Bucket

The bucket appears in the UPDV only as a figure, twice, and on opposite scales. In Balaam's third oracle it overflows with the water that figures Israel's prosperity; in Isaiah it is the vessel against which the nations are measured and found to weigh almost nothing.

Buckets Overflowing with Israel's Prosperity

When Balaam can do nothing but bless, his oracle passes from a description of Israel's tents to a picture of well-watered fertility: "Water will flow from his buckets, And his seed will be in many waters, And his king will be higher than Agag, And his kingdom will be exalted" (Num 24:7). The bucket is plural here, and the image is of water in motion — flowing out of vessels that cannot contain it — paired with seed in many waters and a king lifted higher than Agag.

A Drop of a Bucket

Isaiah's incomparability oracle uses the same vessel as a unit of contrast. Against the immensity of Yahweh, the bucket itself is a small thing, and a single drop falling from it is smaller still: "Look, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are accounted as the small dust of the balance: look, he takes up the isles as a very little thing" (Isa 40:15). Set beside the previous oracle, the same vessel that overflowed for Israel is the same vessel by whose weight the nations are reckoned negligible.