An EAR of grain — the head of a stalk of wheat or barley, and, by the same root, a flowing stream. Judges 12:6 turns the word into history's most famous shibboleth: fleeing Ephraimites, unable to produce the sh- sound, said sibboleth instead and were killed at the fords of the Jordan for the accent alone (not yet on these pages). Zechariah 4:12 stretches the same grain-word onto an OLIVE tree by analogy — shibbelei ha-zeitim, 'ears of the olives' — rendered 'olive branches' or 'twigs' in translation, since English has no botanical word that crosses grain and fruit-tree the way Hebrew's does here. → first discussed at Zechariah 4:12