SMITH (smut)), (Heb. tnci, khaw-rash'). A workman in stone, wood or metal, like the Latin ,hzber, but sometimes more accurately defined by what follows, as a workman in iron, a smith (I Sam.
Is. xliv:12; liV:I6; 2 Kings xxiv:i4; Jer. xxiv:i ; xxix:2).
In 2 Chron. xxiv : 12, 'workers in iron and brass are mentioned. The first smith mentioned in Scripture is Tubal-Cain, whom some writers, arguing from the similarity of the names, iden tify with Vulcan (Gerh. Vossius, De Orig. Ido i. 16). He is said to have been 'an in structor of every artificer in brass and iron' (Gen. iv:22), or perhaps more properly, a whetter or sharpener of every instrument of copper or iron.
As the art of the smith is one of the first essentials to civilization, the mention of its founder was worthy of a place among the other fathers of inventions. So requisite was the trade of a smith in ancient warfare that conquerors removed these artisans from a vanquished nation, in order the more effectually to disable it. Thus the Philistines deprived the Hebrews of their smiths (I Sam. xiii :19; comp. Judg. v :8). So Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, treated them in later times (2 Kings xxiv :14 ; Jer. xxiv ; xxix :2). With these instances the commentators compare the stipulation of Porsenna with the Roman people, after the expulsion of their kings: 'Ne ferro, nisi in agricultura, uterentue (Pliny, Hist. Not. xxxi :14). Cyrus treated the Lydians
in the same manner (Herodotus, a. 142). Smith, occurs in 2 Kings xxiv 16; Jer. xxiv it ; xxix: 2; Vulg. 'clusor; or 'inclusor.' Buxtorf gives 'claustrarius, faber ferrarius.' The root, to close, indicates artisans 'with busy hammers closing rivets up:' which suits the context better than other renderings, as setters of precious stones, seal-engravers, etc. In the New Testament we meet with Demetrius, 'the silversmith,' at Ephe sus• argurokopos, 'a worker in silver,' Vulg. or gentarius; but the commentators are not agreed whether he was a manufacturer of small silver models of the Temple of Diana, or at least of the chapel which contained the famous statue of the goddess, to be sold to foreigners, or used in private devotion, or taken with them by trav elers as a safeguard ; or whether he made large coins representing the temple and image. A coppersmith named Alexander is mentioned as an opponent of St. Paul (2 Tim. iv:14). (See ALEXANDER ; COAL; IRON; METALS.) J. F. D.