Page 204 - Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew

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CHAPTER 13 METALS AND OTHER SUBSTANCES
CHAPTER 13 METALS AND OTHER SUBSTANCES 183
Two metals are missing from the list of six, mentioned earlier: copper (or brass )
and iron . Each seemingly has two different Hebrew names in the Bible.

Copper (or Brass )
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6

The first is the couple of names nechoshet and nechushah. The former appears
133 times in the Bible, the latter only 10 times. Most biblical translations invari-

ably refer to both names as brass , or bronze. The former is an alloy of copper and
zinc , the latter an alloy of copper and tin (plus other substances, like zinc and
lead) . We were for some time confused by the existence of two names with such
parity in their Hebrew names’ numerical values. To our surprise, we have found
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that regarding nechoshet as an alloy (we considered it to be brass, as commonly
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alluded to in biblical translations), and nechushah to be the pure copper element,
is extremely consistent with the statistical models developed to describe the other
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eleven substances analyzed in this chapter. Furthermore, the selection of nechoshet
to represent brass is corroborated by how this name is used in the Bible, which

cannot possibly mean just pure copper. This qualification does not extend to the
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other name. For example, in describing Goliath s armaments, the word nechoshet
’
is invariably mentioned, never the other name (1 Samuel 17:5–6). Conversely,
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nechushah is occasionally referred to as raw material, like in “I will make your
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skies like iron and your earth like [nechushah ]” (Lev. 26:19).
For all these reasons, allusion to the two names follows this distinction.
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The numerical values of nechoshet and nechushah are
5
Nechoshet (brass):
758 = (400 = ת) + (300 = ש) + (8 = ח) + (50 = נ)

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Nechushah (copper):

363 = (5 = ה) + (300 = ש) + (8 = ח) + (50 = נ)

Comments

Both names may be written with vav (the sixth letter in the Hebrew alphabet) or
without. We opted to delete this letter from the calculation of the Hebrew name
numerical values (MNV ) in both cases. As alluded to in the previous chapter, due
to its small numerical value, the inclusion of the letter vav only marginally affects
the statistical results.