It seems then apparent from the several autho rities given above, that from the earliest time silver was used by the Hebrews as a medium of com merce, and that a fixed weight was assigned to single pieces, so as to make them suitable for the various articles presented in trade. Unless we suppose this to be the case, many of the above quoted passages (especially Gen. xxiii. 16'; cf. 2 Kings xii. 4, seq.) would be difficult to understand rightly. In this latter passage it is said that the priest Jehoiada took a chest and bored a hole in the lid of it, and set it beside the altar,' and the priests that kept the door put in all the money that was brought into the house of the Lord.' These passages not only presuppose pieces of metal of a definite weight, but also that they had been recognised as such, either in an unwrought form or from certain characters inscribed upon them. The system of weighing (though the Bible makes mention of a balance and weight of money in many places, Gen. xxiii. 16 ; Exod. xxii. 17 ; 2 Sam. xviii. 12 ; 1 Kings xx. 39 ; Jer. xxxii. 9, io) is not likely to have been applied to every individual piece. In the large total of 603,550 half-shekels (Exod. xxxviii. 26), accumulated by the contribu tion of each Israelite, each individual half-shekel could hardly have been weighed out, nor is it pro bable that the scales were continually employed for all the small silver pieces which men carried about with them. For instance, that there were divisions of the standard of calculation is evident from the passage in Exod. xxx. 13, where the half
shekel is to be paid as the atonement money, and the rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less' (ver. 15). The fourth part of the shekel must also have been an actual piece, for it was all the silver that the servant of Saul had at hand to pay the seer (i Sam. ix. 8, 9). If a quantity of pieces of various weights were carried about by men in a purse or bag, as was the custom (2 Kings v. 23 ; xii. Io ; Gen. xlii. 35), without having their weight marked in some manner upon them, what endless trouble there must have been in buying or selling, in paying or receiving. From these facts we may safely assume that the Israelites had already, before the exile, known silver pieces of a definite weight, and used them in trade. By this is not meant coins, for they are pieces of metal struck under an authority. A curious passage is that in Ezekiel (xvi. 36), which has been supposed to speak of brass money. The Hebrew text has ;IP Int= 11.Zrji1 which has been rendered by the Vulg. quia effusum est res tuum,' and by the A. V. ' because thy filthiness was poured out; As brass was the latest metal introduced for money into Greece, it seems very unlikely that we should have brass money current at this period in Pales tine. The terms lb; '11 (Ps. lxviii. 30) and lbZ (i Sam. ii. 36), are merely expressive of any small denomination of money [PIECE OF SILVER].