EARS of grain plucked by hand — a word that stands in one verse of the Hebrew Bible, Deuteronomy 23:26, where a traveller in a neighbour's standing grain may pluck melilot with your hand but may not swing a chermesh, a sickle, at it. The root is usually taken as malal, to rub or scrape, so the picture is grain rubbed out of the husk between the palms; the derivation is a reasonable guess about a word with no second occurrence. ⭐ That is exactly what Jesus's disciples are doing in the grainfields at Matthew 12:1 and Mark 2:23 (both already on these pages), and Luke 6:1 (not yet on these pages) adds the rubbing outright, rubbing them in their hands — which is also what the Latin Bible put into this verse, so the Douay reads 'break the ears, and rub them in thy hand'. The Pharisees object to the sabbath and not to the plucking, because this law allows it. ⚠ The shelf prints 'ears' (KJV, ASV), 'kernels' (NIV), 'ripe ears' (NWT 1984) and 'a few handfuls' (TLB). → first discussed at Deut 23:26