Hebrew word · H8194
שְׁפוֹת
ushefot
cheese
Found only here. Jewish tradition and most lexicons take it as 'cheese' or some solidified milk product; some link it to a root meaning 'to scrape' or 'skim' (thus cream or scraped curd). HALOT and BDB both mark the meaning as uncertain.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
1) cream, cheese
1a) meaning uncertain
Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
From the study of 2 Samuel 17:29
- Range of meaning
Found only here. Jewish tradition and most lexicons take it as 'cheese' or some solidified milk product; some link it to a root meaning 'to scrape' or 'skim' (thus cream or scraped curd). HALOT and BDB both mark the meaning as uncertain.
- Against the English
KJV 'cheese of kine', BSB/ESV/NASB 'cheese from the herd', NIV 'cheese from cows' milk'. All follow the traditional reading. NIV's 'cows' milk' states as fact what is an interpretation of an uncertain word.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The ancient translators were already unsure. The Septuagint does not translate it and writes saphphōth, the Hebrew letters in Greek. The Vulgate guesses 'fat calves' (pingues vitulos), which takes baqar as the animals themselves rather than their milk.
Where it appears
2 Samuel · 1
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2 Samuel 17:29 וּשְׁפ֣וֹת and cheese of
honey, curds, sheep, and cheese from the herd for David and his people to eat. For they said, “The people have become hungry, exhausted, and thirsty in the wilderness.”
Here: A word found only here in the Bible. Tradition takes it as cheese or some solid milk product. Its exact meaning is uncertain.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.