curds: milk that has soured and thickened into a rich, tangy food, the everyday dairy staple of a herding household
In a hot country milk sours within hours, so it was never kept long as a fresh drink. The household poured it into a hanging skin bag and rocked the bag until the fat gathered, and what came out was thick, tangy and rich, closer to yogurt or the Middle Eastern "leben" than to a pale block of butter. That is the food this word names. Older English Bibles say "butter" because the ancient Greek and Latin translators reached for the nearest thing they knew, and the King James Version kept their choice.
The word almost always travels in company. It stands beside milk (חָלָב) when a herder sets out a meal, beside honey when a writer wants to picture a whole diet, and beside the fat of lambs and the finest wheat when a poet lists the good things of a generous land. Because it belongs to herding rather than farming, it can point two ways at once: it is what a wealthy tent dweller serves an honored guest, and it is also what people fall back on when the fields have gone to briars and only the animals are left. Isaiah 7 turns on exactly that double edge, and readers have argued over which way it leans ever since.
One thing is worth noticing by its absence. Israel's neighbors set curds and honey before their gods, but the offerings named in Israel's law never include this food at all. It stayed on the table of hospitality, wealth and ordinary meals rather than moving to the altar.
Nuances
What Jael's offering of curds is doing in the Song of Deborah, where she serves her guest the finest food in a nobleman's bowl and then drives a tent peg through his skull.
- majorityLavish hospitality turned into a weapon. The fine bowl and the upgrade from water to curds disarm Sisera, and the very generosity of the gesture makes the killing that follows more shocking.; Barnabas Lindars, Judges 1-5: A New Translation and Commentary (ICC); Trent C. Butler, Judges (Word Biblical Commentary); Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary
- minorityA scene charged with seduction and nurture that ends in death, read together with the language of Sisera falling between Jael's feet.; Susan Niditch, "Eroticism and Death in the Tale of Jael," in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, ed. Peggy L. Day
Whether the child's diet of curds and honey in the Immanuel sign marks the plenty that follows deliverance or the reduced fare of a ravaged land.
- contestedThe food of the coming devastation, so the sign carries a threat alongside its promise.; Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 1-12 (Continental Commentary); Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39 (Anchor Yale Bible)
- contestedGood food that God provides, so the child's diet points to deliverance rather than deprivation.; John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 1-39 (NICOT); Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah (Old Testament Library)
Whether the curds and honey eaten by everyone left in the land picture God's provision or the meager diet of a countryside stripped of its farming.
- majorityThe subsistence food of a depopulated land that has reverted from farming to herding, in keeping with the briars and thorns of the following verses.; Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 1-12 (Continental Commentary); Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39 (Anchor Yale Bible); J. J. M. Roberts, First Isaiah (Hermeneia); H. G. M. Williamson, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Isaiah 1-27 (ICC), on Isaiah 7; John H. Hayes and Stuart A. Irvine, Isaiah, the Eighth-Century Prophet
- minorityA sign of plenty: the land still yields its increase, and God feeds the remnant even in the middle of judgment.; John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 1-39 (NICOT); Rashi, Radak and ibn Ezra on Isaiah 7 (classical Jewish commentaries)
- contestedDeliberately double-edged: the image can symbolize desolation and abundance at once, and the shape of the finished chapter draws out the positive reading.; Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah (Old Testament Library)