a small oil lamp: the hand-sized clay bowl, fed with olive oil through a wick, that lit an ordinary home
In the New Testament world a lamp meant one specific object: a small clay bowl, cheap and common, that burned olive oil drawn up a wick and gave about an hour of light to a single room before it needed refilling. Nearly every household owned one. Because everyone could picture it, writers reached for it constantly, both plainly and as an image.
Most often the word is simply that literal lamp, whether:
- in a plain scene (a woman lighting one to hunt for a lost coin)
- in a saying (no one lights a lamp only to hide it)
- in a warning (the lamps of fallen Babylon going dark)
From there it becomes a picture in two directions. The eye is called the body's lamp, the small light by which a person is filled with light or left in the dark. And a person or thing that gives light to others is called a lamp:
- John the Baptist
- the guidance of Scripture
- at the summit the Lamb who lights the new Jerusalem
What holds these uses together is the modest size of the object. A lamp is small enough to hide, small enough to need a stand, small enough to stand for a single person or a single book. That is why the same word can move from a peasant's floor to the throne of God without ever losing its everyday feel.
Nuances
Whether Mark's lamp saying, with its definite article and the unusual image of the lamp itself coming in, points beyond a household lamp to Jesus, whose concealed ministry is destined for disclosure.
- majorityMark intends a veiled reference to Jesus as the lamp, matching his theme of a hidden messiah later revealed.; Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8 (AYB 27), 315-319; R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark (NIGTC), 208-211
- minorityThe saying concerns a literal lamp and its proper use, with no christological reference.; Robert H. Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross, 210-213