Judges 9:53

And a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone,.... Of the upper millstone, as the word signifies, which is observed by Jarchi and other Jewish commentators; this with other stones being carried up

And a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech's head, and all to brake his skull. A certain woman cast a ... millstone upon Abimelech's head, and all to break his skull. Similar was the fate of Pyrrhus.

Such great stones no doubt they carried up with them, whereby they might defend themselves, or offend those who assaulted them. Here the justice of God is remarkable in suiting the punishment to his sin. He slew his brethren upon a stone, , and he loseth his own life by a stone.

Judges 9:53 And a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech’ s head, and all to brake his skull.Ver. 53. And a certain woman.] Women have sometimes done singular service against an enemy: as at the siege of Lamia, laid by M. Acilius, the Roman general: of Coccinum, in the isle of Lemnus, by the Turks, where Marulla, a maiden, fought desperately in defence of her country: of Buda, where the Hungarian women bestirred them lustily to save the town. But what monstrous mothers were those Suevian women, who, assisting their husbands in fight against the Romans, under the conduct of Drusus, son-in-law to Augustus Caesar, threw their young children at them instead of darts. Cast a piece of a millstone.] So that ambitious King Pyrrhus was at last slain with a tile stone thrown upon his head by a woman. And the like deadly blow light by a like hand, upon the head of Hermanius Earl of Lucelburg, whom Pope Hildebrand had set up in opposition to Henry the Emperor, whom he had excommunicated. Simeon De Monteforti also, another of the Pope’ s champions, fighting against those ancient Protestants the Waldenses, was brained with a stone at the siege of Tholouse. That scholar that took his death by the falling of a letter of stone from the Earl of Northampton’ s house at the funeral of Queen Anne, was to be pitied. But commentators observe it for a just hand of God upon Abimelech, that upon one stone he had slain his seventy brethren, and now a stone slayeth him: his head had stolen the crown of Israel, and now his head is smitten. Liv., lib. xxxvii. Turk. Hist., 413. Ibid., 741. Heyl., Geog. Plutarch. Val. Max. Christ. Arch. Ussher.

(53) A piece of a millstone.—The word for millstone is receb, literally, runner, i.e., the upper millstone, or lapis vector, which is whirled round and round over the stationary lower one, sheceb (Deuteronomy 24:6). And all to brake his skull.—This is a mere printer’s error for all-to or al-to, i.e., utterly, and it has led to the further misreading of “brake.” Others think that it should be printed “all to-brake,” where the to is intensive like the German ge—as in Chaucer’s “All is to-broken thilke regioun” (Knight’s Tale, 2,579). But in Latimer we find “they love, and all-to love him” (see Bible Word-book, § 5). The meaning of the verb is “smashed” or “shattered” (LXX., suneklase; Vulg., confregit; Luther, zerbrach). The death of Pyrrhus by a tile flung down by a woman as he rode into the town of Argos is an historic parallel (Pausan. 1:13). The ringleader of an attack on the Jews, who had taken refuge in York Castle in 1190, was similarly killed. His armour.—Celîm, literally, implements. (Comp. Judges 18:11; Genesis 27:3.)

Verse 53. A piece of a millstone] פלח רכב pelach recheb, a piece of a chariot wheel; but the word is used in other places for upper millstones, and is so understood here by the Vulgate, Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic. And all to break his skull.] A most nonsensical version of ותרץ את גלגלתו vattarits eth gulgolto, which is literally, And she brake, or fractured, his skull. Plutarch, in his life of Pyrrhus, observes that this king was killed at the siege of Thebes, by a piece of a tile, which a woman threw upon his head.

53. upper millstone] lit. ‘millstone of riding’; i.e. the upper stone of a mill turned by a handle, the lower stone being stationary. In Palestine the grinding of corn for the household was, and still is, done by the women (Ecclesiastes 12:3, St Matthew 24:41); this explains how a woman came to use such a weapon. Cf. Judges 4:21.

The phrase “all” to is now obsolete, and means “quite,” “entirely,” as in Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton.

53. All-to brake his skull — Better, and she brake his skull. The phrase all-to was used by some of the old English authors in the sense of entirely, but is now obsolete.