ὀστράκινος

From the study of 2 Corinthians 4:7

Range of meaning

Ostrakinos means 'made of baked clay, earthenware', from ostrakon, a potsherd. Skeuos is any vessel, container, tool or piece of equipment. In Jewish and early Christian usage it can also stand for a person, as an instrument or as a creature shaped by God (Acts 9:15; Rom 9:21–23; 2 Tim 2:20–21). Together they name the plainest, cheapest household ware: storage jars, cooking pots, oil lamps.

Against the English

'Earthen vessels' (KJV, YLT) and 'jars of clay' or 'clay vessels' (BSB, WEB, NIV, ESV) are accurate. Two things can slip, though. 'Jars' is narrower than skeuos, which could also mean a lamp or a dish. And modern readers may picture handmade art pottery, when the ancient connotation was 'cheap, mass-produced and disposable'.

How it drifted

Clay pottery today is often a crafted, valued object. In antiquity earthenware was the throwaway end of the range, set against bronze, silver and gold vessels (2 Tim 2:20 makes the same contrast).

Used elsewhere in the period

In the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint, LXX), 'earthen vessel' appears in the Levitical purity laws: an earthenware vessel that becomes unclean must be broken, while a bronze one is scoured (Lev 6:28 [6:21 LXX]; 11:33; 15:12). It is the vessel you smash and replace. Jeremiah stores a land deed in an earthen jar to keep it safe (Jer 32:14 [39:14 LXX]), and the Dead Sea Scrolls were found kept this way. Lamentations 4:2 mourns that Zion's precious children, 'worth their weight in gold', are now 'reckoned as earthen pots, the work of a potter's hands'. Isaiah 30:14 pictures a potter's vessel shattered beyond use. The Dead Sea Thanksgiving Hymns repeatedly call the human being 'a thing shaped from clay' (yetser ha-chomer), drawing on Gen 2:7 and the potter-and-clay passages (Isa 29:16; 45:9; 64:8; Jer 18). In the Greco-Roman world Cicero calls the body 'a sort of vessel or receptacle of the soul' (Tusc. 1.52).

From the study of 2 Timothy 2:20

Range of meaning

Made of ostrakon, fired clay: earthenware, pottery. Connotes cheapness, fragility and disposability; a broken pot's shards (ostraka) were used as scrap writing material.

Against the English

KJV/YLT 'of earth' and BSB/WEB 'clay' are accurate. What a modern reader may miss is how cheap and throwaway such pottery was, and its place in purity law.

Used elsewhere in the period

Lev 6:28; 11:33; 15:12: an earthen vessel that became ritually unclean had to be broken, while wood could be rinsed and metal purified by fire (Num 31:22–23). Paul's 'treasure in clay jars' (2 Cor 4:7) uses the same word to stress weakness and lowliness. Wooden ware (xylinos) was likewise cheap kitchen and storage equipment.