the idol of the Ammonites at Kabbah, weighed a talent of gold, that is, 125 lbs. troy, a weiglit so great that it coidd not have been worn by David among the ordinary insignia of royalty (2 Sam. xii, 30). The great abun- dance of gold in early times is indicated by its entering into the composition of every article of ornament and almost all of domestic use. Among the sjioils of the Midianites taken by the Israelites, in their bloodless victorj-^ when Balaam was slain, were ear-rings and jew- els to the amount of 10,750 shekels in gold (Numb. xxxi, 48-54), equal in value to more than 61.50,000. 1700 shekels of gold (worth more than 815.000) in nose jew- els (A. V. " ear-rings") alone were taken by Gideon^ army from the slaughtered ISIidianites (Judg. viii, 26). These numbers, though large, are not incredibly great, when we consider that the country of the ^lidianites was at that time rich in gold streams, which have since been exhausted, and that, like the Malays of tlie pres- ent day and the Peruvians of the time of Pizarro, they carried most of their wealth about them. But the amount of treasure accumulated by David from spoils taken in war is so enormous that we are tempted to conclude tlie numbers exaggerated. From the gold shields of Iladadezer's army of Syrians and other sources he had collected, according to tlie chronicler (1 Chron. xxii, 1 h. KiD.tiitii l;ilfiil^(>r l:oM. and l.niid.di 10 talents of sil\cr; tn [\\r»- inu-i )»• .■i.Mi.l \n< own cintritiution of 3(101) taleiiis of gold ami 7000 of -ilvcr ( 1 ( 'liron. xxix, 2-4 ), and the additional ofteriiigs of the people, the total value of which, estimating the weight of a talent to be 125 lbs, troy, gold at 73.«. per oz., and silver at 4«.4irf. per oz., is reckoned by Mr. Napier to be £tt39,929,G87. Some idea of the largeness of this sum may be formed by considering that in 1855 the total amount of gold in use in the world was calculated to be about .*4, 100,000,000. Undoubtedly the quantity of the precious metals pos- sessed by the Israelites might be greater in conse- quence of their commercial intercourse with the Pha-ni- cians, who were masters of the sea; but in the time of David they were a nation struggling for political exist- ence, surrounded by powerful enemies, and witliout the leisure necessary for developing their commercial capa- bilities. The numbers given by Josei)hus (.1 nt. vii, 14, 2) are only one tenth of those in the text, but the sum, oven when thus reduced, is still enormous. But though gold was thus common, silver appears to have been the ordinary medium of commerce. The first commercial transaction of which we possess the details was the pur- chase of Ephron's field by Abraliam for 400 shekels of silver (Gen. xxiii, IG); slaves were bought with silver (Gen. xvii, 12); silver was the money paid bj- Abime- lech as a compensation to Abraham (Gen. xx, IG); Jo- seph was sold to the Ishmaelite merchants for twenty pieces of silver (Gen. xxxvii, 28) ; and generally in the Old Testament, '"money" in the A. A', is literally silver. The first payment in gold is mentioned in 1 Cliron. xxi, 25, where l)avid buys the threshing-floor of Oman, or Araunah, the Jebusite, for " six hundred shekels of gold by weight." But in the parallel narrative of the transac- tion in 2 Sam, xxiv, 24, the price paid for the threshing- floor and the oxen is fifty shekels of silver. An attempt has been made by Keil to reconcile these two jiassages, by supposing that in the fornur the ]iiircliase referred to was that of the entire hill on which the threshing-floor stood, and in the latter that of the threshing-floor itself. But the dose resemblance between the two narratives renders it difficult to accept this explanation, and to im- agine that two different circumstances are described. Tliat there is a discrepancy between the numbers in 2 Sam.xxiv,9and 1 Chron.xxi,5isa<lmittcd,and it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that the present case is but another instance of the same kind, Willi this one exception there is no case in tlie O, '1', in which gold is alluded to as a medium of commerce: the He- brew coinage may have been partly gold, but we have no proof of it. See Gold.
Silver was brought into Palestine in the form of
METAL
147
METAL
plates from Tarshish, with gold and ivory (I Kings x, 22 ; 2 Chron. ix, 21 ; Jer. x, 9). The accumulation of ■wealth in the reign of Solomon was so great that silver was but Uttle esteemed : " the king made silver to be hi Jerusalem as stones" (1 Kings x, 21, 27). With the treasures which were brought out of Egypt, not only the ornaments, but the ordinary metal-work of the Tab- ernacle was made. Silver was employed for the sockets of the boards (Exod. xxvi, lil; xxxvi, 24), and for the hooks of the pillars and their liUets (Exod. xxxviii, 10). The capitals of the pillars were overlaid with it (Exod. xxxviii, 17); the chargers and bowls oifered by the princes at the dedication of the Tabernacle (Numb, vii, 13, etc.), the trumpets for marshalling the host (Numb. X, 2), and some of the candlesticks and tables for the Temple, were of silver (1 Chron. xxviii, 15, 10). It was used for the setting of gold ornaments (Prov. xxv, 11) and other decorations (Cant, i, 11), and for the pillars of Solomons gorgeous chariot or palanquin (Cant. iii, 10). See Silver.