Pottery

Pottery was one of the earliest and most widespread crafts of the ancient Near East, with evidence of its practice in Canaan from the Neolithic period onward. In Israel, potters (Hebrew yotser) worked clay with their feet (Isa. 41:25), shaped it on a wheel (Jer. 18:3), and fired it in kilns. The potter's control over his clay became one of the most powerful biblical images for God's sovereignty over his creatures: God is the potter, humanity is the clay (Isa. 45:9; 64:8; Rom. 9:20–21). Jeremiah visited the potter's house and received a prophetic lesson on God's freedom to reshape or destroy the work of his hands (Jer. 18:1–10). The shepherd-king of Psalm 2:9 will "break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." Archaeological pottery typology is the primary tool for dating biblical-era sites.