Mill, millstone
Archimandrite Nikifor’s Biblical Encyclopedia
(Exod 11:5). Mills for grinding grain are a very ancient invention. We first encounter them already in the time of the Exodus, when in Egypt it was customary to make women turn the millstones, as is still done in the East even to this day. The Israelites ground the manna in mills (Num 11:8), and the millstone was so essential an item of household use that it was not even permitted to be taken as a pledge (Deut 24:6). References to millstones in general, to hand millstones, and to their use, are frequent in Holy Scripture, and some of these references are especially noteworthy.
Thus, for instance, in the book of Judges (9:53; 16:21), Isaiah (47:2), Lamentations (5:13), Matthew (24:41), and elsewhere. A certain woman threw a piece of millstone upon Abimelech’s head and broke his skull. The Philistines took Samson, put out his eyes… and he ground in the prison house (Judg 16:21). “Take the millstones,” says the prophet Isaiah, “and grind meal.” “The young men are taken to the millstones,” says the prophet Jeremiah, describing the calamities of Jerusalem, “and the children fall under loads of wood.”