Note 139 — MIRRORS135.

Historia Vitri apud Judæos, in Comment. Societat. Scient. Gotting. iv. p. 330. Having requested Professor Tychsen’s opinion on this subject, I received the following answer:—“You have conjectured very properly that the mirrors of the Israelitish women, mentioned Exod. xxxviii. 8, were not employed for ornamenting or covering the washing-basins, in order that the priests might behold themselves in them; but that they were melted and basins cast of them. The former was a conceit first advanced, if I am not mistaken, by Nicol. de Lyra, in the fourteenth century, and which Michaelis himself adopted in the year 1754; but he afterwards retracted his opinion when he made his translation of the Old Testament at a riper age. In the Hebrew expression there is no ground for it; and mirrors could hardly be placed very conveniently in a basin employed for washing the feet. I must at the same time confess that the word (מראת) which is here supposed to signify a mirror, occurs nowhere else in that sense. Another explanation therefore has been given, by which both the women and mirrors disappear from the passage. It is by a learned Fleming, Hermann Gid. Clement, and may be found in his Dissertatio de Labro Æneo, Groning. 1732, and also in Ugolini Thesaurus, tom. xix. p. 1505. He translates the passage thus: Fecit labrum æneum et operculum ejus æneum cum figuris ornantibus, quæ ornabant ostium tabernaculi. This explanation however is attended with very great difficulties; and as all the old translators and Jewish commentators have here understood mirrors; and as the common translation is perfectly agreeable to the language and circumstances, we ought to believe that Moses, not having copper, melted down the mirrors of his countrywomen and converted them into washing-basins for the priests.”