Leviticus 26:26

WEB

When I break your staff of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver your bread again by weight: and you shall eat, and not be satisfied.

KJV

And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight: and ye shall eat, and not be satisfied.

Commentary

And when I have broken the staff of your bread,.... Brought a famine, at least a scarcity of provisions upon them, deprived them of bread, the staff of life, by which it is supported; or however made it very scarce among them, so that they had hardly a sufficiency to sustain nature, and perhaps the blessing of n ourishment withheld from that; see Isa 3:1 , ten women shall bake your bread in one oven; for want of wood, according to Jarchi; or rather through scarcity of bread corn, they should have so little to bake every week, that one oven would be sufficient for ten families, which in a time of plenty each made use of one for themselves; and so Aben Ezra says, it was a custom in Israel for every family to bake in an oven by themselves, which they ate the whole week. Ten is a certain number for an uncertain, and denotes many, as in Zac 8:23 . Making and baking bread was the work of women in the eastern countries, as we find it was particularly among the Persians (n), and continues to this day among the Moors and Arabs (o): and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight; there being not enough for everyone to eat what they pleased, but were obliged to a rationed allowance, therefore everyone in the family should have their share delivered to him by weight; see Eze 4:16 , and ye shall eat, and not be satisfied; not having enough to eat to satisfaction; or what they did eat, God would withhold a blessing from it for their nourishment, the reverse of Lev 26:5 . (n) Herodot. Polymnia, sive. l. 4. c. 187. (o) Shaw's Travels, p. 241. Ed. 2.