1 Samuel 8:13

13 Your daughters he will take to be makers of perfumes and cooks and bread-makers.

1 Samuel 8:13 Meaning and Commentary

1 Samuel 8:13

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. Some versions ^F4 render it "unguentariae", makers or sellers of ointments, and such there were in some nations ^F5, such was Lydia in Juvenal ^F6;

and to be cooks;
to dress all sorts of food, especially what were boiled, as the word signifies: and to be bakers; to make and bake bread, which though with us is the work of men, yet in the eastern countries was usually done by women; (See Gill on Leviticus 26:26).

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FOOTNOTES:

F4 So V. L. and Tigurine.
F5 Vid. Plin. Nat. Hist. l. 8. c. 5.
F6 Satyr. 2. ver. 141. Vid. Turnebi Adversar. l. 15. c. 17.

1 Samuel 8:13 In-Context

11 And he said, This is the sort of king who will be your ruler: he will take your sons and make them his servants, his horsemen, and drivers of his war-carriages, and they will go running before his war-carriages;

12 And he will make them captains of thousands and of fifties; some he will put to work ploughing and cutting his grain and making his instruments of war and building his war-carriages.

13 Your daughters he will take to be makers of perfumes and cooks and bread-makers.

14 He will take your fields and your vine-gardens and your olive-gardens, all the best of them, and give them to his servants.

15 He will take a tenth of your seed and of the fruit of your vines and give it to his servants.