Pots" and other large vessels in the Bible represent facts and factual ideas, which serve as containers for truth the same way pots serve as containers for water or wine. Pots fill their function because they are hard, strong and impervious; facts are also absolute and unchanging, filling their function the same way. And pots must be filled to serve any use, just as facts must be filled with truth to serve any purpose. To some extent this meaning also applies to cups, bowls and other smaller vessels, though it is a little more immediate. Generally you don't fill a cup so you can store a liquid; you fill it to drink it. Smaller vessels then often take more of their meaning from the substance they contain, and in many cases ("cup" and "wine" especially) actually mean the same thing.

4913. 'Seeing that I have not given her to Shelah my son' means because what was external was of such a nature. This becomes clear from what has been explained already - that Tamar could not be given to Shelah, Judah's son, because if she had been the joining together would have been as that of a wife and husband married to each other through the law of leviratical marriage. But the semblance of religion existing among the Jewish nation which he was to represent was not like that husband but like a father-in-law joined to a daughter-in-law as to a prostitute.