Bible Dictionary
Mines, Mining
Ancient mining involved digging shafts, extracting ore, and refining metals such as gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, and tin. Job 28 provides the Bible’s principal description of these operations.
Definition
Ancient mining involved opening shafts, extracting ore, and refining metals such as gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, and tin. Job 28:1–11 is the principal biblical description of these operations in the supplied material.
Biblical Usage
Job presents mining as a known human activity involving the search for hidden mineral wealth. Other passages are understood as referring to the refining of metals through heat, air, nitre, or lead.
Historical Background
Mining remains at Wady Magharah include Egyptian inscriptions, furnaces, and shipping facilities for copper. Gold and silver were refined by several methods. Silver was largely supplied from Spain, while Palestine was rich in iron; tin had no known trace there.
Scripture References
Related Figures
Historical Bible Dictionaries
Smith's Bible Dictionary
A highly-poetical description given by the author of the book of Job of the operations of mining as known in his day is the only record of the kind which we inherit from the ancient Hebrews. (Job 28:1-11) In the Wady Magharah, “the valley of the cave,” are still traces of the Egyptian colony of miners who settled there for the purpose of extracting copper from the freestone rocks, and left their hieroglyphic inscriptions upon the face of the cliff. The ancient furnaces are still to be seen, and on the coast of the Red Sea are found the piers and wharves whence the miners shipped their metal in the harbor of Abu Zelimeh. Three methods were employed for refining gold and silver: (1) by exposing the fused metal to a current of air; (2) by keeping the alloy in a state of fusion and throwing nitre upon it; and (3) by mixing the alloy with lead, exposing the whole to fusion upon a vessel of bone-ashes or earth, and blowing upon it with bellows or other blast. There seems to be reference to the latter in (Psalms 12:6; Jeremiah 6:28-30; Ezekiel 22:18-22) The chief supply of silver in the ancient world appears to have been brought from Spain. The Egyptians evidently possessed the art of working bronze in great perfection at a very early time, and much of the knowledge of metals which the Israelites had must have been acquired during their residence among them. Of tin there appears to have been no trace in Palestine. The hills of Palestine are rich in iron, and the mines are still worked there, though in a very simple, rude manner.