The noun μωλος (molos) describes the toil or struggle of war, or the "grind of battle" in the graceful words of Peter Green's translation of the Iliad (2.401). It's not clear where this word may come from, but in Latin there is the noun moles, meaning heap (hence our English word demolish, which is hence the equivalent of decompile), which was also used to describe a certain war machine, a heaped up fortification or a mass of soldiers. A joint Proto-Indo-European origin of these words has been proposed, but if it existed, it isn't broadly attested in extant European languages.

Here at Abarim Publications we suspect that our words aren't Indo-European at all but rather Semitic, and derivatives of the vast מלל (malal) root, perhaps via מלל II (malal 2), to grind or scrape, or אמל ('amal), to languish (Isaiah 24:4, Hosea 4:3, Joel 1:10), or מלא (male'), to be full or be a heap (of stones or fruits or people). This latter verb occurs over 250 times in the Old Testament, and indeed on occasion describes being outfitted for war (2 Samuel 23:7, Jeremiah 51:11). For more on the link between Greek and Hebrew, see our article on the many Hebrew roots of Greek.

But whatever the pedigree, our noun μωλος (molos) is not used in the New Testament. From it, however, comes:

The adverb μογις (mogis) means with difficulty or hardly or scarcely (Luke 9:39 only). It stems from the (unused) noun μογος (mogos), trouble or distress, in turn from the verb μογεω (mogeo), to toil or suffer, but that is where the etymological trail runs cold. Our adverb μογις (mogis) is used interchangeably with the adverb μολις (molis), barely (see directly above). From this word comes:

The noun μωλωψ (molops) means stripe or battle scar. This noun occurs in 1 Peter 2:24 only, which appears to refer to Isaiah 53:5, which in the Koine version of the Septuagint indeed uses our word μωλωψ (molops), as translation of the noun חברה (habra), stripe.

It's not quite clear where our noun comes from, although it obviously looks like a combination of the nouns μωλος (molos), battle grind (see above), and ωψ (ops), eye or face. But despite all this, experts suspect that our word is rather like κυκλωψ (kuklops), which looks like a combination of κυκλος (kuklos), circle, and ωψ (ops), eye, and hence would mean round-eye (and not one-eye!), but in fact has been found to stem from the verb κλεπτω (klepto), to steal, plus a lost word for cattle: it means cattle thief.

An alternative origin of μωλωψ (molops) has not yet been agreed upon, but it should be noted that our noun was either very rare or non-existent until it appeared in the Septuagint, and may very well have been coined by its authors. Here at Abarim Publications we don't know either, but if we were to guess, we would guess: מ (me) + ל (le) + פסס (pasas): place for the spreading of skin marks.

The noun μυλη (mule) means mill, hence indeed our English word mill (but curiously not words like meal or mule, although the obvious proximity of these words probably helped each other's formation). The Latin equivalent is molo (hence the Dutch molen and windmolen, mill and windmill), which forces a curious association with the previous.

Mills were two stones between which people ground corn and wheat — see our article on αληθω (aletho), to grind or tread out — in order to make flour, mix that into dough, so as to bake bread in controlled fires in ovens. Homer used our word to describe small hand-mills that women used in providing food for their families, but as communities grew and food became manufactured on an industrial level, the mills became larger and powered by mules, oxen or slaves.

Mills were among the very first complex machines and probably predated weaving looms. The Indo-European root that expressed weaving is "tek-", from which we get our English words textile, technology and text (text has always been rightly considered a technology, namely information technology; see our article on YHWH). The earthly profession of Jesus (and Joseph) was not carpenter (as folklore has it) but τεκτων (tekton), or "assembler".

The Greek word for bread is αρτος (artos), which literally means "exactly right", suggesting a precise harmony of constituents (for which a vast global industrial economy must be in place: agricultural, political, military). Jesus was the Bread of Heaven, which implies a "Cosmic Mill" (see κοσμος, kosmos), namely the rotating of the starry sky during the night (Genesis 15:5) and bread baked in the Solar Oven during the day. He was born in Bethlehem, which means House of Bread but also House of War, which too brings our word μυλη (mule) in proximity to the above.

The ancient and artistic act of weaving came to signify the general art of putting things together, and thus the very language and ratio that forms the canopy of the human kosmos. The mill, however, came to signify the mindless grind of labor: the reduction of precious human life to cogs and wheels in a vast and beastly machine (hence also blind Samson's mill: Judges 16:21). Having to work like a chained mule is precisely the kind of bondage that the Bible abhors.

Freedom ( ελευθερια, eleutheria) is a divine quality, which comes from wisdom and a mastery of the rules of nature: the perfect Law of Freedom (James 1:25) the very purpose of the mission of Christ (Galatians 5:1). The absence of freedom results in bondage and labor: the New Testament word for evil, namely the adjective πονηρος (poneros), comes from the verb πενομαι (penomai), meaning to toil or labor.

At the battle of Thebez, an unnamed woman dropped a millstone on the evil Abimelech's head, upon which he called his armor bearer to euthanize him (Judges 9:54). A strikingly similar end befell the maniacal general Pyrrhus, whose military antics destabilized the Roman Republic and ultimately resulted in the destruction of Phoenician Carthage and the formation of the Roman Empire.

Our noun μυλη (mule), mill, isn't used in the New Testament, but from it come the following words and note the propensity of these words to describe instruments of punishment: