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GOURD (kîkâyôn, Jon_4:5).—The similarity of the Heb. to the Egyp. kiki, the castor-oil plant, suggests this as Jonah’s gourd. This plant, Ricinus communis, often attains in the East the dimensions of a considerable tree. The bottle-gourd, Cucurbita lagenaria, which is often trained over hastily constructed booths, seems to satisfy the conditions of the narrative much better.
Wild gourds (pakkû‘ôth, 2Ki_4:39) were either the common squirting-cucumber (Ecballium elalerium), one of the most drastic of known cathartics, or, more probably, the colocynth (Citrullus colocynlhis), a trailing vine-like plant with rounded gourds, intensely bitter to the taste and an irritant poison.
E. W. G. Masterman.