coal
The mineral coal is known to have been found in ancient Syria and Egypt.
A common alternative fuel for Israelites was dried dung of animals and wood charcoal.
Two different words are found in Hebrew to denote coal, both occurring in Proverbs 26:21, “As coal [Hebrew: peham; i.e., ‘black coal’] is to burning coal [Hebrew: gehalim].” The latter of these words is used in Job 41:21; Proverbs 6:28; Isaiah 44:19.
The words “live coal” in Isaiah 6:6 are more correctly “glowing stone.”
In Lam. 4:8 KJV the expression “blacker than a coal” is literally rendered in the margin of the Revised King James Version “darker than blackness.”
“Coals of fire” (2 Samuel 22:9, 13; Psalm 18:8, 12-13, etc.) is an expression used metaphorically for lightning proceeding from God.
A lying tongue is compared to “coals of juniper” (Psalm 120:4; James 3:6).
“Heaping coals of fire on the head” symbolizes overcoming evil with good. The words of Paul (Romans 12:20) are equivalent to saying, “By charity and kindness thou shalt soften down his enmity as surely as heaping coals on the fire fuses the metal in the crucible.”
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