And every thing whereupon any part of their carcase falleth shall be unclean; whether it be oven, or ranges for pots, they shall be broken down: for they are unclean, and shall be unclean unto you.
Whether it be oven (see the notes at Leviticus 2:4; Genesis 18:6) х tanuwr (H8574); Septuagint, klibanos (G2823)] - a shallow vessel of a portable size, in which bread is baked, commonly earthen, but sometimes metallic, about three feet in height, which was heated internally with wood or dried grass. When the jar was properly heated, and the fire had burned down, the thin cakes were applied to its sides either without or within. Wilkinson describes such ovens as common in the houses of ancient Egypt (Vol. 2:, p. 385); and Niebuhr and others inform us that they are in use among the Bedouin Arabs.
Or ranges for pots, х kiyrayim (H3600)]. The word is in the dual. The Septuagint renders it chutropodes, pots or kettles, with two or more feet. Keil and Delitzsch take it for a vessel consisting of two parts - i:e., a pot or pan with a lid; but vessels of this description are embraced by Leviticus 11:33, which commands them, when they have been polluted, to be "broken;" while the "ranges for pots" were, like altars or walls, to be "broken down."
The following account by Rauwolf ('Travels,' p. 192), of the apparatus used by the Arabs for boiling a pot, will serve to explain what is meant:-`They make a hole in the earthen floor of their dwellings about a foot and a half deep, in which they put their earthen pots, with the meat in them, closed up about the half above the middle-three-fourth parts they lay about with stones, and the fourth part is left open, through which they throw in their dried dung, and any other combustible substances they can procure, which burn immediately, and produce so great a heat that the pot becomes as hot as if it stood over a fire of coals.' The "ranges of pots" correspond to the little structure described by this traveler, 'three parts of which was laid or built about with stones.'
This little building the law required the Israelites to "break down," when it happened to have become ceremonially unclean. In fact, 'the ranges for pots,' or fire places, were similar to those rude and primitive erections which are still seen on the hearths of huts in the poor remote districts of Scotland, which are formed of a few bricks or stones piled edgeways. It would be very little trouble to put them up again after being dismantled, as the law required.