Brass

The KJV/ASV register's "brass" is the Bible's word for copper or bronze, the workhorse metal of the tabernacle, the temple, the city-gate, and the soldier's panoply. UPDV renders it as "bronze" or "copper" throughout. The references are gathered under one umbrella: a mineral mined and smelted, a tribute and trade-good, the substance of altar and sea and pillar, the metal of helmet and greave and fetter, the medium of pagan idols, and a stock figure for hardness, drought, and dazzling brightness.

Mineral, Smelting, and Source

Bronze and copper are dug from the land itself. Of the promised land Moses says, "a land in which you will eat bread without scarceness, you will not lack anything in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you may dig copper" (De 8:9). Job's hymn to wisdom couples mining and smelting in a single line: "Iron is taken out of the earth, And copper is molten out of the stone" (Job 28:2). Ezekiel's furnace-oracle names bronze among the metals that go into the fire: "As they gather silver and bronze and iron and lead and tin into the midst of the furnace, to blow the fire on it, to melt it; so I will gather you⁺ in my anger and in my wrath, and I will lay you⁺ there, and melt you⁺" (Eze 22:20).

The metal flows into Israel from outside as well. The trans-Jordan tribes go home "with silver, and with gold, and with bronze, and with iron" out of the spoil (Jos 22:8). David takes "exceedingly much bronze" from Betah and Berothai, the Aramean cities of Hadadezer (2Sa 8:8). Tyre's traffickers bring still more: "Javan, Tubal, and Meshech, they were your traffickers; they traded the souls of man and vessels of bronze for your merchandise" (Eze 27:13).

Workers in Bronze

Three named craftsmen are tied to the metal. Tubal-cain stands at the head of the line, "the forger of every cutting instrument of bronze and iron" (Ge 4:22). Hiram of Tyre is the temple-craftsman, son of a Tyrian "worker in bronze," himself "filled with the wisdom and the understanding and the knowledge to work all works in bronze" when he comes to King Solomon (1Ki 7:14). At the far end of the canon stands Alexander, named without honor: "Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the Lord will render to him according to his works" (2Ti 4:14).

Bronze for the Tabernacle

Bronze enters the sanctuary-list at the head of the offering. "And this is the offering which you⁺ will take of them: gold, and silver, and bronze" (Ex 25:3) — third-ranked, but already on the table. The tent itself is held together with it: "And you will make fifty clasps of bronze, and put the clasps into the loops, and couple the tent together, that it may be one" (Ex 26:11). The summary inventory in Exodus 38 collects the rest: "the bronze of the offering was seventy talents, and two thousand and four hundred shekels," made into "the sockets to the door of the tent of meeting, and the bronze altar, and the bronze grating for it, and all the vessels of the altar, and the sockets of the court round about, and the sockets of the gate of the court, and all the pins of the tabernacle, and all the pins of the court round about" (Ex 38:29-31). The basin too is bronze, and bronze of a particular history: "he made the basin of bronze, and its base of bronze, of the mirrors of the serving women who served at the door of the tent of meeting" (Ex 38:8).

Bronze for the Temple

Solomon's temple multiplies the tabernacle's bronze on a different scale. David's deathbed-stockpile names "of bronze and iron without weight; for it is in abundance" (1Ch 22:14). Solomon's vessels follow suit: "Solomon left all the vessels [unweighed], because they were exceedingly many: the weight of the bronze could not be found out" (1Ki 7:47). The post-exilic return preserves a remnant of the same character: "twenty bowls of gold, of a thousand darics; and two vessels of fine bright bronze, precious as gold" (Ezr 8:27).

The Chaldean demolition of the temple is the inversion of all this gathering. "The pillars of bronze that were in the house of Yahweh, and the bases and the bronze sea that were in the house of Yahweh, the Chaldeans broke in pieces, and carried the bronze of them to Babylon" (2Ki 25:13) — the Jachin-and-Boaz columns, the wheeled laver-stands, and the great bronze sea reduced to portable scrap. Earlier, after Shishak's plunder of Solomon's gold, bronze had already done the substitute-work: "King Rehoboam made in their stead shields of bronze, and committed them to the hands of the captains of the guard, that kept the door of the king's house" (2Ch 12:10). Bronze stands in for lost gold; then the bronze itself is broken up and carried off.

Cymbals and Sounding Bronze

The Levitical singer-roster pairs the metal with worship-music: "the singers, Heman, Asaph, and Ethan, [were appointed] with cymbals of bronze to sound aloud" (1Ch 15:19). Paul plays the same metal back as a figure of empty noise: "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but don't have love, I have become sounding bronze, or a clanging cymbal" (1Co 13:1).

Bronze Armor

The full bronze panoply is given in Goliath's profile: "he had a helmet of bronze on his head, and he was clad with a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of bronze. And he had greaves of bronze on his legs, and a javelin of bronze between his shoulders" (1Sa 17:5-6). Rehoboam's substituted shields belong to the same bucket on a smaller scale (2Ch 12:10). The Seleucid elephant-corps in Maccabees keeps the same outfit alive into the Hellenistic field: "there stood by every elephant a thousand men in coats of mail, and with helmets of brass on their heads" (1Ma 6:35).

Gates, Bars, Fetters

The same metal closes cities and binds prisoners. Ben-geber's Bashan-fief has "threescore great cities with walls and bronze bars" (1Ki 4:13). Yahweh's deliverance-poetry inverts the image: "For he has broken the gates of bronze, And cut the bars of iron in sunder" (Ps 107:16). The Cyrus-oracle echoes it: "I will break in pieces the doors of bronze, and cut in sunder the bars of iron" (Isa 45:2). At Gaza the fetters bite the other way — "they brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of bronze; and he ground in the prison-house" (Jdg 16:21) — the prisoner of the Philistines closed in by the same metal that closed their gates.

Household Vessels

Outside the sanctuary, bronze is ordinary kitchenware. Mark's notice on Pharisaic washings names "cups, and pots, and bronze vessels, and beds" as the things scrupulously rinsed (Mk 7:4).

Roman Treaty-Tablets

In the second-temple register, bronze takes on a diplomatic function. The Roman reply to Judas Maccabaeus is laid down in the metal as a permanent record: "this is the copy of the writing that they wrote back, engraved in tablets of brass, and sent to Jerusalem, that it might be with them there for a memorial of the peace and alliance" (1Ma 8:22).

Bronze Idols

Bronze becomes an idol-metal where the same craft is bent toward false worship. At the Belshazzar-feast they "drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of bronze, of iron, of wood, and of stone" (Da 5:4). The trumpet-aftermath in the Apocalypse repeats the inventory: "the rest of men, who were not killed with these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and the idols of gold, and of silver, and of bronze, and of stone, and of wood; which can neither see, nor hear, nor walk" (Re 9:20).

The Bronze Serpent

Within this whole field of bronze-objects, one piece carries its own history. Moses fashions it directly: "Moses made a serpent of bronze, and set it on the standard: and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked to the serpent of bronze, he lived" (Nu 21:9). The Mosaic bronze-sign is later turned incense-idol, and Hezekiah's reform-demolition pulverizes it and renames it Nehushtan: "he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for in those days the sons of Israel burned incense to it; and he called it Nehushtan" (2Ki 18:4). Jesus draws the wilderness sign forward as the type of his own lifting-up: "as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up" (Jn 3:14).

Figurative Uses

The metal is one of the Bible's standing figures. It is the curse-sky and curse-ground of drought: "I will make your⁺ heaven as iron, and your⁺ earth as bronze" (Le 26:19). It is the blessing-bar of Asher: "Your bars will be iron and bronze; And as your days, so will your strength be" (De 33:25). It is the figure of obstinacy — "your neck is an iron sinew, and your brow bronze" (Isa 48:4) — and the figure of prophetic fortification — "I have made you this day a fortified city, and an iron pillar, and bronze walls, against the whole land" (Jer 1:18).

It is also the figure of dazzling brightness. The living-creatures' feet "sparkled like burnished bronze" (Eze 1:7); the man at the Tigris has "his arms and his feet like burnished bronze" (Da 10:6); the Son of Man on Patmos has "his feet like burnished bronze, as if it had been refined in a furnace" (Re 1:15).

In the Daniel-visions the metal becomes a kingdom-marker. The image's "belly and its thighs of bronze" (Da 2:32) are interpreted as "another third kingdom of bronze, which will bear rule over all the earth" (Da 2:39). The fourth beast's nails are bronze: "whose teeth were of iron, and its nails of bronze; which devoured, broke in pieces, and stamped the remnant with its feet" (Da 7:19). And in Zechariah the chariot-vision opens between "mountains of bronze" (Zec 6:1).