the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
free while helping to build churches and support pastors in Uganda.
Click here to learn more!
Bible Dictionaries
Mill
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or 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 (Judges 9:53 Gesenius translated "a cut piece of millstone," not a fragment, but the whole with its carefully cut surface; Revelation 18:21).
Two women (Matthew 24:41) 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 (Exodus 11:5; Judges 16:21; Isaiah 47:1-2; Lamentations 5:18). The mill stones were so essential for preparing food that they were forbidden to be taken in pledge (Deuteronomy 24:6). The cessation of the sound of grinding was a sign of desolation (Jeremiah 25:10; Revelation 18:22; Ecclesiastes 12:3-4, "the grinders cease because they are few ... the sound of the grinding is low".) Larger millstones were turned by asses; Matthew 18:6 "a donkey millstone" (Greek).
These files are public domain.
Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Mill'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/m/mill.html. 1949.
