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The High Priest's Breastplate: Liguria

VII. Leshem. No stone in the breastplate is more difficult to determine than this one. The Septuagint, Josephus, and the Vulgate all translate ligurius, an appellation sometimes applied to amber, a substance quite unfitted for use in the breastplate among the other engraved stones. Probably the original significance of ligurius was amber, this name being used because Liguria, in northern Italy, was the chief source of supply for Greece and the Orient; amber which had been gathered on the shores of the Baltic being brought by traders to Liguria and forwarded thence to other lands. As, however, the Greeks had another name for amber, electron, the name ligurion appears to have been applied later to a variety of the jacinth somewhat resembling amber in color, and then to other varieties of the same stone. The original form of the name was evidently ligurion, which was later changed to lyncurion, and was then explained as meaning the urine of the lynx (from and, urine). This fanciful etymology gave rise to the story that the ligurios, or rather lyncurius, was the solidified urine of the lynx. The term lyncurion, as used by Theophrastus, may possibly have included the sapphire as well as the jacinth, since he lays especial stress upon the coldness of this substance, a quality characteristic of the sapphire, and also of the still denser jacinth. Hence, it appears that we have, even in the name ligurius, some justification for accepting the rendering hyacinthus, suggested by the list of foundation stones in Revelation xxi, 20, and already proposed by Epiphanius, Bishop of Constantia, about 400 A.D. Whether hyacinthus should be rendered "sapphire" or "jacinth" is not easy to determine, as this name seems to have been used indifferently for bothstones; with the Arabs, under the form yakut, it became a generic term for all the varieties of the corundum gems. The sapphire was engraved in Greek and Roman times and is, perhaps, the leshem stone of the Second Temple. For the Mosaic breastplate we are forced to seek for some stone known in ancient Egypt, where the sapphire does not seem to have been introduced at an early date. If we could accept the suggestion of Brugsch that the Egyptian neshem stone, reputed to have wonderful magic virtues, was the same as the Hebrew leshem, a brown agate would have been the seventh stone in the original breastplate, as Wendel gives very strong reasons for rendering neshem in this way. The color designations were very freely used in Egyptian, and therefore a reddish or a yellowish brown agate may have been used. The leshem bore the tribal name Joseph.

VIII. Shebo. This is uniformly rendered in the ancient versions and in Josephus by "agate," a composite stone highly esteemed in very ancient times, and hence worthy of a place among the stones of the breastplate; at a later period, as Pliny notes (xxxvii, 54), it became so common that it was but little regarded. Nevertheless the fact that the various kinds of agates were believed to have many talismanic and therapeutic virtues, the great variety of coloration observable in these stones, and the curious figures and markings displayed by many of them, served to make them favorite objects. The etymology of the word shebo suggests that it designated more especially a banded agate, and that set in the proto-breastplate was most probably one with gray and white bands, as this variety often appears in Egyptian work. There would have been no lack of contrast between this stone and the reddish or yellowish brown agate, of uniform color, which may have occupied the seventh place. For the later breastplate we may choose any one of the many kinds of banded agate. This stone had engraved upon it the name Benjamin.