The use of iron stoves was unknown to the Syrians in my childhood days; and this modern convenience is now used only by some of the well-to-do people in the large cities. The rank and file of the people, as in the days of ancient Israel, still bake their bread at semi-public ovens, a few of which are found in every village and town. This baking-place is mentioned often in the Bible, but the word "oven" in the English translation is somewhat misleading. It {201} is so because the _tennûr_ (translated "oven" in the Bible) is unknown to the English-speaking world, if not to the entire Occident. The _tennûr_ is a huge earthen tube about three feet in diameter and about five feet long; it is sunk in the ground within a small, roughly constructed hut. The women bake their bread at the _tennûr_ in turn, certain days being assigned to certain families. The one baking comprises from one hundred to two hundred loaves. The fuel, which consists of small branches of trees, and of thistles and straw, is thrown into the _tennûr_ in large quantities. It is to this that Jesus alludes in the passage, "If then God so clothe the grass which is to-day in the field, and to-morrow is _cast into the oven_, how much more will he clothe you, O ye of little faith?" When I recall the sight of a burning _tennûr_, I do not find it difficult to imagine what the old theologians meant by the "burning pit." The billows of black smoke, pierced at intervals by tongues of flame issuing from the deep hole, convert the chimneyless hut into an active {202} crater. No one who has seen such a sight can fail to understand what the prophet Malachi meant when he exclaimed, "For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble."[1] And no one who has seen that little hut, virtually plastered with the blackest soot, can fail to understand the full meaning of that passage in the fifth chapter of the Book of Lamentations, the tenth verse, which says, "Our skin was black like an oven, because of the terrible famine." A large baking is a source of pride as well as a means of security. A Syrian housewife is proud to have the oven all to herself for a whole day. It is a disgrace--nay, a curse--to have a small baking, or to buy bread in small quantity, "one weight" at a time. One of the terrible threats to Israel, recorded in the twenty-sixth chapter of the Book of Leviticus, the twenty-sixth verse, is this: "When I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall {203} bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight: and ye shall eat and not be satisfied." My mother often admonished us to be thankful that we were not like those who had to buy their bread by weight--that is, in small quantities.