a large, deep, wide-mouthed bowl: an open basin for holding and mixing liquid
This word names a specific kind of container: a big, deep, round bowl with a wide open mouth, often fitted with two handles and made of bronze, clay, or sometimes precious metal. It was the everyday vessel for holding and blending liquid, above all wine at a feast. The same word and nearly the same object turn up all across the ancient Near East, from the mixing bowls of Ugarit to the great basins of Assyria, which is why scholars often treat it as a shared culture-word that traveled with fine tableware.
It appears only three times in the Hebrew Bible, and each time the same bowl serves a different scene.
- At Mount Sinai it holds the blood of the covenant that Moses throws against the altar and the people.
- In Isaiah it is one of the household vessels pictured hanging on a trusted servant.
- In the Song of Songs it becomes a poetic image for the beloved's body, a rounded bowl that is never without blended wine.
Scholars agree closely on what the object is: a wide, deep bowl made to be filled. What they debate is what each scene makes of it, how large to picture it in Isaiah, and how much weight to give the vivid comparison in the Song. The word itself always carries the same freight: something big, round, and meant to be filled, whether with blood, with belongings, or with wine.
How to gauge the size of the vessel in Isaiah 22:24, where it is grouped with the small vessels hanging on Eliakim, even though elsewhere the word names a large bowl.
- contestedIt is a large banquet bowl, and the label small applies to the whole set of household ware only in relation to the great peg, running from the biggest bowls down to the flagons.; Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 13-27 (Continental Commentary, 1997); James L. Kelso, 'The Ceramic Vocabulary of the Old Testament,' BASOR Supplementary Studies 5-6 (1948)
- contestedIt is the smaller end of the range here, a cup or dish set against the larger storage jars, giving a from-least-to-greatest sweep.; John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 1-39 (NICOT, 1986); J. Alec Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah (1993)
- contestedThe listing is a figure of speech for the entire range of vessels, and its size should not be pressed.; Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39 (Anchor Bible 19, 2000); J. J. M. Roberts, First Isaiah (Hermeneia, 2015)
What the beloved's body likened to a rounded wine-bowl in Song of Songs 7:2 is meant to evoke, and how sexually explicit or ritually loaded the image is.
- majorityA vivid but non-ritual love image: the body, read as the navel, is a rounded mixing-bowl always full of blended wine, a figure of abundance within ordinary love poetry.; Michael V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (1985); Roland E. Murphy, The Song of Songs (Hermeneia, 1990); Tremper Longman III, Song of Songs (NICOT, 2001); Duane Garrett, Song of Songs (WBC 23B, 2004); J. Cheryl Exum, Song of Songs (OTL, 2005)
- minorityA large ritual mixing-bowl of the kind known from Ugaritic religious texts, with the body part read as the vulva and the verse set within sacred-marriage and banquet rites.; Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs (Anchor Bible 7C, 1977), pp. 617-620
- minorityA crescent-moon-shaped luxury bowl, drawing on ancient moon-and-fertility imagery without turning the poem itself into a ritual text.; Othmar Keel, The Song of Songs (Continental Commentary, 1994), pp. 232-235; Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch, The Song of Songs: A New Translation (1995)