He asked water, &c. The original here is very poetical and elegant, and not badly imitated in our translation of it, if it were placed in hemistics thus:
He asked water, and she gave milk;
She brought forth butter in a lordly dish.
The last clause, however, perhaps had better be rendered, cream in a princely bowl; that is, she brought forth the choicest of her milk in the best dish or bowl she had; not indeed such a one as the luxury of after ages introduced, but such as was agreeable to the simplicity of those times and of this family, and such as the better sort of people then used. Jael, we have observed, on Judges 4:19, probably at that time intended him no other than kindness, till God, to fulfil Deborah's prophecy, by an immediate impulse on her mind, directed her to do otherwise.