Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 4:25 AM, Harold Holmyard wrote:

> HH: I don't think it is forced. They obviously had bronze, since it is
> mentioned a great deal. There was no need to enumerate every kind of
> metal, since Moses was simply pointing to various large categories of
> objects that could be used for murder:  metal, stone, and wood.
>
> HH: The use of "iron" for metal could be a use of synecdoche:
>
> synecdoche: A whole is represented by naming one of its parts (genus
> named for species), or vice versa (species named for genus).

While we might not see the word metal we do see lists of metal.  For
example, Num 31:21-24.  He used it in Num 31, why not Num 35?
Also, while they "obviously" had bronze, it is not so obvious they
had iron weapons for striking.  In fact, it is more likely that if anything,
bronze would come to be used as a name for all metals rather than
iron, given the history of the metals' development -- bronze came
first.  You already see that in the words where bronze is a Semitic
word but iron is a loan-word.

Yitzhak Sapir