And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.
And he will take your daughters to be perfumers, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.
`And your daughters he doth take for perfumers, and for cooks, and for bakers;
And he will take your daughters for perfumers, and cooks, and bakers.
1 Samuel — The transition from judges to monarchy. Samuel rises as prophet-judge; Israel demands a king; Saul rises and is rejected; David is anointed in obscurity and flees across the wilderness. Three lives overlapping — the prophetic-judicial-royal handoff.
Voices3
9. When subjection is sought by carnal men, assuredly whatever is commanded them is burdensome, even if it is not difficult: because since they have it from the swelling of pride that they follow the judgment of their own will, whatever opposes their deliberation they consider most grievous. But indeed when harsh and contrary things are commanded, what a weight of burden is that! What swelling of heart! When they could scarcely bear even pleasant and light things unwillingly—things which, if they had been willing, they would have borne most easily.
Gregory the Dialogist· Commentary on 1 Kings, Book 4, Chapter 1, 604patristic
What then is the meaning of what he adds: that the daughters of the Israelites would become perfumers, cooks, and bakers? But by the term "daughters" sometimes weakness is signified, sometimes fruitfulness. Who then are the daughters of the Israelites, if not chosen souls, prepared for the conception of the divine Word? They become the king's perfumers: because as they advance through the instruction of their preacher, they receive within themselves the abundant grace of the Holy Spirit, through which they can wholesomely heal the brokenhearted.
Gregory the Dialogist· Commentary on 1 Kings, Book 4, Chapter 4, 604patristic
And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries,.... Such as deal in spices, and mix them, and make them up in various forms very agreeable to the taste. Men are commonly in our countries and times employed in such arts, but it seems this was the business of women in those times and places.
John Gill· Exposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763)reformed
