mortar Summary and Overview

(Heb. homer), cement of lime and sand (Gen. 11:3; Ex. 1:14); also potter's clay (Isa. 41:25; Nah. 3:14). Also Heb. 'aphar, usually rendered "dust," clay or mud used for cement in building (Lev. 14:42, 45). Mortar for pulverizing (Prov. 27:22) grain or other substances by means of a pestle instead of a mill. Mortars were used in the wilderness for pounding the manna (Num. 11:8). It is commonly used in Israel at the present day to pound wheat, from which the Arabs make a favourite dish called kibby.

MOR'TAR . See Lime.

medokah, wherein the manna was pounded for use (Numbers 11:8). So still the Arabs pound wheat for their national dish, kibby (Thomson, Land and Book, 8:94). The maktesh was a larger mortar. Proverbs 27:22; "though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, (yet) will not his foolishness depart from (upon) him." The husk upon the grain can be bruised off it, but the mortar of trial cannot remove the fool's folly inherent by nature and habit (Jeremiah 13:23). So Ahaz (2 Chronicles 28:22), Judah (Isaiah 1:5-6; Isaiah 9:13; Jeremiah 5:3). The corrector's patience is tried, the corrected is not reformed, Roberts (Orient. Illustr. 368) mentions in the East large mortars for rice worked by two women, each in turn striking with a pestle five feet long. Criminals at Kandy were so beaten to death in such a mortar.