Mortar

Mortar appears in two unrelated technical senses across the UPDV: a domestic pounding-vessel into which grain (and, by figure, a fool) is crushed with a pestle, and a wet-mix binding-material trodden underfoot for brick-and-stone construction. The same English word covers both, and the canon turns each sense to its own moral and prophetic use.

The Pounding Vessel

In the wilderness manna economy, mortars stand in alternation with mills as the breakdown-vessel for the daily ration: "The people went about, and gathered it, and ground it in mills, or beat it in mortars, and boiled it in pots, and made cakes of it: and the taste of it was as the taste of fresh oil" (Nu 11:8). The grinding-and-beating pair sets two implements side by side, with the mortar as the pound-and-crush vessel for cake-baking.

The same domestic instrument turns into a proverb on the limits of correction: "Though you should bray a fool in a mortar with a pestle along with bruised grain, Yet his foolishness will not depart from him" (Pr 27:22). The fool is figured as placed in the mortar with the already-bruised grain, the pestle is named as the pounding-tool, and the conclusion is that the pestle-action which works on grain cannot pound out a fool's folly.

The Building Material

The other mortar is the wet-mix that holds brick and stone. The Egyptian bondage-catalogue names it first in the paired construction-material list of the enforced labor: "and they made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and in bricks, and in all manner of service in the field, all their service, in which they made them serve with rigor" (Ex 1:14). Mortar and bricks are coupled under one rigor-regime, with the bitter-making verb framing both as life-embittering work.

At Babel the binding-material is supplied by substitution: "And they said one to another, Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and they had bitumen for mortar" (Ge 11:3). Brick stands in for stone, and bitumen stands in for mortar — the wet-mix register held even when the local geology forced an ad-hoc substitute.

The same wet-mix is the trodden labor of siege-preparation. To Nineveh the prophet issues sarcastic last-minute imperatives: "Draw yourself water for the siege; strengthen your fortresses; go into the clay, and tread the mortar; make strong the brickkiln" (Na 3:14). The clay-pit, the foot-trodden mortar, and the kiln chain together as the doomed last-resort fortification labor.

Mortar in the Cleansed House

When a house is treated for the leprosy-plague, the mortar is named twice — once as the renewed wall-coating and once as the discarded debris of the failed cure. After the plague-stones are pulled out, the second-chance reconstruction reapplies fresh material: "and they will take other stones, and put them in the place of those stones; and he will take other mortar, and will plaster the house" (Le 14:42). The taking-verbs draw new stones and new mortar; the plaster-verb re-coats the house.

If the plague returns, the verdict is total demolition, and the mortar is itemized along with the stones and timber as carried out: "And he will break down the house, the stones of it, and its timber, and all the mortar of the house; and he will carry them forth out of the city into an unclean place" (Le 14:45). Mortar is exhibited here as inseparable from the house's cleanness-status — repaired with it on the second chance, expelled with it on the final breakdown.

The Untempered Daub

The construction-mortar carries a moral charge in the prophets, where false-prophets are figured as wall-builders who use a defective mix. In Ezekiel the indictment is direct: "Because, even because they have seduced my people, saying, Peace; and there is no peace; and when one builds up a wall, look, they daub it with untempered [mortar]" (Eze 13:10). The bracketed [mortar] is the UPDV editorial supply naming the substance; the untempered modifier grades the operative-defect at the un-cured wet-mix register, so the daubing-substance is the very seal of the false-peace lie.

The image is repeated against Jerusalem's prophets in the next major oracle: "And her prophets have daubed for them with untempered [mortar], seeing false visions, and telling them lying fortunes, saying, Thus says the Sovereign Yahweh, when Yahweh has not spoken" (Eze 22:28). The daubing again pairs with false visions and lying fortunes — the inadequate binding-material as the diagnostic mark of false prophecy.

The Trampled Mortar

The wet-mix turns figurative one more time, this time on the receiving end. In the Cyrus-oracle of Isaiah the raised-up one from the east is described as a treader: "I have raised up one from the north, and he has come; from the rising of the sun one who calls on my name: and he will trample rulers as mortar, and as the potter treads clay" (Isa 41:25). The trampling that elsewhere prepares mortar for brick-making is here turned on rulers themselves — the same foot-tread, the same wet-mix, but now with rulers as the trodden material under the divinely raised-up tread.