Mason - UPDV Updated Bible Version

The mason works in stone — quarrying, hewing, dressing, setting, and engraving it. In the UPDV the trade appears alongside carpentry as one of the two structural crafts a building project requires, and it is named most often where a king is constructing or repairing a major house. The verses gathered here trace the craft from its earliest substitute (brick and bitumen in place of stone) through the masonry of David's palace, the repair of the Yahweh-house under Joash and Josiah, the rebuilding of the second temple, and the specialized engraving work that adorned the priestly garments and the temple precincts.

A trade in brick and stone

At Babel the building material is named precisely because stone was unavailable: "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and they had bitumen for mortar" (Ge 11:3). Where stone could be had, it was the preferred fabric. Job's miner's-eye description of the earth assumes stone as the matrix from which other materials are won: "Iron is taken out of the earth, And copper is molten out of the stone" (Job 28:2). The mason's labor begins with hewing — cutting raw stone — and continues through dressing it for setting; both stages are spoken of together when David tells Solomon that "there are workmen with you in abundance, hewers and workers of stone and timber" (1Ch 22:15).

Building for the king

When David takes Jerusalem, masons appear in the very first construction notice of his reign. Hiram king of Tyre supplies both the materials and the craftsmen: "And Hiram king of Tyre sent messengers to David, and cedar-trees, and carpenters, and masons; and they built David a house" (2Sa 5:11). The Chronicler tells the same scene with the order of trades reversed: "And Hiram king of Tyre sent messengers to David, and cedar-trees, and masons, and carpenters, to build him a house" (1Ch 14:1). The pairing — Tyrian masons working alongside Tyrian carpenters, Lebanese cedar arriving with them — sets the pattern for monumental building in Israel.

That pattern carries forward into Solomon's preparations. David instructs Solomon that the workmen for the temple are already at hand, "hewers and workers of stone and timber, and all men who are skillful in every manner of work" (1Ch 22:15). Solomon for his part writes to Huram of Tyre asking for "a skillful man to work in gold, and in silver, and in bronze, and in iron, and in purple, and crimson, and blue, and who knows how to engrave [all manner of] engravings, [to be] with the skillful men who are with me in Judah and in Jerusalem, whom David my father provided" (2Ch 2:7). The finished sanctuary, in turn, is so heavily paneled that the stone substrate disappears from view: "And there was cedar on the house inside, carved with knops and open flowers: all was cedar; there was no stone seen" (1Ki 6:18). The masonry is there — under the paneling — but the visible decorative work belongs to the carver.

Repairing the house of Yahweh

Two later kings put masons back to work on the temple. Under Joash, the silver collected for repairs is paid out by the overseers to a chain of trades: "they paid it out to the carpenters and the builders, that wrought on the house of Yahweh, and to the masons and the hewers of stone, and for buying timber and cut stone to repair the breaches of the house of Yahweh, and for all that was laid out for the house to repair it" (2Ki 12:11-12). Under Josiah, the same arrangement repeats: silver goes "to the carpenters, and to the builders, and to the masons, and for buying timber and cut stone to repair the house" (2Ki 22:6). In both passages the mason and the hewer of stone are paid in coordination with the carpenter and the builder; cut stone and timber are bought together; and the work is framed as repair of breaches in an existing structure rather than new construction.

Rebuilding after the exile

When the foundation of the second temple is laid under Cyrus, the same combination of trades and the same Tyrian-Sidonian supply line appear: "They gave silver also to the masons, and to the carpenters; and food, and drink, and oil, to those of Sidon, and to those of Tyre, to bring cedar-trees from Lebanon to the sea, to Joppa, according to the grant that they had of Cyrus king of Persia" (Ezr 3:7). The continuity with David and Solomon is striking — masons paid in silver, carpenters paid alongside them, cedar arriving from Lebanon by sea — even though the political setting (a Persian grant) is wholly new.

The destruction that occasioned this rebuilding is itself remembered as the undoing of fine stonework: "And now all its carved work They break down with hatchet and hammers" (Ps 74:6). What the mason and the engraver had set up, the hammer dismantled.

The engraver in stone

Within the mason's craft, engraving is its own specialty. For the priestly garments Yahweh commands: "With the work of an engraver in stone, like the engravings of a signet, you will engrave the two stones, according to the names of the sons of Israel" (Ex 28:11). The breastplate stones are made the same way: "And the stones were according to the names of the sons of Israel, twelve, according to their names; like the engravings of a signet, every one according to his name, for the twelve tribes" (Ex 39:14). The Spirit-given craft skill given to Bezalel for the tabernacle expressly includes "cutting of stones for setting, and in carving of wood, to work in all manner of workmanship" (Ex 31:5) — stone-cutting and wood-carving named together as a single category of inspired competence.

Sirach's portrait of the engraver describes the same labor from the inside: "Likewise the engraver and craftsman, Who passes his time by night as by day; They cut gravings of signets, And his diligence is to make variety, He sets his heart to make his likeness true, And his anxiety is to finish his work" (Sir 38:27). Sirach's larger point in the surrounding lines is that the working trades — engraver, smith, potter — are indispensable: "All these rely upon their hands, And each is wise in his handiwork" (Sir 38:31); "Without them a city cannot be inhabited" (Sir 38:32); "But the fabric of the world, they will maintain, And their thoughts are on the handiwork of [their] craft" (Sir 38:34).

Yahweh as engraver, the apostle as masterbuilder

The image of stone-engraving is taken up to describe Yahweh's own act in Zechariah's vision: "For, look, the stone that I have set before Joshua; on one stone are seven eyes: look, I will engrave its engraving, says Yahweh of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day" (Zec 3:9). The craftsman's tool — the engraver's chisel — becomes the metaphor for a divine inscription that accompanies the day-of-cleansing.