Hebrew word · H8574

תַּנּוּר

tanur

oven

A portable or partly sunken clay oven, usually shaped like a cylinder or a beehive, used every day for baking flat bread. A fire was built inside, and once the walls were hot the dough was slapped onto them. Used by extension for any intensely hot enclosed fire (Ps 21:9 'like a fiery oven').

Appears 15 times in 15 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

1) furnace, oven, fire-pot, (portable) stove

1a) for cooking

1b) of God's wrath, His furnace (fig)

1c) of hunger, desire for evil

1d) fire-pot

Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

In depth

From the study of Malachi 4:1

Range of meaning

A portable or partly sunken clay oven, usually shaped like a cylinder or a beehive, used every day for baking flat bread. A fire was built inside, and once the walls were hot the dough was slapped onto them. Used by extension for any intensely hot enclosed fire (Ps 21:9 'like a fiery oven'). The word is distinct from kivshan (a kiln or smelting furnace, Gen 19:28; Exod 9:8) and from Aramaic 'attun (the royal furnace of Dan 3).

Against the English

KJV and (I believe) ESV have 'oven'. BSB, WEB, NIV and NASB have 'furnace', which to a modern reader suggests an industrial or metalworking furnace, or the 'fiery furnace' of Daniel 3.

How it drifted

Latin Vulgate rendered the word 'caminus' (kiln, furnace), and later English 'furnace' carries that tradition. A modern 'oven' sounds too mild to many translators, so they upgrade to 'furnace' to keep the heat. That loses the everyday picture.

Used elsewhere in the period

Clay tannur ovens are well attested archaeologically across the Levant from the Iron Age on. In the Bible: Lev 2:4; 26:26 (ten women baking in one oven); Hos 7:4–7 (the heated oven as a picture of passion and conspiracy); Lam 5:10; Gen 15:17 (a 'smoking oven' in the covenant scene). The Septuagint translates it 'klibanos', the same word Jesus uses in Matt 6:30 / Luke 12:28 for the oven into which field grass is thrown.

From the study of Leviticus 2:4

Range of meaning

The domestic clay oven: a cylinder of fired clay, often partly sunk in the ground, with a fire built inside. When the walls were hot, flat dough was slapped onto the inner walls and peeled off once baked. The word also appears in images of burning heat and judgment (Ps 21:9; Hos 7:4–7; Mal 4:1 / 3:19 Heb).

Against the English

'Oven' is correct, but modern readers picture a closed box with a door and racks. The tannur was an open-topped clay cylinder that baked bread on its walls.

Used elsewhere in the period

Akkadian tinūru, Aramaic tannūrā, Arabic tannūr, and the same object survives in the Middle Eastern tabun/tannur and the South Asian tandoor. Archaeologists find tannur remains in almost every Iron Age Israelite house.

From the study of Psalm 21:9

Range of meaning

A fixed clay oven for baking bread. It was cylindrical or bell-shaped and stood in a courtyard or house. Fuel burned inside it, and flat loaves were slapped onto the hot inner walls. The image carries intense, enclosed, steady heat that people knew from daily life.

Against the English

KJV and ESV say 'oven', which is accurate. BSB, WEB and NIV say 'furnace', which suggests a metal-smelting furnace, an industrial boiler, or the furnace of Daniel 3 (which is a different Aramaic word, attun). 'Oven' is closer to the object.

How it drifted

'Furnace' has been used for tannur since early English Bibles, probably to make the line sound grander. Modern readers who know Daniel 3 or hear 'fiery furnace' as hellfire then hear more than the household oven the psalm describes.

Used elsewhere in the period

Leviticus 2:4 and 7:9 (grain offerings baked in a tannur); Leviticus 26:26 ('ten women will bake your bread in one oven'); Hosea 7:4–7 (conspirators 'hot as an oven' who 'devour their judges'); Lamentations 5:10 (skin hot as an oven from famine); Malachi 4:1 (Hebrew 3:19), 'the day is coming, burning like an oven', where the arrogant become stubble; Genesis 15:17 (a smoking tannur passes between the pieces). Archaeologists find tannur ovens across Iron Age Israelite sites (King & Stager, Life in Biblical Israel). The Septuagint translates it klibanos, the Greek word for a baking oven.

Where it appears

Genesis · 1

  1. Genesis 15:17 תַנּ֤וּר a fire pot of

    When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, behold, a smoking firepot and a flaming torch appeared and passed between the halves of the carcasses.

    Here: The ordinary household clay oven, a cylinder open at the top, with fire inside and smoke pouring out. Here it is linked to the next word: 'an oven of smoke'.

Exodus · 1

  1. Exodus 8:3 וּבְתַנּוּרֶ֖יךָ and in ovens your

    The Nile will teem with frogs, and they will come into your palace and up to your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and your people, and into your ovens and kneading bowls.

Leviticus · 4

  1. Leviticus 2:4 תַנּ֑וּר an oven

    Now if you bring an offering of grain baked in an oven, it must consist of fine flour, either unleavened cakes mixed with oil or unleavened wafers coated with oil.

    Here: The household clay oven of the ancient Near East. 'Baked thing of an oven' means ordinary home baking, the kind of bread a family made every day.

  2. Leviticus 7:9 בַּתַּנּ֔וּר in <the> oven

    Likewise, every grain offering that is baked in an oven or cooked in a pan or on a griddle belongs to the priest who presents it,

  3. Leviticus 11:35 תַּנּ֧וּר an oven

    Anything upon which one of their carcasses falls will be unclean. If it is an oven or cooking pot, it must be smashed; it is unclean and will remain unclean for you.

    Here: A household clay oven: a beehive-shaped or cylinder-shaped structure, usually built in the courtyard, where flatbread was slapped against the hot inner wall. It stands at the head of the clause as the subject, as if to say "as for an oven..."

  4. Leviticus 26:26 בְּתַנּ֣וּר in an oven

    When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will bake your bread in a single oven and dole out your bread by weight, so that you will eat but not be satisfied.

    Here: "In an oven": the tannur, a clay oven shaped like a beehive or cylinder, heated with fuel inside, with flat loaves stuck to its hot walls. Every household or courtyard group normally had one.

Nehemiah · 2

  1. Nehemiah 3:11 הַתַּנּוּרִֽים׃ ס the ovens

    Malchijah son of Harim and Hasshub son of Pahath-moab repaired another section, as well as the Tower of the Ovens.

  2. Nehemiah 12:38 הַתַּנּוּרִ֔ים the ovens

    The second thanksgiving choir proceeded to the left, and I followed it with half the people along the top of the wall, past the Tower of the Ovens to the Broad Wall,

    Here: 'Of the ovens'. A tannur was the ordinary clay oven for baking bread. The tower was probably named after bakers' ovens nearby. It was one of the sections repaired in 3:11.

Psalms · 1

  1. Psalm 21:9 כְּתַנּ֥וּר like a furnace of

    You will place them in a fiery furnace at the time of Your appearing. In His wrath the LORD will engulf them, and the fire will consume them.

    Here: 'Like an oven.' A tannur was the clay bread oven found in an ordinary courtyard, with the fire burning inside it. The comparison works in one of two ways. Either the enemies are treated as if they were thrown into one, or they become like one, burning from the inside.

Isaiah · 1

  1. Isaiah 31:9 וְתַנּ֥וּר and an oven

    Their rock will pass away for fear, and their princes will panic at the sight of the battle standard,” declares the LORD, whose fire is in Zion, whose furnace is in Jerusalem.

Lamentations · 1

  1. Lamentations 5:10 כְּתַנּ֣וּר like an oven

    Our skin is as hot as an oven with fever from our hunger.

Hosea · 3

  1. Hosea 7:4 תַנּ֔וּר an oven

    They are all adulterers, like an oven heated by a baker who needs not stoke the fire from the kneading to the rising of the dough.

  2. Hosea 7:6 כַתַּנּ֛וּר like <the> oven

    For they prepare their heart like an oven while they lie in wait; all night their anger smolders; in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.

  3. Hosea 7:7 כַּתַּנּ֔וּר like <the> oven

    All of them are hot as an oven, and they devour their rulers. All their kings fall; not one of them calls upon Me.

    Here: "Like the oven": the ordinary household clay oven. It picks up the oven picture that runs through verses 4–7. The definite article points to the oven already described, the one whose fire smolders all night and flares up at dawn.

Malachi · 1

  1. Malachi 4:1 כַּתַּנּ֑וּר like <the> furnace

    “For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace, when all the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble; the day is coming when I will set them ablaze,” says the LORD of Hosts. “Not a root or branch will be left to them.”

    Here: 'Like the oven.' This is the ordinary household bread oven of clay, which got extremely hot inside. The article ('the oven') points to a familiar everyday object, not a special industrial furnace.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.