I. Name
The plural noun ʿăṣabbîm, ‘idols’, is derived from the verb ʿāṣab I, ‘form, fashion, shape’, which is attested in Job 10.8: “Your hands fashioned and made me” (see also Jer. 44.19). The verb should not be confused with ʿāṣab II ‘to be sad, sorrowful’. The singular of the noun ʿeṣeb meaning ‘(clay) vessel, pot’ is attested in Jer. 22.28: “Is this man Coniah a wretched broken pot, a vessel (kĕlî) no one wants? Why are he and his offspring hurled out, and cast away in a land they knew not?”
II. Identity
Atte…