Israel in the Iron-Smelting Furnace? Towards a New Understanding of the כּוּר הַבַּרְזֶל in Deut 4:20
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/hn.v1i1.142926Keywords:
Deut 4:20, iron furnace, metallurgical metaphorAbstract
Most scholars interpret the metallurgical imagery of כּוּר הַבַּרְזֶל in Deut 4:20 and parallels as a reference to an iron-smelting furnace describing the harsh realities of Israel's slavery in Egypt. A consideration of the Hebrew mode of expression however leads to the conclusion that the metaphor refers to a crucible made of the hardest metal generally known in antiquity, which is iron. The metaphor therefore conveys the impression that the Israelite existence in Egypt is described like being trapped in a crucible made of a hard and impenetrable material that cannot be broken. This article also argues that Deut 4:20 appears to be the provenance of the parallel phraseology of 1 Kong 8:51 and Jer 11:4.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Counting from volume 9 (2024), articles published in HIPHIL Novum are licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). The editorial board may accept other Creative Commons licenses for individual articles, if required by funding bodies e.g. the European Research Council. With the publication of volume 9, authors retain copyright to their articles and give Hiphil Novum the right to the first publication. The authors retain copyright to earlier versions of the articles, such as the submitted and the accepted manuscript. Authors and readers may use, reuse, and build upon the published work, use it for text or data mining or for any other lawful purpose, as long as appropriate attribution is maintained.
Articles in volumes 1-8 are not licensed under Creative Commons. In these volumes, all rights are reserved to the authors of the articles respectively. This implies that readers can download, read, and link to the articles, but they cannot republish the articles. Authors may post the published version of their article to their personal website, institutional repository, or a repository required by their funding agency as a part of a green open access policy.
