GOURD ( kîkâyôn , Jonah 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 , 2 Kings 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.