Mirror

The mirror in Scripture is a polished bronze hand-piece — a personal grooming tool whose surface returns an image to the one who looks into it. Around that everyday object the biblical writers cluster a small set of figures: the firmament hammered out as if molten, the basin at the door of the tent, the daughters of Zion stripped of their finery, the dimness of present sight, the unveiled face of the church, the hearer who glances and forgets, the polished enemy, and the dream.

The Bronze Mirror

The biblical mirror is metal, not glass — a sheet of bronze worked to a polished finish. Job's question makes the sky itself the comparison: "Can you with him spread out the sky, Which is strong as a molten mirror?" (Job 37:18). The figure presses both the hardness of the cast surface and the brightness of its reflective face onto the heavens.

The same bronze is what the women of Israel surrender at the door of the tent of meeting. "And 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). The grooming-pieces become the laver where the priests wash; the metal of personal vanity is melted into the metal of priestly cleansing.

A Hand-Piece of the Daughters of Zion

The mirror is a hand-portable item, listed alongside the most refined garments in Isaiah's day-of-the-Lord stripping inventory: "the hand-mirrors, and the fine linen, and the turbans, and the veils" (Is 3:23). Inside the v18-23 catalogue of finery the Lord will take away from the daughters of Zion, the hand-mirror is named as one named-class targeted for divine removal. The object that confirms a woman's appearance is itself carried off in the judgment.

The Polished Enemy and the Reflecting Dream

Ben Sira twice puts the mirror to figurative use. The enemy who listens quietly and walks softly is to be regarded with the same wariness one would give to a brilliantly polished metal surface that hides its own decay: "Let him be like a polished mirror; And know that there is no end to the corrosion" (Sir 12:11). The brightest possible outward-finish is precisely what conceals the limitless inward-rust.

The same writer turns the figure to the dream. "A dream is like a mirror, The likeness of a face reflecting a face" (Sir 34:3). What the dream shows is not a new face from outside but the face the dreamer has already brought to it. The mirror diagnoses the dream-class: image-content determined by what is placed before it.

Present Sight: Dim and Indirect

In Paul's hands the mirror becomes the figure of present-age vision itself. "For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then I will know fully even as also I was fully known" (1 Cor 13:12). The mirror stands for indirect, dim seeing; it is set against "face to face" and paired with the cognitive counterpart of partial knowing. The limitation of the bronze surface is the limitation of the present age.

The Unveiled Face

Paul's other mirror is not a verdict on dimness but a description of transformation. "But all of us, with unveiled face looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit" (2 Cor 3:18). The mirror is the medium of the sight, the beheld object is specified as the Lord's glory, and the looking is paired with an ongoing transformation into the same image. What is taken in through the mirror is reflected forward in image-formation.

The Glance-and-Leave Hearer

James returns the mirror to its everyday register and uses it to indict the hearer who is not a doer. "For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man looking at his natural face in a mirror: for he looks at himself, and goes away, and right away forgets what manner of man he was" (Jas 1:23-24). The mirror is the medium of a momentary self-sight; the object seen is the "natural face." The fault lies not in the looking but in the going-away — the glance is taken and immediately discarded, and with it the knowledge of what was seen.