Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comFausset Bible Dictionary: Mill
Subjects in this Topic:
In the East two "circular stones" (reechahim), 2 ft. diameter, the lower fixed, and with the upper surface slightly convex, fitting into the upper stone's concavity. This stone has a hole through which the grain passes, above a pivot rising from the lower stone. About the pivot the "upper stone" (recheb, "the rider") is turned by a handle. Being moveable it could be thrown as a missile ( Gesenius translated "a cut piece of millstone," not a fragment, but the whole with its carefully cut surface; ).
Two women () facing one another, seated on the ground, both turned it round by the handle, the one supplying the grain through the hole. It was hard servile labor (; ; -2; ). The mill stones were so essential for preparing food that they were forbidden to be taken in pledge (). The cessation of the sound of grinding was a sign of desolation (; ; -4, "the grinders cease because they are few ... the sound of the grinding is low".) Larger millstones were turned by asses; "a donkey millstone" (Greek).