קֶ֫מַח
qe.mach (H7058)
flour
AI Word Study
# Qemach (קְמַח): Flour in Biblical Context The Hebrew word *qemach* refers to flour, a staple processed grain product in ancient Israel. With fourteen occurrences throughout the biblical text, it appears with sufficient frequency to indicate it was a routine element of daily life and religious practice, though not so common as to dominate biblical vocabulary. The word itself is straightforward in its referent—ground grain prepared for consumption or offering. The fourteen occurrences suggest that flour held practical and possibly ceremonial importance in biblical society. Its repeated appearance indicates it was significant enough to be mentioned explicitly in various contexts, whether describing food preparation, offerings to the temple, or provisions. The modest number of attestations, however, indicates that flour was likely so ordinary that biblical authors did not feel compelled to reference it constantly, even though it would have been present in nearly every household and religious ritual of ancient Israel. Without access to the specific contexts of these fourteen occurrences, we cannot determine whether *qemach* was used exclusively for ordinary baking, for sacred offerings, or in both domains. The data confirms that this was a recognized, named commodity in biblical Hebrew with a clear semantic field—it was not a rare or exotic substance, but rather an established part of the material and religious vocabulary of ancient Israel.
AI synthesis uses only provided lexicon data -- never training knowledge.
Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah, and said, “Quickly prepare three seahs of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes.”
then the man shall bring his wife to the priest, and shall bring her offering for her: one tenth of an ephah of barley meal. He shall pour no oil on it, nor put frankincense on it, for it is a meal offering of jealousy, a meal offering of memorial, bringing iniquity to memory.
Gideon went in and prepared a young goat and unleavened cakes of an ephah of meal. He put the meat in a basket and he put the broth in a pot, and brought it out to him under the oak, and presented it.
When she had weaned him, she took him up with her, with three bulls, and one ephah of meal, and a container of wine, and brought him to Yahweh’s house in Shiloh. The child was young.
The woman had a fattened calf in the house. She hurried and killed it; and she took flour, and kneaded it, and baked unleavened bread of it.
brought beds, basins, earthen vessels, wheat, barley, meal, parched grain, beans, lentils, roasted grain,
Solomon’s provision for one day was thirty cors of fine flour, sixty measures of meal,
She said, “As Yahweh your God lives, I don’t have a cake, but a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jar. Behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and bake it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.”
For Yahweh, the God of Israel says, ‘The jar of meal will not run out, and the jar of oil will not fail, until the day that Yahweh sends rain on the earth.’ ”
The jar of meal didn’t run out, and the jar of oil didn’t fail, according to Yahweh’s word, which he spoke by Elijah.
But he said, “Then bring meal.” He threw it into the pot; and he said, “Serve it to the people, that they may eat.” And there was nothing harmful in the pot.
Moreover those who were near to them, as far as Issachar, Zebulun, and Naphtali, brought bread on donkeys, on camels, on mules, and on oxen: supplies of flour, cakes of figs, clusters of raisins, wine, oil, cattle, and sheep in abundance; for there was joy in Israel.
Take the millstones and grind flour. Remove your veil, lift up your skirt, uncover your legs, and wade through the rivers.
For they sow the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind. He has no standing grain. The stalk will yield no head. If it does yield, strangers will swallow it up.