John 18:18 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

A fire of coals; for it was cold— See the note on Jeremiah 36:22. Fires in winter are used but for a little while at Aleppo, which is considerably further to the north than Jerusalem; and some there make use of none at all. The fires they then use in their lodging-rooms are of charcoal, in pans; which sort of fire also is used by the Egyptians. They had no chimneys. But what seems most to have required the use of wood, and consequently chimneys, among the Jews, was the dressing the paschal lamb; for charcoal might without doubt be sufficient for their common cookery. If, however, they roasted the lambs of the passover, as Thevenot tells us the Persians do whole sheep, as well as lambs, which are not designed for sacred purposes, the use of smoky wood might be avoided; for they do it, he says, in ovens, which have the mouth open at the top; into which, after they are well heated, they put the meat, with an earthen pan underneath, to receive the fat: they roast alike on all sides, and he acknowledges that they dress them well. He subjoins anotherway of roasting a whole sheep, practised by the Armenians, by which also the use of smoky wood is avoided: for having flayed it, they cover it again with the skin, and put it into an oven upon the quick coals, covering it also with a good many of the same coals, that it may have fire under and over, to roast it well on all sides; and the skin keeps it from being burned. But however these things may be, it is certain that this account is in no wise contradicted, but rather confirmed, by what St. John says of a fire kindled in a palace at Jerusalem, to warm persons who had been out in a cold night, which it seems was a fire of charcoal, not of wood, and gives a propriety to the mentioning of this circumstance which I never observed to be remarked in any author. In like manner paschal ovens are also mentioned by Jewish writers. See the Observations on Sacred Scriptures, p. 117.