Quote:
Originally Posted by fundy
Deu 8:7 For the LORD thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills;
Deu 8:8 A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey;
Deu 8:9 A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.
Obviously the production of brass and iron was the intended end result of the mining that was able to be carried out in the hills, just as the bread, barley, vines, olive oil etc were to be available as the results of the farming that it was possible to carry out.
Usually all that has to be done when a "problem" like this arises is to read the surrounding verses, sit and think about what is written and pray for God to show you the meaning.
God wants us to think about his words.
1Ti 4:15 Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all.
Fundy
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Or you could look up the word in Strong’s Concordance (5178) and see that the primary meaning of the Hebrew word “nechosheth” is copper ore and the secondary meaning is bronze. Words have a range of meaning and usage ultimately determines the meaning. Translators make choices about how to translate words and there are a number of issues that influence their decision.
The KJV translators were not inspired. Sometimes they made bad choices partly because of the information available to them in the 17th Century. For example, in Deuteronomy 33:17 in the KJV they chose “unicorns” for the word "reem" which means "wild ox" (BDB, 910b). Further “reem” in this passage is singular not plural. It is not necessarily an error to have brass in Deuteronomy 8:9 but copper is the more likely meaning of the word “nechosheth” in this context as it fits the idea of “out of whose hills you can dig” better than brass. If you wanted to choose the secondary meaning here (not sure why) then bronze would certainly be better than brass.