The women of the household were the ones who made the bread, but it was no simple process. First, the grain had to be grown. Then, it was harvested, threshed, winnowed, and sifted. Next, the grain had to be ground. This was one of the big jobs that women had in Galilee. To feed even a small family, women had to spend two or three hours a day grinding the grain. Villages in Galilee weren’t wealthy enough to have shared mills powered by animals. All of that grinding was done by hand. They had larger stones anchored to the ground and smaller ones in their hands. They just sat there and ground it back and forth. There’s a Jewish writing from around that time that said when Jewish women got a servant, the first task they would give to the servant was the dreaded daily grind.
In any case, women didn’t do this monotonous task alone. They had courtyards that had grindstones and ovens. Many scholars think that poor villages would have one oven that the entire community would use. All of the women would come together to keep the fire burning. The fuel would’ve probably been too expensive for one family alone. They would wait their turn and bake the bread that would feed their families. Spending hours and hours together, women shared stories of what was going on in their lives, they educated the children and young women, and they finished other work they had to do. Providing for a guest was a duty, for certain, but the countless hours of labor for the food at the center of every meal was life or death for a family.
Any time they served bread, even for an unexpected guest, it was unacceptable to feed a guest leftover scraps that the family had on end. They had to serve good, whole loaves. Since the women in the village knew one another, they knew who cooked what and who’s likely to have whole loaves left over. In 1st century Galilee, there weren’t too many public spots for travelers: in or out of cities. Travelers looking for hospitality needed the basics of survival. Turning a visitor away meant you didn’t care if they lived or died.
But treating a guest well… that was a beautiful thing! Making them feel comfortable and happy and welcome showed the whole community that you and your family were truly good people. What’s more, if the community found out that one family helped another in a pinch, that family would be celebrated, too! A welcoming community where people took care of one another was just as attractive then as it is now – perhaps more so. There is something holy in knowing that you can trust your neighbor and your friend to care when you really need them.
Sources:
*https://ferrelljenkins.blog/2012/04/30/grinding-grain-in-bible-times/
*https://tavolamediterranea.com/2018/06/14/baking-bread-romans-part-iii-panis-strikes-back/
*https://www.forcey.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/07_bi_bread_and_bread_making.pdf
*Shewell-Cooper, W.E. “Barley,” in The Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible, Vol 1: A-C, eds. Merrill C. Tenney and Moises Silva (Grand Rapids, Mich: Zondervan, 2009), 508.
*Culpepper, R. Alan. The People of the Parables: Galilee in the Time of Jesus. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2024, p. 78-79.
*https://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2074-77052022000100046
* Vinson, Richard B. Luke. Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary. Macon, Georgia: Smyth & Helwys, 2008, p. 375-376.
