What is the hyssop of the Bible?

The hyssop of the Bible is most probably za'atar, Origanum syriacum. It is a small aromatic herb of the mint family that grows on rocks and terrace walls across Palestine, and it is the same plant that is dried, ground with sumac and sesame, and eaten on bread (what za'atar is).

It is not Hyssopus officinalis. The purple-flowered herb sold in garden centres under the name hyssop took the biblical name centuries later, in European herbals. It is not part of the wild flora of Palestine, so nobody in the text could have gone out and cut a bunch of it.

The identification is old, and it is written in Arabic. Where the Hebrew of Exodus 12:22 has ezov, Saadia's tenth-century Arabic translation has صعتر, sa'tar, an older spelling of the word Palestinians say today. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible pointed the same way in 1900, more than nine centuries later.

The Bible never describes hyssop. It only uses it. Read together, the passages need a small plant that can be tied into a bunch, that holds liquid well enough to sprinkle it, and that grows out of walls.

The Arabic Bible does not translate the word at all. In all four verses this record checked (Exodus 12:22, 1 Kings 4:33, Psalm 51:7 and John 19:29) the modern Arabic text reads زوفا, zufa, which is the Hebrew word carried across. A reader in Nablus or Bethlehem meets a plant name in church that nobody uses in the market.

Hyssopus officinalis is not a native plant of Palestine. Grace Crowfoot and Louise Baldensperger, who spent years on this question from the village of Artas near Bethlehem, called that “one certain thing in the whole controversy” in 1932.

The Palestinian record agrees. This record searched every row of both published checklists of the country's native plants and the two open occurrence counts:

• 0 rows for Hyssopus in the 2022 checklist of Palestine's native flora, West Bank and Gaza (1,826 taxa).
• 0 rows for Hyssopus in the 2026 checklist of the West Bank (1,710 taxa).
• 0 records of Hyssopus officinalis in GBIF for Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon or Syria, against 38, 9, 74 and 69 of Origanum syriacum.

The name moved; the plant never did. Greek and Roman herbals used “hyssop” for a loose group of herbs, very probably marjorams. Northern European herbalists copied the old prescriptions and attached them to an aromatic plant they had at home. By the sixteenth century English herbals meant Hyssopus officinalis when they wrote hyssop, and some of their authors noticed that it no longer matched the ancient descriptions.

The same transfer shows in the name the databases now give za'atar. The 2018 Palestinian wild-food survey prints the accepted English name beside Origanum syriacum, and it reads “Biblical hyssop”.

Saadia Gaon translated the Torah into Arabic in the tenth century, and at Exodus 12:22 he wrote وخذوا باقة من صعتر: “take a bunch of sa'tar.” He did not borrow the Hebrew word. He named a plant his readers could pick (Tafsir, Exodus 12:22, Paris edition of 1893).

صعتر is still on the Palestinian books. The 2022 and 2026 checklists both give three Arabic names for Origanum syriacum: زعتر بري, صعتر and سعتر. The second is Saadia's spelling, letter for letter.

The Samaritans of Nablus used za'atar as hyssop within living record. Crowfoot and Baldensperger visited the Samaritan High Priest, who showed them a Pentateuch in three languages written in his own hand. Where the Hebrew had ezobh, the Samaritan column had zufa and the Arabic had sa'tar, and he told them it meant the za'atar of daily life that grows on Mount Gerizim. One of them attended the Samaritan Passover there in April 1930 and watched a priest dip a small bunch of za'atar in blood and water and touch it to the doorposts of the festival huts.

And zufa survives too, attached to a different plant. The checklists give زوفا بيضاء, white zufa, as a name for Micromeria fruticosa, another small herb of the mint family that Palestinians also call زعتر بلاط, paving-stone za'atar. Both of the Bible's Arabic words for hyssop are alive in Palestine, and both sit inside the za'atar group.

The Mishnah rules that hyssop for ritual use must be plain hyssop: not “Greek hyssop”, not “stibium hyssop”, not “Roman hyssop”, not “wild hyssop”, and not any kind that carries a qualifying name. Crowfoot and Baldensperger heard in that rule exactly how Palestinians talk about za'atar.

Seven names, six species, and only one of them is called za'atar with nothing added. That one is Origanum syriacum. The plant the Mishnah allows is the plant that needs no adjective, and in Palestine that is still true of the same herb.

The five za'atars Palestinians gather today, with their months, are on the za'atar page, and every name in both languages is in the plant-names index.

The serious rival is the caper. In 1846 the botanist J. Forbes Royle argued in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society that the hyssop was Capparis spinosa, الكبّار. Three of his reasons were that the caper grows out of walls, that one of its Arabic names, asuf, sounds like ezov, and that it has a stem long enough to carry a sponge.

John 19:29 is the weak point of the za'atar answer. Za'atar is a low herb with thin twigs, and lifting a soaked sponge on it is hard to picture. Royle's caper handles that verse better. On this record's reading it handles Exodus worse: a thorny caper branch is a poor thing to tie into a bunch and use as a brush.

• The Bible's hyssop is not Hyssopus officinalis. That plant is absent from Palestine's native flora.
• The best single answer is za'atar, Origanum syriacum. Saadia wrote it in the tenth century and the Samaritans were still using it in 1930.
• Crowfoot and Baldensperger wrote “most probably”, and this record keeps their hedge. One verse fits the caper better.
• The plant has its own name where it grows. زعتر.

Za'atar is also one of the three wild plants Palestinians are prosecuted for gathering under Israeli nature law. The court record and its sources are on Under the Law.