And carry these ten cheeses unto the captain of their thousand, and look how thy brethren fare, and take their pledge.
Carry these ten cheeses unto the captain - to enlist his kind attention. х `aseret (H6235) charitseey (H2757) hechaalaab (H2461), ten cuttings (slices of curdled milk - i:e., soft cheese) (Gesenius). The Septuagint has: kai tas deka strufalidas tou galaktis toutou, and ten rounds (little forms, shapes) of this milk.] Oriental cheeses are very small, resembling in shape and size our penny loaves, as the cheeses of the ancient Hebrews seem also to have been (cf. Job 10:10; Psalms 68:15); and although they are frequently made of so soft a consistence as to resemble curds, those which David carried seem to have been fully formed, pressed, and sufficiently dried to admit of their being carried. [The Hebrew word chariyts (H2757) signifies not only a cutting or slice, but a threshing-sledge; and hence, Harmer ('Observations,' 1:, pp. 510, 511) supposes that 'what Jesse bid his son David carry to the officer of the army were ten baskets, somewhat of the shape of their threshing instruments, in which was coagulated milk.] Baskets made of rushes or the dwarf palm are the cheese vats of Barbary (Shaw's 'Travels,' p. 168); into these they put the curds, and, binding them up close, press them. But the Eastern cheeses are of so very soft a consistency, after their being pressed, and even when they are brought to be eaten, that Sandys imagined they were not pressed at all - "a beastly kind of unpressed cheese that lies in a lump," being his description of this part of the Eastern diet. Now, if the cheeses sent by Jesse were as soft and tender as those now in use in the East, or if the milk was only coagulated, so as to be what we mean by the word curds, which forms a considerable part of the diet in the East, can we imagine any way more commodious for the carrying them to the army than in the rush-baskets in which curds were formed into cheese?' (See the note at 2 Samuel 17:29; Job 10:10: also see Burckhardt, 'Notes on the Bedouins,' 1:,
p. 60).
Take their pledge. Tokens of the soldiers' health and safety were sent home in the convenient form of a lock of their hair, a piece of their nail, or such like. Some think that nothing more is meant by 'taking their pledge' than that Jesse wished David to bring some proof or assurance of their having gotten the provisions he had sent.