840 SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY. 



as appropriated to the purpose of drawing or painting. Ezek. xxiii, 

 14. 



The vermilion in present use is well known as a preparation of 

 mercury and sulphur; but Pliny informs us, that that which was 

 called by the Greeks milton, was found in silver mines, in the form 

 f reddish sand, and was much used by the Romans in his time as 

 a paint, and formerly applied to sacred purposes. Coin p. Ezek, 

 xxiii. 14. Bochart observes, that there is a lake in Africa, called 

 from the Pho3nicians Sisari, so named, he thinks, on account of the 

 vermilion, or red paint ( called by the Hebrews st&er) for which 

 those parts were famous; and also of the neighboring river, called 

 likewise, in Latin, Rubicatus, red -colored. 



CLAY. 



THIS well know and useful substance is spoken of in several 

 passages of scripture, from which it is evident that it has been ap- 

 propriated to the manufacture of various useful and ornamental 

 articles from a very early period of the world. 



There is only one passage among these, however, that requires 

 elucidation, and as it has occasioned much embarrassment to bibli- 

 cal critics, the reader will not be displeased at the length of the fol- 

 lowing article, from the pen of the ingenious Landseer, which clears 

 up the sense of the sacred writer, and renders manifest the pro- 

 fundity and accuracy of his knowledge. The passage elucidated 

 is as follows: 'Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; 

 and caused the day-spring to know his place, that it might take hold 

 of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it ? 

 It is turned as clay to the seals ; and they stand as a garment. And 

 from the wicked their light is withholden, and the high arm shall 

 be broken,' Job xxxviii. 12 14. 



Dr. John Mason Good, who has favored the public with a new 

 and luminous arrangement and translation of this extraordinary 

 book, affirms, that there is hardly any passage in the whole poem 

 that has been supposed so difficult of elucidation as that above cited; 

 'nor,' continues he, 'have I met with a single rendering that is per- 

 spicuous, or will bear a critical examination. Schultens says, he 

 has compared and examined with great attention the different at- 

 tempts of interpreters to explain the fourteenth verse, but confesses, 

 that from none of them has he been able to extract its meaning ; and 

 even Reiske, the boldest critical expositor we are possessed of, fin- 

 ishes with exclaiming, ' Fateor me non capere.' 



Now, Schulten and Reiske have failed of their object, not (as nu>y 

 well be supposed) from lack of scholarship or of judgment, but for 



