oven Summary and Overview

Heb. tannur, (Hos. 7:4). In towns there appear to have been public ovens. There was a street in Jerusalem (Jer. 37:21) called "bakers' street" (the only case in which the name of a street in Jerusalem is preserved). The words "tower of the furnaces" (Neh. 3:11; 12:38) is more properly "tower of the ovens" (Heb. tannurim). These resemble the ovens in use among ourselves. There were other private ovens of different kinds. Some were like large jars made of earthenware or copper, which were heated inside with wood (1 Kings 17:12; Isa. 44:15; Jer. 7:18) or grass (Matt. 6:30), and when the fire had burned out, small pieces of dough were placed inside or spread in thin layers on the outside, and were thus baked. (See FURNACE T0001398.) Pits were also formed for the same purposes, and lined with cement. These were used after the same manner. Heated stones, or sand heated by a fire heaped over it, and also flat irons pans, all served as ovens for the preparation of bread. (See Gen. 18:6; 1 Kings 19:6.)

The eastern oven is of two kinds --fixed and portable. The former is found only in towns, where regular bakers are employed. #Ho 7:4| The latter ia adapted to the nomad state, it consists of a large jar made of clay, about three feet high and widening toward the bottom, with a hole for the extraction of the ashes. Each household possessed such an article, #Ex 8:3| and it was only in times of extreme dearth that the same oven sufficed for several families. #Le 26:26| It was heated with dry twigs and grass, #Mt 6:30| and the loaves were placed both inside and outside of it.

tanur. Fixed or portable. The fixed ovens were inside towns. The portable ovens consisted of a large clay jar, three feet high, widening toward the bottom, with a hole to extract the ashes. Sometimes there was an erection of clay in the form of a jar, built on the house floor. Every house had one (Exodus viii. 3 ); only in a famine (lid one suffice for several faro-flies (Leviticus xxvi. 26). Tile heating fuel was dry grass and twigs (Blurt. vt. 30: "grass, which to-day is, to-morrow is cast into the oven"). The loaves were placed inside, and thin cakes outside of it. Image of consuming vengeance (Malachi 4:1). Psalm 21:9; "Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of Thine anger... burning with Thy hot, wrath in the day of the Lord." Hosea 7:4, 7: "they are all adulterers, as an oven heated by (burning from) the baker," i.e. the fire burns of itself, even after tlle baker has ceased to feed it with fuel. "Who teaseth from raising (rather from heating it meeir) after he hath kneaded the dough until it be leavened:" he omits to feed it only during the short time of the fermentation of the bread. So their lusts were on fire even in the short respite that Satan gives, till his leaven has worked. 2 Peter 2:14, "cannot cease from sin."