Fuel

The fuel used in ancient Palestine included nearly every available combustible material: dry grass and thorns (Matthew 6:30; Psalms 58:9; Ecclesiastes 7:6), dried dung (Ezekiel 4:12, 15), wood, and charcoal. The relative scarcity of timber in many parts of Canaan meant that thorns, briers, and dried vegetation were commonly relied upon for cooking fires — fast-burning fuel that produced quick heat. Ezekiel's instruction to bake his bread over human dung as a sign of Jerusalem's coming defilement was so distressing to the prophet that God granted him cow dung as a substitute — indicating that animal dung fuel, though unpleasant, was a known and tolerable reality of daily life (Ezekiel 4:12–15).

In the prophetic imagination, fuel becomes a figure for what is consumed in judgment: Ezekiel 15 asks what the vine is good for if it produces no fruit — it cannot even be used as fuel, for the fire consumes it. Isaiah 9:5 describes the boots and garments of the enemy army becoming fuel for fire. The contrast between true worshippers and those who are mere fuel for divine judgment runs through both prophetic and apocalyptic texts (Isaiah 9:18–19; Ezekiel 21:32).