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13. Though ye should lie among the pots ²⁵²⁵     The interpretation of this verse is attended with great difficulty. Speaking of it and the following verse, Dr Lowth says, “I am not at all satisfied with any explication I have ever met with of these verses, either as to sense or construction, and I must give them up as unintelligible to me. Houbigant helps out the construction in his violent method: ‘Aut invenit viam, aut facit.’” It is pretty generally admitted, that in the first part of this verse a “state of wretchedness and distress,” as Calvin remarks, is indicated; but it is difficult to ascertain the meaning of the word שפתים, shephataim, which he renders pots, and, consequently, to ascertain to what the allusion particularly is. None of the old translators have so rendered it; and numerous significations have been given to it. The Chaldee renders it, “bounds in the divisions of the way;” the Syriac and Arabic, “paths” or “ways;” the Septuagint, κλήρων, “allotments,” “inheritances,” or “portions,” apparently deriving the word from שפת, divisit, ordinavit, and perhaps attaching to it a similar idea as in the preceding translations, men’s portions of land or possessions having been divided and distinguished by paths Jerome, adhering to the Septuagint, makes it “inter medios terminos.” Thus, the word will not be without significance, expressing a forlorn and wretched condition, lying down betwixt the bounds; that is, in the highways. But many modern critics think that it signifies something in relation to pots, and that it may very probably be the same as that which the Arabs call אתאפי, Athaphi, stones set in a chimney for a pot to rest on, the pots being without legs. “Of these,” says Hammond, “the Arabians had three, and the third being commonly (to them in the desert) some fast piece of a rock, or the like, behind the pot, — as in a chimney the back of the chimney itself, and that not looked on as distinct from the chimney, — the other two at the sides, which were loose, might fitly be here expressed in the dual number שפתים; and then the lying between these will betoken a very low, squalid condition, as in the ashes, or amidst the soot and filth of the chimney.” “These two renderings,” he adds, “may seem somewhat distant; and yet, considering that the termini or bounds in divisions of ways were but heaps of stones, or broken bricks, or rubbish, the word שפתים, which signifies these, may well signify these supporters of the pots also, in respect of the matter of these being such stones or broken bricks.”
   Parkhurst takes a view somewhat similar to this last interpretation. He reads, “among the fire ranges,” or “rows of stones.” “Those,” says he, “on which the caldrons or pots were placed for boiling; somewhat like, I suppose, but of a more structure, than those which Niebuhr says are used by the wandering Arabs. ‘Their fire-place is soon constructed: they only set their pots upon several separate stones, or over a hole digged in the earth.’ Lying among these denotes the most abject slavery; for this seems to have been the place of rest allotted to the vilest slaves. So, old Laertes, grieving for the loss of his son, is described by Homer (in the Eleventh Book of the Odyssey) as, in the winter, sleeping where the slaves did, in the ashes near the fire: —
   ‘—Oqi dmwev eni oikw
En koni agci purov.’”
    See his Lexicon on שפת ii.
   The Chaldee has “broken bricks,” or “rubbish,” that are thrown away; the word, according to this sense, being derived from שפה, shephah, to bruise, to trample on A similar noun, אשפת, ashpoth, derived from the verb שפה, is used in Psalm 113:7, for a dunghill, or the vilest place, whither all kinds of rubbish are cast out, and where the poor are said to lie. When Job was brought by Satan to the lowest depths of affliction, he sat down among the ashes, and scraped himself with a potsherd, which indicated the state of extreme sadness and debasement to which he was reduced. If this is the sense here, “lying among the broken bricks or rubbish” expresses, in like manner as the preceding translations, the most mean, dejected, and wretched condition.
   Harmer’s attempt to explain this passage is at least very ingenious: — As shepherds in the East betake themselves, during the night, for shelter to the caves which they find in their rocky hills, where they can kindle fires to warm themselves, as well as dress their provisions, and as doves, as well as other birds, frequently haunt such places, he conjectures that the afflicted state of Israel in Egypt is here compared to the condition of a dove making its abode in the hollow of a rock which had been smutted by the fires which the shepherds had made in it. He supposes the word here translated pots to mean the little heaps of stones on which the shepherds set their pots, there being a hollow under them to contain the fire. — Harmer’s Observations, volume 1, pp. 176, 177.
   Gesenius thinks the word is equivalent to המשפתים, hammishpethaim, which occurs in Judges 5:16, and which our English version makes “sheepfolds,” the only difference between the two words being, that the word here wants the formative letter מ, mem Thus, it may refer to the condition of the Israelites when living among their flocks in the wilderness. We have not yet exhausted the different significations affixed by commentators to this word; but, without referring to more, we shall only add, that, according to some, the allusion is to the condition of the Israelites in Egypt, who were doomed to the drudgery of brick-making and pottery, and had probably to sleep among the brick-kilns or earthenware manufactories in which they were employed.
   With respect to the second clause of the verse, in which an image taken from the dove is introduced, a difficulty which has been stated is, how her feathers can be said to resemble yellow gold. From the circumstance, that the splendor of gold is here intermingled, Harmer concludes that this is not a description of the animal merely as adorned by the hand of nature, but that the allusion is to white doves that were consecrated to the Syrian deities, and adorned with trinkets of gold, the meaning being, “Israel is to me as a consecrated dove; and though your circumstances have made you rather appear like a poor dove, blackened by taking up its abode in a smoky hole of the rocks, yet shall you become beautiful and glorious as a Syrian silver-coloured pigeon, on which some ornament of gold is put.” — Harmer’s Observations, volume 1, p. 180. But there are certainly doves which answer to the description here given, some of them having the feathers on the sides of the neck of a shining copper color, which in a bright sun must resemble gold. See Encyc. Brit. Art. Columbia. Besides, the reference is not necessarily to the color of gold, but to its brilliancy. How highly poetical an emblem, to depict the glorious change effected in the condition of the Hebrews by the deliverance which God had granted them over the proud and formidable enemies who had kept them in the degrading condition represented in the first clause of the verse! Having spoken of God as fighting the battles of his people, he adds, by way of qualification, that they may lie for a time under darkness, though eventually God will appear for their deliverance; There can be little doubt that he hints at the state of wretchedness and distress to which the nation had been reduced under the government of Saul, for the interposition was the more remarkable, considering the misery from which it had emerged. The words, however, convey a further instruction than this. They teach us the general truth, that believers are, by the hidden and mysterious power of God, preserved unhurt in the midst of their afflictions, or suddenly recovered so as to exhibit no marks of them. The language admits of being interpreted to mean either that they shine even when lying under filth and darkness, or that, when freed from their troubles, they shake off any defilement which they may have contracted. Let either sense be adopted, and it remains true that the believer is never consumed or overwhelmed by his afflictions, but comes out safe. An elegant figure is drawn from the dove, which, though it lie amongst the pots, retains the beauty which naturally belongs to it, and contracts no defilement on its wings. From this we learn that the Church does not always present a fair or peaceable aspect, but rather emerges occasionally from the darkness that envelops it, and recovers its beauty as perfectly as if it had never been subjected to calamity.