BOTTLE, a Kag made of Goat’s Skin with the hair on the inside, well pitched and sewed together, wherein Oil and other Liquors were preserved: The mouth of the Bottle is through one of the animals paws, which furnishes the matter of it. There is frequent mention of Bottles in Scripture, and as every one is not acquainted with the nature of them, it may not be unprofitable to say a word or two of them in this place. When Abraham dismissed Hagar, he gave her and her Son bread, and water in a Bottle Gen. xxi. 14, 15.for their journey. The Gibeonites the better to deceive Joshua and the Elders of the people, shewed them their old Bottles, telling them, that they had brought them new from their own homes, thereby hoping to convince them that they came from some remote Josh. ix. 4. 13. Judg. iv. 19. Ps. xxxii. 7. Ps. lxxvii. 13. Ps. cxix. 83.country. Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite opened a Bottle full of Milk, and offered Sisera some of it to drink.
The Psalmist in order to exalt the power of God, says, that he holdeth the waters of the Sea, shut up as it were in a Bottle, or a Portmantle; and speaking of the passage through the Red-Sea, he says in like manner, that he shut up the waters as in a Bottle. He locked them up, drew them back, bound them up. In another place he compares himself to a Bottle exposed to the Frost. Factus sum sicut uter in pruina, or exposed to the smoak, as a bottle dried, blackened, shrivelled. Our Saviour says, that men Matth. ix. 17.do not put new wine into old bottles, else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out. His Apostles were, as it were, old Bottles before the descent of the Holy Spirit upon them, they were not capable either of comprehending or practising all the perfection which Jesus Christ came to teach mankind.