An oven was a vessel or built structure used for baking bread and preparing food. Ancient ovens could be fixed or portable, and were heated with wood, grass, or other fuel.
Definition
An oven was a fixed or portable vessel or structure used for baking bread and preparing food. Fixed ovens were associated with towns and professional bakers. Portable ovens commonly consisted of large clay jars, about three feet high and widening toward the bottom, with an opening for removing ashes. Dough could be placed inside the heated oven or spread in thin layers on its outside. Pits, heated stones, hot sand, and flat iron pans also served similar purposes.
Biblical Usage
Ovens appear in passages concerning household cooking, baking, famine, and ordinary daily life. Scripture mentions fuel such as dry twigs, grass, wood, and other combustible material. The oven also appears in descriptions of severe scarcity, when one oven might serve several families, and in references to bakers’ quarters and the tower of the ovens.
Historical Background
Eastern ovens were of two principal kinds: fixed ovens found in towns and portable ovens suited to nomadic or household life. Jerusalem had a street called Bakers’ Street, and the phrase “tower of the furnaces” is more properly understood as “tower of the ovens.”
Historical Bible Dictionaries
Easton's Bible Dictionary
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.) 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.)
Smith's Bible Dictionary
The eastern oven is of two kinds—fixed and portable. The former is found only in towns, where regular bakers are employed. (Hosea 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, (Exodus 8:3) and it was only in times of extreme dearth that the same oven sufficed for several families. (Leviticus 26:26) It was heated with dry twigs and grass, (Matthew 6:30) and the loaves were placed both inside and outside of it.
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE)
<p>uv'-'-n.</p><p>See BREAD; FURNACE.</p>
