Boyd’s Bible Dictionary:
(open). A flat plate for baking, and a deeper vessel for holding liquids (Lev. 2:5; 6:21).
Concise Bible Dictionary:
Some of these were made of iron as mentioned in Ezekiel 4:3, and were used for baking cakes (Lev. 2:5; 1 Chron. 23:29). The iron plates that were laid on the small ovens, and on which bread and cakes were baked, are probably alluded to.
From Manners and Customs of the Bible:
Leviticus 7:9. All the meat offering that is baken in the oven, and all that is dressed in the frying-pan, and in the pan, shall be the priest’s that offereth it.
1. One form of oven common in the East consists of a hole dug in the ground four or five feet deep and three feet in diameter, and well plastered.
When the oven is thoroughly heated the dough is rolled out no thicker than a finger, and is stuck against the sides of the oven, where it is instantly baked. Another oven is made of a great stone pitcher, in the bottom of which a fire is made among small flints which retain the heat. On these the dough is placed arid is soon baked. Sometimes it is rolled out very thin, and is stuck on the outside of the heated pitcher, whence it instantly falls, baked through. It is thought by some that reference is made to this pitcher-oven in Leviticus 2:4, and that the “unleavened cakes of fine flour mixed with oil” were to be baked inside the pitcher, and the “unleavened wafers anointed with oil” were to be baked on the outside; the “cakes” being mixed with oil, while the “wafers,” rolled out thinner, were only smeared with it.
2. The “frying-pan” (marchesheth) was a deep vessel of iron used for boiling meat, and which could also be used for baking bread.
3. The “pan” was a thin flat plate of iron on which bread could be quickly baked as on our griddles. This is the utensil referred to in Ezekiel 4:3.
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