taḥan

• Names a job done at a mill, and the verses name the equipment and the product with it: ground between the millstones, ground into flour.Num 11:8Isa 47:2
• Is the labor of prisoners and slaves, so putting someone at the mill is itself the picture of humiliation: the blinded strongman set to grinding in jail, the proud city told to take up the stones.Jdg 16:21Isa 47:2
• Can name the workers themselves, the women at the stones who stop because too few of them are left.Ecc 12:3
• Names household work a wife does, which is why it can stand in an oath as the shame a man calls down on his own house.Job 31:10
• Pictures oppression as treating human beings like grain fed under the stone, with rulers grinding the faces of the poor.Isa 3:15

• Both describe reducing something solid to small particles by repeated crushing, and the golden calf account uses them as one process: the calf is ground, and it is ground until it is fine as dust.Exo 32:20Deu 9:21
• Both can be turned from material onto people, so that crushing becomes a way of speaking about power used against the weak or against defeated nations.Isa 3:15Mic 4:13
• English Bibles commonly render both with the same word, "grind", which hides that one of them names the labor and the other names how fine the result is.Isa 47:2Exo 30:36

• Names how fine the thing has become rather than the work that got it there, and the verse usually spells out what it ended as: ground "to dust", or as fine as the mud of the streets.2Ki 23:62Ki 23:152Sa 22:43
• Is the reform accounts' word for putting a shrine or an image beyond recovery: it follows a verb of smashing and carries the wreckage the rest of the way down to powder.2Ch 34:42Ch 34:72Ch 15:16
• Belongs to the threshing floor and its sledges and cart wheels rather than to the mill, and can picture whole peoples and mountains pounded down until nothing of them stands.Mic 4:13Isa 41:15
• Can describe what simply happens to a thing, with no worker in view: the grain is crushed under the wheel, and it is not crushed on and on forever.Isa 28:28
• Can attach to another verb to say how far that verb's work must go, adding "fine" to the rubbing of the holy incense rather than naming an action of its own.Exo 30:36

• Grinding at the stones is the household's daily, never finished work, and the job forced on prisoners and slaves. Blinded Samson is set to grinding in a Philistine prison, proud Babylon is told to take up the handmill and grind flour like a servant girl, and Job, swearing his innocence, can name no worse fate for himself than his wife grinding for another man.Jdg 16:21Isa 47:2Job 31:10
• Turned on an object rather than on grain, grinding means destroying it for good: Moses burns the golden calf and then works it down to dust so that nothing anyone could bow to is left.Exo 32:20Deu 9:21
• Grinding becomes a picture of crushing people, when God charges Israel's leaders with treating the poor the way a mill treats wheat.Isa 3:15
• Because the sound of the mill meant a house still had people and food in it, the grinding falling silent stands for a whole household, or a body, winding down: Ecclesiastes pictures old age as a place where the women at the mill stop because so few of them are left.Ecc 12:3

• Both words name a way of breaking something hard down by hand until it can be cooked. Numbers 11:8 sets them side by side as the two ways the people worked the manna, some of it run between the stones of a mill and rendered "ground", some of it pounded in a mortar and rendered "beat", with both roads ending in the same baked cakes.Num 11:8

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• It is the ordinary food work of the household mill: grain or manna worked between stones until it is flour that can be cooked and eaten, so the powder is the useful goal rather than the wreckage.Num 11:8Ecc 12:3
• Because that work is slow, endless and menial, it stands for the humiliation of captives and the lowest servants: a blinded prisoner set to the stones, a proud city ordered to sit down and turn the mill like a slave girl, a wife imagined as another man's drudge.Jdg 16:21Isa 47:2Job 31:10
• As a picture of injustice it describes pressure applied steadily over time, wearing people away rather than felling them with one blow, as when rulers are charged with grinding the faces of the poor.Isa 3:15

• Both can be aimed at one and the same object until nothing usable is left, and the account of the gold calf runs them in sequence: the image is battered apart, then what remains is worked down until it is as fine as dust.Deu 9:21

• It is the standard word for blows struck in war: an army beaten down and driven back by its pursuers, enemies broken before a king, nation battered by nation.Num 14:45Deu 1:44Psa 89:232Ch 15:6
• It names the smashing of an idol or a forbidden object so that it can never be set up and used again, which is why reforming kings and prophets reach for it.2Ki 18:42Ch 34:7Mic 1:7
• It can also be constructive hammering, where the breaking is only the first half of the making: metal beaten out of swords into farm tools, or out of farm tools into weapons.Isa 2:4Mic 4:3Jol 3:10
• It suits brittle things that give way all at once under a blow: a clay jar shattered without pity, a city gate battered into rubble.Isa 30:14Isa 24:12
• It reaches to bodies as well as objects: an animal whose parts have been crushed is unfit to bring to the altar, and human life is pictured as knocked to pieces between morning and evening.Lev 22:24Job 4:20

• Names a job done at a mill, and the verses name the equipment and the food alongside it: manna worked between millstones before it was cooked, and a captive city told to take the stones and grind meal.Num 11:8Isa 47:2
• Is the labor of prisoners and slaves, so being put to it is itself the humiliation: the blinded strongman set to grinding in the prison house, the proud city ordered down to the millstones.Jdg 16:21Isa 47:2
• Belongs to ordinary household life and to the people who do it, which is why the women at the stones can stand for a whole household growing old, and why a man can stake an oath on the shame of his wife grinding for someone else.Ecc 12:3Job 31:10
• Pictures oppression as feeding human beings under the stone, with rulers grinding "the faces of the poor" in the ordinary running of a town rather than on a battlefield.Isa 3:15

• Both take something solid all the way down to powder, so either can end a thing for good: the golden calf reduced until nothing of it could be used again, and defeated enemies beaten as fine as the dust of the earth.Exo 32:20Deu 9:212Sa 22:43
• Both turn from material onto people, so crushing becomes a way of talking about power used against those who cannot resist, whether by a ruler over the poor or by a king over a beaten army.Isa 3:15Psa 18:42
• Both describe steady pressure and rubbing rather than one heavy blow, which is why each can leave a fine powder behind: manna worked between the stones, incense rubbed small.Num 11:8Exo 30:36

• Can name a wearing away that nobody performs and nobody intends, with no worker, no tool, and no blow struck: water rubbing stones down over long stretches of time.Job 14:19
• Serves careful sacred preparation, where the point is the fineness of the powder and not a meal: the incense for the sanctuary is rubbed "very small" before it is set in place.Exo 30:36
• Is the word victory poems reach for when an enemy is rubbed away to nothing, and the verse then says how fine the leftovers were: like dust before the wind, like mud trodden out in the streets.Psa 18:422Sa 22:43

• Names the labor rather than the equipment, so it can describe a person put to that labor as a punishment or a public disgrace. Samson is blinded and set to grinding in a Philistine prison, and Job can name no worse fate for himself than his wife grinding for another man.Jdg 16:21Job 31:10
• Reaches past grain to any hard thing pounded down to powder, where the point is destruction and not food. Moses burns the golden calf and then grinds it until there is nothing left that anyone could bow to.Exo 32:20Deu 9:21
• Can be turned on people themselves as an accusation, treating human beings the way a mill treats wheat. Israel's leaders are charged with grinding the faces of the poor.Isa 3:15
• Can stand in for the workers, naming them by the job they do rather than by the stones they use. In Ecclesiastes the women who grind stop because so few of them are left.Ecc 12:3

• Both belong to one piece of daily household work, turning grain into flour by hand, and the two often appear in the same breath because one names the stones and the other names the pushing of them. In the wilderness the people ground the manna at the handmills.Num 11:8
• Both carry the low status of that work, so either one is enough to picture a proud power brought down to a servant's job. Babylon is told to take up the handmill and grind flour like a slave girl.Isa 47:2

• Is a physical possession that can be picked up and carried off, which is why the law forbids taking it as security for a loan. To seize a family's handmill is to take away the means of making tomorrow's bread.Deu 24:6
• Marks a place in a household, so standing behind the stones identifies who a person is. The plague on Egypt reaches from the throne down to the firstborn of the slave girl at the handmill.Exo 11:5
• Makes a sound that signals a town is still inhabited, so the silence of the stones becomes a picture of desolation. Jeremiah lists the noise of the handmill alongside the light of the lamp among the ordinary things God will take away.Jer 25:10