Kettle

The kettle (Hebrew dûd, meaning boiling or basket) was a large pot used for cooking, mentioned in the Old Testament in several contexts. The same Hebrew word is rendered variously as pot, basket, caldron, and kettle depending on the context: it appears as a cooking vessel for meat (1 Samuel 2:14), as a basket for figs (Jeremiah 24:2), and metaphorically as the seething pot in Job 41:20 describing the breath of Leviathan.

The prophet Samuel's context is particularly illuminating: the sons of Eli's priests sent a servant with a three-pronged fork to thrust into the kettle, pan, or caldron where the sacrificial meat was boiling, taking whatever the fork brought up as the priest's portion—a practice the text condemns as violation of the proper priestly dues. In Micah 3:3, the prophetic condemnation of corrupt leaders is expressed in terms of butchers: they chop my people in pieces like meat into the kettle. The kettle thus functioned as both an ordinary household and temple cooking vessel and a vivid metaphor for exploitation and judgment in prophetic rhetoric.