Butter in these verses is ordinary country food, often set out for a guest. In Genesis 18:8 Abraham takes “butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed” and serves the three visitors under the tree. Jael brings “butter in a lordly dish” to Sisera in Judges 5:25. Friends bring butter and cheese to David’s tired army in 2 Samuel 17:29. Proverbs 30:33 turns churning into a lesson: as milk produces butter, so “the forcing of wrath bringeth forth strife”. Genesis 18 is the warmest of these, so read the first eight verses to see how Abraham welcomed strangers.
6 verses
And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree, and they did eat.
Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape.
He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish.
And honey, and butter, and sheep, and cheese of kine, for David, and for the people that were with him, to eat: for they said, The people is hungry, and weary, and thirsty, in the wilderness.
He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and butter.
Surely the churning of milk bringeth forth butter, and the wringing of the nose bringeth forth blood: so the forcing of wrath bringeth forth strife.
Matthew George Easton, 1897
(Heb. hemah), curdled milk (Gen. 18:8; Judg. 5:25; 2 Sam. 17:29), or butter in the form of the skim of hot milk or cream, called by the Arabs kaimak, a semi-fluid (Job 20:17; 29:6; Deut. 32:14). The words of Prov. 30:33 have been rendered by some “the pressure [not churning] of milk bringeth forth cheese.”
William Smith, 1884
Curdled milk. (Genesis 18:8; 32:14; Judges 5:25; Job 20:17) Milk is generally offered to travellers in Palestine in a curdled or sour state, leben , thick, almost like butter. Hasselquist describes the method of making butter employed by the Arab women: "they made butter in a leather bag, hung on three poles erected for the purpose, in the form of a cone, and drawn to and fro by two women."