a large earthenware jar: the household vessel for carrying and pouring water or storing dry food like meal.
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This word names an object, not an action: a big clay jar of the kind every ancient household owned. It was heavy pottery, wide enough to hold a real supply of water or grain, and open enough to pour from. Women carried it down to the spring on the shoulder or head, filled it, and lugged it home, which is exactly what Rebekah does again and again in the story of Isaac's bride.
The same jar shows up doing several ordinary jobs:
Rebekah lowers it to draw water and pours it out for a stranger and his camels
the widow of Zarephath keeps her last handful of flour in one, with her little oil flask (צַפַּחַת) beside it
Elijah has four of them filled with water and emptied over his altar on Mount Carmel
Gideon's three hundred men hide torches inside empty ones and smash them at the signal
Because the jar was fired clay, it could shatter, and the Bible turns that fragility into a picture. In the poem on old age and death that closes Ecclesiastes, the writer says the day comes when the pitcher is broken at the spring: the vessel that once carried the water of life lies smashed and useless, an image of the body giving out. The Greek Old Testament regularly renders this jar with its own word for a water pot (ὑδρία), the very vessel the women carry to the well in the Gospels.
here it holds the widow's last flour and is plainly a clay storage jar1Ki 17:12
Both
—
Only barrel
"barrel" evokes a large wooden cask bound with staves and hoops, an object unknown in ancient Israel and wrong for a fired-clay vessel
How kad differs from similar Hebrew words
צַפַּחַתa small jug or flask for oil or water; in the Zarephath scene the meal sits in the large jar while the oil sits in this little cruse, so this word is the small companion vessel, not the big storage jar.
A large water jar carried on the shoulder, used to draw water at a well or spring and pour it out.Gen 24:15Gen 24:16Gen 24:20Ecc 12:6
An earthenware pitcher handled in numbers and prized for how it shatters, as when Gideon's men hid torches in empty jars and broke them as a signal.Jdg 7:16Jdg 7:19Jdg 7:201Ki 18:33
Both
Both are clay household vessels holding a liquid staple, and both stand side by side in the Zarephath miracle where neither the meal jar nor the oil flask runs dry.1Ki 17:141Ki 17:16
A small flask kept close at hand, such as the little water set by a sleeper's head and carried off overnight.1Sa 26:111Sa 26:121Sa 26:161Ki 19:6
נֵבֶלa large jar or skin-bottle used chiefly for wine; it overlaps as a big container but leans toward wine and can mean a leather bottle rather than fired pottery.
The everyday vessel for drawing and carrying water from a well or spring, light enough to rest on the shoulder or lower to the hand.Gen 24:14Gen 24:16Ecc 12:6
Also stores dry provisions such as flour, serving as an ordinary household jar for food kept in the home.1Ki 17:121Ki 17:141Ki 17:16
Both
Both name a breakable earthen vessel shaped by the potter, an image scripture reaches for when something once whole is smashed beyond repair.Ecc 12:6Isa 30:14Lam 4:2
The standard container for wine, whether a leather skin or an earthen jar, carried along as a gift or travel provision.1Sa 1:241Sa 25:182Sa 16:1Jer 13:12
Carries a wholly separate meaning that the water jar never has: a stringed musical instrument, the lyre or lute played in temple worship and praise.1Ch 15:16Psa 150:3Amo 5:23
בַּקְבֻּקa small narrow-necked flask or bottle, named for the gurgle of liquid poured from it; a little pouring vessel, far smaller than this broad storage jar.
The everyday water jar drawn at a well and carried on the shoulder, then let down and tipped to pour out a drink.Gen 24:14Gen 24:16Gen 24:18Gen 24:20Gen 24:45Gen 24:46
A household storage jar large enough to hold the family's supply of meal or flour.1Ki 17:121Ki 17:141Ki 17:16
Both
Both are fired-clay vessels fragile enough to be smashed to pieces: Jeremiah breaks the flask as a sign of coming ruin, and Gideon's men break the jars that had hidden their torches.Jer 19:10Jdg 7:19
A small, narrow-necked bottle used to carry a modest measure of something precious, such as the honey brought along as a gift to the prophet.1Ki 14:3
The chosen object of a prophetic sign precisely because a hard-fired clay bottle, once shattered, can never be pieced back together, an emblem of ruin that cannot be undone.Jer 19:1Jer 19:10
kad in the other biblical languages
ὑδρίαGreek“jar”the Greek word for a water jar, the vessel the Samaritan woman leaves at the well and the servants fill at Cana; the Greek Old Testament uses it to render this Hebrew jar.
Holds dry provisions as readily as water: the widow of Zarephath's jar of flour that never ran empty through the famine.1Ki 17:121Ki 17:141Ki 17:16
Serves as ordinary breakable earthenware put to other uses: Gideon's men hid torches inside empty jars, then smashed them as a battle signal.Jdg 7:16Jdg 7:19Jdg 7:20
Becomes an image of death itself, the pitcher shattered at the spring when a life ends.Ecc 12:6
Both
Both name the everyday vessel a woman carries to a well or spring and fills with water for the household.Gen 24:16Jhn 4:28
Names the large stone jars set apart for Jewish ceremonial washing, each holding many gallons.Jhn 2:6
κεράμιονGreek“clay jar”a Greek earthen pitcher of water, the jar a man is seen carrying in the city; a close counterpart for the water-carrying use of this word.
Serves as an all-purpose household vessel across many scenes: drawing and pouring water at the spring, holding a family's supply of flour, and concealing torches in a night raid.Gen 24:161Ki 17:12Jdg 7:16
Becomes a poetic image of fragile mortal life, the jar shattered at the fountain when a person dies.Ecc 12:6
Both
Both name a portable clay jar used to fetch and carry water, filled and lifted from a well or spring.Gen 24:16Mrk 14:13
In the New Testament it appears only as a jar of water carried by a man, a prearranged sign that leads the disciples to the room for the Passover meal.Mrk 14:13Luk 22:10
What scholars say about kad
The standard lexica are in full agreement that כַּד denotes a large earthenware jar or pitcher used for water and for dry provisions. BDB (461) glosses "jar, of earthenware, for water," noting its use for carrying water (Gen 24), for meal (1 Kgs 17:12ff), and as a container for Gideon's torches (Judg 7:16ff). HALOT (s.v. כַּד) gives "pitcher, jug" and records the vessel's fragility, which underlies the death image at Ecclesiastes 12:6. DCH (s.v. כד) catalogues the same distribution across seventeen verses and five forms. The vessel is consistently pottery, hence breakable, which is why Gideon's jars can be smashed and the Ecclesiastes poem can make the shattered jar a figure for the body's collapse; C. L. Seow (Ecclesiastes, AB 18C, 1997, 351-372) reads the broken pitcher at the spring within the poem's sequence of ruined household objects. HALOT and others note the widely observed correspondence between this Semitic vessel-name and Greek κάδος and Latin cadus, container words that many philologists derive from the same Semitic source, though the direction and details of the borrowing are debated and do not affect the sense of the Hebrew word. The related smaller vessels צַפַּחַת (a cruse or flask) and בַּקְבֻּק (a narrow-necked bottle) mark the jar's size by contrast in the same narratives.
Sources
BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. כַּד, p. 461lexicon
HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. כַּדlexicon
DCH (Dictionary of Classical Hebrew), ed. D. J. A. Clines, s.v. כדlexicon