Bible Dictionary
Butter
Biblical butter commonly refers to curdled or thickened milk, sometimes a semi-liquid cream or butter-like substance. It was a valued food offered to guests and used in ordinary meals.
Definition
Biblical butter commonly means curdled or sour milk, though it may also refer to a thick or semi-liquid cream resembling butter. It was a valued food and could be served to guests or eaten with ordinary meals.
Biblical Usage
Curdled milk or butter-like food appears in accounts of hospitality, provision, and pastoral life. One proverb may refer either to the pressure of milk producing butter or to the making of cheese.
Historical Background
Milk in Palestine was commonly offered to travelers in a curdled form called leben. Butter could be made by shaking milk in a leather bag suspended from poles.
Scripture References
Historical Bible Dictionaries
Easton's Bible Dictionary
(Heb. hemah), curdled milk (Gen. 18:8; Judg. 5:25; 2 Sam. 17:29), or butter in the form of the skim of hot milk or cream, called by the Arabs kaimak, a semi-fluid (Job 20:17; 29:6; Deut. 32:14). The words of Prov. 30:33 have been rendered by some “the pressure [not churning] of milk bringeth forth cheese.”
Smith's Bible Dictionary
Curdled milk. (Genesis 18:8; 32:14; Judges 5:25; Job 20:17) Milk is generally offered to travellers in Palestine in a curdled or sour state, leben, thick, almost like butter. Hasselquist describes the method of making butter employed by the Arab women: “they made butter in a leather bag, hung on three poles erected for the purpose, in the form of a cone, and drawn to and fro by two women.”
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE)
<p>See FOOD.</p>