Mineral Poverty of Palestine

MESTREZAT, mes"tre"wI', JEAN: French Reformed; b. in Geneva 1592; d. in Paris May 2, 1657. He studied in Saumur, then accepted a call from the church at Charenton, and remained there till his death. He was a learned theologian, a distinguished preacher, and one of the main supports of the French Reformed Church in the seventeenth century. He was active in its synods, in its disputations with the Jesuits, and in its negotiations with the court. He published many sermons, which are interesting to the historian of the Reformed preaching because of their expository character (e.g., Exposition de l'epitre aux Hebreux, 5 parts, Geneva, 1653-55). His other writings are polemical; a treatise, De la communion h Jesu Christ au sacrement de l'eucharistie (Sedan, 1624), was translated into German (Frankfort, 1624), English (1631), and Italian (Geneva, 1638).

(C. Schmidt†.)

Bibliography: Andrd, Essai sur les amvres de J. Mestrezat, Strasburg, 1847; A. Archimard, in Mémoires et documents, xv. 29-72, published by the Society of History, Geneva; Lichtenberger, ESR, ix. 113-121.

1. Mineral Poverty of Palestine

The mountains of Palestine show strata of the Upper Cretaceous formation, older deposits occur only sporadically, and the coast plains and valley of the Jordan contain fluvial deposits; all these formations are notably poor in metals. The reference in the latter part of Deut. viii. 9, where the Holy Land is extolled as a "land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig copper," can not be to [modern] oreless Palestine; while in the first clause the author may have had in mind the black basaltic rocks east of the Jordan. It is furthermore probable that he consolidates with the promised land a large portion of Lebanon, where mining was practised. The neighboring regions are in this respect more favorably endowed. On Mt. Sinai, mining (of copper) dates back into the fourth dynasty (c. 3000 B.c.). And in the north, Lebanon yields ore, though in small quantities. Traces of old copper mines and iron mines occur north of Beirut in the Kesravan range, described in the annals of Sargon as one that contains mines. The Septuagint of I Kings ii. 46c of Swete's ed. (= ii. 48 of Lagarde) has a passage bearing on this point, which is wanting in the Hebrew and reads: "And Solomon began to open up the mighty riches of Lebanon." Jeremiah (xv. 12)

also speaks of" iron from the north." On the other hand the mines which so strongly impress the poetical Job should be sought in the Sinaitic peninsula or in Nubia. At all events the Israelites for the most part derived their metals from the neighboring peoples, but they soon learned the art of working them. It was known that the ores must be cleansed of their impure ingredients, a result mainly achieved by the smelting-process. In order to accelerate the separation of metals in fusion, they added some such vegetable alkaline salt (beir) as the carbonate of potash obtained from wood ashes, or a mineral alkaline salt (nete; cf. Isa. i. 25; Ezek. xxii. 18-22).

METALS, HEBREW USE OF

1. Mineral Poverty of Palestine