Page:03.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.B.vol.3.LaterProphets.djvu/1540

 such as go in or come away. In the first case it may mean water let in like a cataract over the ruins of the blasted auriferous rock, the corrugi of Pliny: Alius par labor ac vel majoris impendi: flumina ad lavandam hanc ruinam jugis montium obiter duxere a centesimo plerumque lapide; corrugos vocant, a corrivatione credo; mille et hic labores. But בּקּע is not a suitable word for such an extensive and powerful flooding with water for the purpose of washing the gold. It suits far better to understand the expression of galleries or ways cut horizontally in the rock to carry the water away. Thus von Veltheim explains it: “The miner makes ways through the hard rock into his section in which the perpendicular shaft terminates, guides the water which is found in abundance at that depth through it [i.e., the water as the bottom of the pit that hinders the progress of the work], and is able [thus Job 28:10 naturally is connected with what precedes] to judge of the ore and fragments that are at the bottom, and bring them to the light. This mode of mining by constantly forming one gallery under the other [so that a new gallery is made under the pit that is worked out by extending the shaft, and also freeing this from water by making another outlet below the previous one] is the oldest of all, of which anything certain is known in the history of mining, and the most natural in the days when they had no notion of hydraulics.” This explanation is far more satisfactory than that of Herm. Sam. Reimarus, of the “Wolfenbütteler Fragmente” (in his edition of the Neue Erkl. des B. Hiob, by John Ad. Hoffmann, 1734, iv. S. 772): “He breaks open watercourses in the rocks. What the miners call coming upon water, is when they break into a fissure from which strong streams of water gush forth. The miner not only knows how to turn such water to good account, but it is also a sign that there are rich veins of ore near at hand, as there is the most water by these courses and fissures. Hence follows: and then his eye sees