medokah , wherein the manna was pounded for use (Numbers 11:8). So still the Arabs pound wheat for their national dish, kibby (Thomson, Land and Book, 8:94). The maktesh was a larger mortar. Proverbs 27:22; "though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, (yet) will not his foolishness depart from (upon) him." The husk upon the grain can be bruised off it, but the mortar of trial cannot remove the fool's folly inherent by nature and habit (Jeremiah 13:23). So Ahaz (2 Chronicles 28:22), Judah (Isaiah 1:5-6; Isaiah 9:13; Jeremiah 5:3). The corrector's patience is tried, the corrected is not reformed, Roberts (Orient. Illustr. 368) mentions in the East large mortars for rice worked by two women, each in turn striking with a pestle five feet long. Criminals at Kandy were so beaten to death in such a mortar.