a small clay flask: the little jug that holds a personal supply of water or oil
This word names a thing, not an action: a small fired clay flask, narrow enough to pour a trickle and light enough to carry in one hand. It is the little vessel, never the big household storage jar. When the two appear in the same sentence the difference in size is the whole point, as in the widow's house at Zarephath, where the last of the flour sits in a large jar (כַּד) and the last of the oil sits in this small flask.
Four of its seven appearances are a flask of water, and three of those sit beside someone asleep:
- Saul sleeps in the middle of his camp with his spear planted in the ground and this flask of water by his head
- David slips in and lifts both away in the dark, taking them instead of the king's life
- Elijah, worn out and asleep under a desert bush, wakes to find a baked cake and this flask of water set beside his head
The other three appearances are a flask of oil, all in the same story. A starving widow has a handful of flour and a little oil left, enough for one final meal before she and her son die. Elijah promises that the jar of flour will not be used up and the flask of oil will not run dry until the rains return, and the miracle is measured out by those two containers on her shelf.
Nothing about the vessel itself is remarkable, and that plainness is part of the effect. A missing water flask is enough to prove that a king lay helpless while his guards slept, and an oil flask that never quite empties is a quiet daily provision rather than a spectacle.