616 Br. J. H. Gladstone [Feb. 11, 



acquainted with the metals used in that country. They borrowed 

 the jewels of silver and gold of their oppressors ; and of these the 

 golden calf was afterwards made. We read, too, of the " brazen 

 serpent,' * and of elaborate directions for the use of silver, gold and 

 biass in the construction of the Tabernacle. Lead is mentioned 

 once, but iron seems to have been unknown to them, the word never 

 occurring in the Book of Exodus ; and though it is occasionally 

 mentioned in the later Books of Numbers, Deuteronomy and Joshua, 

 it is always with reference, not to the Israelites, but to the nations 

 they encountered. Thus we read of the Midianites having gold, 

 silver, copper, iron, tin and lead, which were to be purified by pass- 

 ing through the fire ; of the King of Bashan, a remnant of the 

 Rephaim, who had the rare luxury of an iron bedstead, which was 

 kept afterwards as a curiosity at Rabbah ; and of the spoil of the 

 Amorite city of Jericho, comprising gold, silver, copper and iron. 

 Later on the Canaanites wei e formidable with their " nine hundred 

 chariots of iron ; " and later still the Philistines, whose champion, 

 (j'oliath of Giith, was cla I in armour of bronze, and bore a spear with 

 a heavy head of iron. Among the materials collected by David in 

 rich abundance for the building of the Temple were gold, silver, 

 bronze and iron ; but the best artificers in metals were furnished by 

 Hiram of Tyre, at the request of Solomon. During the reign of the 

 latter there was an immense accumulation of these j^recious metals in 

 Jerusalem. The comparative value of the different materials is 

 indicated by the words of the j^rophet in describing the Zion of the 

 future, "For biMSS 1 will bring gold, and for iron 1 will bring silver, 

 find for wood brass, and for stones iron" (Isaiah Ix. 17). Another 

 prophet (Jeremiah vi. 29, 30) uses the simile of the refining of silver 

 by the process of cupellation. 



1 he great mound of Tel el Hesy affords a very perfect example 

 of the debris of town upon town during many centuries ; and of the 

 lis;lit that these mounds throw upon the progress of civilisation. 

 When Joshua, after the decisive victory of Bethhoron, led his troops 

 to the plain in the south-west corner of Palestine, he besieged and 

 took Lachish, a city of the Araorites. It then became an important 

 stronghold of the Israelites : its vicissitudes are frequently mentioned 

 at various dates of the sacred history, as well as on the Tel el Amarna 

 tablets. The mound has lately been explored by Messrs. Petrie and 

 Bliss ; and in the remainsof the Amorite city (perhaps b.c. 1500 ) there 

 are large rough weapons of war, made of cop|»er without admixture 

 of tin ; above this, dating perhaps from 1250 to 800, appear bronze 

 tools, with an occasional piece of silver or lead, but the bronze 

 gradually becomes scarcer, its place being taken by iron, till at the 



* The word " brass," at the time of the transLition of our Bible was used 

 indiscriminately for copper or anj' of its alloys ; so was also the correspondino^ 

 Hebrew term. In the Old Testament it never refers to the alloy of zinc, to 

 whifh the term brass is now conliiied. 



