THE TWO STONES — the potter's wheel, and one of the most informative words in the Hebrew Bible, because it is a DUAL: not 'wheel' but the dual of even, 'stone'. The word is a photograph of the machine — a lower stone turned by hand or foot driving an upper stone on a pivot and socket, with the clay riding on top — and the older versions still hear the number (KJV and ASV both have 'the wheels', plural, at Jeremiah 18:3; modern versions flatten it to one wheel). ⚠ It occurs only TWICE in the Bible, and the other place is startling: Exodus 1:16, where it is the BIRTH-STOOL the Hebrew mothers crouch on and Pharaoh tells the midwives to watch. One dual word for the potter's twin stones and for the two stones of childbirth — both of them the place where a life is given its shape. See the encyclopedia entry on the potter for how the craft was actually done. → first discussed at Jer 18:3