Oven

Oven (Heb. תִּנּוּר, tannur', from the same root with the Chaldee תּנִן to smoke, Gr. κλίβανος), originally any receptacle for fire, as a furnace or kiln (comp. Ge 15:17; Isa 31:9); but usually an oven for baking bread and cakes (see Ex 7:25; Le 2:4), not only that used by the baker (Ho 7:4,6-7), but also that in which the mistress of a house baked her bread (Le 26:26; and see Jahn. Bibl. Archaeol. 1:213; 2,182). This oven was built of brick, and was smeared within and without with clay. A fire. was kindled within it, and the dough was placed upon the side, where it baked, and was called מִאֲפֵה תִּנּוּר, maapheh tannur (Le 2:4). The κλίβανος of the Greeks appears to have been of a similar construction. Each household possessed such an article (Ex 8:3), and it was only in times of extreme dearth that the same oven sufficed for several families (Le 26:26). It was heated with dry twigs and grass (Mt 6:30), and the loaves were placed both inside and outside of it. It was also used for roasting meat (Mishna, Taan. 3:8). The heat of the oven furnished Hebrew writers with an image of rapid and violent destruction (Ps 21:9; Ho 7:7; Mal 4:1). But the Hebrews did not always possess such an oven, and often seem to have baked their bread on the ground, which was first heated by a fire, or on thin plates of metal, and sometimes to have made an excavation in the earth, which answered the purpose (see Gesenius, Thesaur. s.v. תִּנּוּר). See BAKE.

Among the modern Orientals the dough, when prepared, is not always baked at home. In towns there are public ovens and bakers by trade; and although the general rule in large and respectable families is to bake the bread at home, much bread is bought of the bakers by unsettled individuals and poor persons; and many small households send their dough to be baked at the public oven, the baker receiving for his trouble a portion of the baked bread, which he adds to his day's stock of bread for sale. Such public ovens and bakers by trade must have existed anciently in Palestine, and in the East generally, as is evident from Ho 7:4 and Jer 37:21. The latter text mentions the bakers' street (or, rather, bakers' place or market), and this would suggest that, as is the case at present, the bakers, as well as other trades, had a particular part of the bazaar or market entirely appropriated to their business, instead of being dispersed in different parts of the towns where they lived. See CRACKNEL.