Flagon

Flagon in the Authorized Version renders the Hebrew ashishah, which most modern scholars identify not as a liquid container but as a cake of pressed or dried raisins. The Revised Version and most modern translations render it "raisin cake" — a concentrated, sweet food used both in ordinary life and in worship contexts. The "flagons of wine" of the older translation reflect an error; the substance was a solid cake of compressed raisins rather than a vessel of wine.

Raisin cakes appear in 2 Samuel 6:19 and 1 Chronicles 16:3 in David's distribution of food to the people after the ark's installation — a joyful communal celebration. Song of Solomon 2:5 uses them as a term of refreshment: "Sustain me with raisin cakes, refresh me with apples, for I am sick with love." Hosea 3:1 warns against those who "turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes" — a reference to the use of raisin cakes in pagan Canaanite fertility cult offerings, practices associated with Baal and Asherah worship (Hosea 3:1).