TIN. 351 



TIN. 



THIS metal, so useful for a variety of purposes in the present day, 

 was also known in the time of Moses, who distinctly notices it in 

 liis enumeration of the six kinds of metal, in Numb. xxxi. 22. 



Silver, of all the metals, suffers most from an admixture of tin, a 

 very small quantity serving to make that metal as brittle as glass, 

 and what is worse, being with great difficulty separated from it 

 again. The very vapor of tin has the same effect as the metal itself 

 on silver, gold, arid copper, rendering them brittle. Hence we may 

 see, says Parkhurst, the propriety of Jehovah's denunciation, by the 

 prophet Isaiah, chap. i. 25 ; for having, at the 22d verse, compar- 

 ed the Jewish people to silver, he declares at verse 25, ' I will turn 

 my hand upon thee, and purge away thy dross, and remove all thy 

 particles of tin ; where Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, and the 

 Vulgate read, thy tin; but the LXX. read wicked ones. This de- 

 nunciation, however, by a comparison of the preceding and fol- 

 lowing context, appears to signify that God would, by a process of 

 judgment, purify those among the Jews who were capable of puri- 

 fication, as well as destroy the reprobate and incorrigible. Comp. 

 . Jer. vi. 29, 30 ; ix. 7 ; Ezek. xxii. 18, 20 ; Mai. iii. 3. 



In Ezek. xxvii. 12, Tarshish is mentioned as furnishing tin, which 

 country is, on the authority of Bochart, generally believed to be the 

 ancient Tartessus in Spain.' 



