A reference to the milk of Sheep is to be found in the New Testament: "Who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock?" (1 Cor. ix. 7).
In this country the milk of the Sheep is scarcely ever used, but in Scotland, especially in the great Sheep-feeding districts, its milk is valued as it deserves, and is specially employed for the manufacture of cheese.
The mention of cheese brings us to another branch of the subject. Gesenius thinks that the chemhah mentioned in Prov. xxx. must be a kind of cheese, on account of the word "mitz," i.e. pressure. Thus the word "cheese" occurs three times in the Authorized Version of the Bible, and in all these passages a different word is used. We will take them in their order. The first mention occurs in 1 Sam. xvii. 17, 18, "And Jesse said unto David his son, Take now for thy brethren an ephah of this parched corn, and these ten loaves, and run to the camp to thy brethren; and carry these ten cheeses unto the captain of their thousand." In this passage the word which is rendered "cheeses" in the Authorized Version is "charitz," a term which is translated in the Jewish Bible as "slices of cheeses," on account of the etymology of the word, which is derived from a root signifying slicing or cutting.
Another word is used in 2 Sam. xvii. 29, where, among the provisions that Barzillai brought to David, is mentioned "cheese of kine." The Hebrew word "shaphôth," which is translated as cheese, derives its origin from a root signifying to scrape.
The third term translated as cheese is to be found in Job x. 10, "Hast thou not poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese?" The word "gebînah," which is here translated as "cheese" both in the Authorized Version and the Jewish Bible, is derived from a root signifying to curdle.
Here, then, we have three passages, in each of which a different word is mentioned, and yet these words have been translated in a precisely similar manner, both in our own version and in the Jewish Bible. The subject is so well summed up by the Rev. W. L. Bevan, in Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible," that we may insert here the passage:—
"It is difficult to decide how far these terms correspond with our notion of cheese, for they simply imply various degrees of coagulation. It may be observed that cheese is not at the present day common among the Bedouin Arabs, butter being decidedly preferred. But there is a substance closely corresponding to those mentioned in 1 Sam. xvii., 2 Sam. xvii., consisting of coagulated buttermilk, which is dried until it becomes quite hard, and is then ground. The Arabs eat it with butter. (Burckhardt, 'Notes on the Bedouins,' i. 60.)
"In reference to this subject, it is noticeable that the ancients seem generally to have used either butter or cheese, but not both. Thus the Greeks had in reality but one expression for the two; for βούτερον=βοῦς-τυρός ('cheese of kine'). The Romans used cheese extensively, while all nomad tribes preferred butter. The distinction between cheese proper and coagulated milk seems to be referred to in Pliny xi. 96."
The reader will observe that this opinion exactly coincides with that which was expressed a few lines above, namely, that the Hebrews used one word to express both butter and cheese. The coagulated and dried buttermilk—i.e. the "leben" of the Bedouins, and the "amasi" of the Kaffir tribe—may well be the "shaphôth bâkâr," or "scrapings of the kine," as being necessarily scraped off the stone or metal plate on which it was dried.