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Bible Dictionaries
Tin
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or bedil; Greek kassiteres , from whence comes Cassiterides, the name given to the Scilly isles by the Greeks and Romans. who did not know that the tin came from the mainland of Cornwall. Arabic kasdeer , Sanskrit kastira , Egyptian khasit . The Hebrew bedil , means "substitute" or alloy, its principal use being then to make bronze. In Egypt and Assyria 10 or 20 parts of tin went to 80 or 90 of copper to make bronze. Found among Midian's spoils (Numbers 31:22). Centuries before Israel's Exodus bronze was made by the mixture of tin and copper in Egypt, which proves the very ancient use of tin. Isaiah (Isaiah 1:25) alludes to it as an alloy separated, by smelting, from the silver.
Bedell took his motto from Isaiah 1:25. In Ezekiel 22:18; Ezekiel 22:20, "Israel is to me become dross ... tin ... therefore I will gather you into the furnace," i.e., as Israel has degenerated from pure silver into a deteriorated compound, I must throw them into the furnace to sever the good from the bad (Jeremiah 6:29-30). The Phoenicians conveyed much tin probably to Tartessus or Tarshish in Spain, thence to Tyre; Jeremiah 27:12," Tarshish was thy (Tyre's) merchant with tin." Zechariah (Zechariah 4:10 margin) mentions tin as used for plummets. Spain and Portugal, Cornwall and Devonshire, and the islands Junk, Ceylon, and Banca in the straits of Malacca (Kenrick, Phoenicia, 212), were the only three countries known to possess tin in quantities.
These files are public domain.
Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Tin'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/t/tin.html. 1949.
