Lastly, The reason is delivered in the Text. Let us build us a City and a Tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the whole earth; as we have already began to wander over a part. These were the open ends proposed unto the people; but the secret design of _Nimrod_ was to settle unto himself a place of dominion, and rule over his Brethren, as it after succeeded, according to the delivery of the Text, the beginning of his kingdom was _Babel_. CHAPTER VII Of the Mandrakes of _Leah_. We shall not omit the Mandrakes of _Leah_, according to the History of _Genesis_. And _Reuben_ went out in the daies of Wheat-harvest, and found Mandrakes in the field, and brought them unto his mother _Leah_; then _Rachel_ said unto _Leah_, give me, I pray thee, of thy sons Mandrakes: and she said unto her, is it a small matter that thou hast taken my husband, and wouldest thou take my sons Mandrakes also? and _Rachel_ said, Therefore he shall lie with thee this night for thy sons Mandrakes. From whence hath arisen a common conceit, that _Rachel_ requested these plants as a medicine of fecundation, or whereby she might become fruitfull. Which notwithstanding is very questionable, and of incertain truth. For first from the comparison of one Text with another, whether the Mandrakes here mentioned, be the same plant which holds that name with us, there is some cause to doubt. The word is used in another place of Scripture [SN: _Cant._ 7.], when the Church inviting her beloved into the fields, among the delightfull fruits of Grapes and Pomegranates, it is said, The Mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits. Now instead of a smell of Delight, our Mandrakes afford a papaverous and unpleasant odor, whether in the leaf or apple, as is discoverable in their simplicity or mixture. The same is also dubious from the different interpretations: for though the Septuagint and _Josephus_ do render it the Apples of Mandrakes in this Text, yet in the other of the _Canticles_, the _Chaldy_ Paraphrase termeth it Balsame. R. _Solomon_, as _Drusius_ observeth, conceives it to be that plant the _Arabians_ named Jesemin. _Oleaster_, and _Georgius Venetus_, the Lilly, and that the word _Dudaim_ may comprehend any plant that hath a good smell, resembleth a womans breast, and flourisheth in wheat harvest. _Tremelius_ interprets the same for any amiable flowers of a pleasant and delightfull odor: but the _Geneva_ Translators have been more wary then any: for although they retain the word Mandrake in the Text, they in effect retract it in the Margin: wherein is set down the word in the original is _Dudaim_, which is a kind of fruit or Flower unknown. [Sidenote: _The vegetables in H. Scripture how variously expounded._]