Hebrew word · H7347

רֵחֶה

rechayim

millstone

A hand-mill, always in the "pair" form because the mill was two stones: a lower saddle-shaped stone and an upper stone moved over it by hand.

Appears 5 times in 5 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. · Updated November 01, 2026

What it means

1) handmills

1a) a pair of millstones for grinding

Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

Range of meaning: A hand-mill, always in the "pair" form because the mill was two stones: a lower saddle-shaped stone and an upper stone moved over it by hand.
Against the English: "Millstones" can make a modern reader picture a large water-mill or a mill turned by an animal. Here it means the small household hand-mill, worked mostly by women every day.
Used elsewhere in the period: Deuteronomy 24:6 forbids taking "a pair of millstones, or even the upper one" as a pledge for a loan, "for that would be taking a life in pledge". Without the mill a family could not eat. Exodus 11:5 mentions "the slave girl behind the millstones". Ecclesiastes 12:4 uses "the sound of grinding fades" as an image of the end of life.

Range of meaning: The pair of stones that make a hand-mill: a fixed lower stone and a movable upper stone (Deut 24:6 distinguishes 'the mill' from 'the upper millstone'). Paired with the verb ṭāḥan 'grind', it stands for the daily work of turning grain into flour.
Against the English: 'Millstones' can call up a modern picture of a huge stone wheel in a mill house, turned by water or by a donkey (the 'donkey millstone' of Matt 18:6). In Iron Age Israel and Babylon this was a household hand-mill, worked by a woman kneeling over it for hours every day.
How it drifted: Later milling technology (rotary and animal-driven mills, then water mills) changed the mental picture.
Used elsewhere in the period: Exod 11:5 sets 'the firstborn of Pharaoh on his throne' against 'the firstborn of the slave girl behind the hand-mill', the two ends of the social scale. Samson as a captive is made to grind in prison (Judg 16:21); captured young men 'carry the mill' (Lam 5:13). The sound of the millstones is a sign of normal life (Jer 25:10). Job 31:10 ('may my wife grind for another') pairs grinding with sexual subjugation. Mesopotamian records show slave women and war captives assigned to milling in large numbers.

Exodus · 1

Exodus 11:5 הָרֵחָ֑יִם the hand-mill

and every firstborn son in the land of Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, to the firstborn of the servant girl behind the hand mill, as well as the firstborn of all the cattle.

Numbers · 1

Numbers 11:8 בָרֵחַ֗יִם in <the> hand-mill

The people walked around and gathered it, ground it on a handmill or crushed it in a mortar, then boiled it in a cooking pot or shaped it into cakes. It tasted like pastry baked with fine oil.

Deuteronomy · 1

Deuteronomy 24:6 רֵחַ֖יִם a hand-mill

Do not take a pair of millstones or even an upper millstone as security for a debt, because that would be taking one’s livelihood as security.

Isaiah · 1

Isaiah 47:2 רֵחַ֖יִם a hand-mill

Take millstones and grind flour; remove your veil; strip off your skirt, bare your thigh, and wade through the streams.

Here: The ending marks a pair: the two stones of a household hand-mill, a heavy lower slab and a smaller upper stone rubbed or turned over it. Not a large animal-driven mill, but the tool a kneeling woman worked by hand every day.

Jeremiah · 1

Jeremiah 25:10 רֵחַ֖יִם a hand-mill

Moreover, I will banish from them the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of the bride and bridegroom, the sound of the millstones, and the light of the lamp.

Here: The form means "a pair": the two stones of a hand-mill. The upper stone was rubbed or turned over the lower. Women ground grain on these every day, usually before dawn, so their scraping was the background sound of a living house. Silence here means no bread and no one left to make it.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.