sappir

סַפִּיר occurs eleven times, always of a blue precious stone, and belongs to a family of names that traveled with the stone itself (Greek σάπφειρος, Latin sapphirus, and comparable forms elsewhere); the older derivation from Sanskrit śanipriya is now generally set aside as speculative. HALOT and DCH gloss the word "lapis lazuli"; BDB retains the traditional "sapphire." The case for lapis rests on three converging lines. First, corundum stands at the top of the hardness scale and cannot be engraved or inlaid with the copper and bronze tools of the second and first millennia BC, yet Exodus 28:18 and 39:11 set the stone in a mounted breastpiece and Song 5:14 has it worked into ivory. Second, Job 28:6 pairs the matrix of the stone with עַפְרֹת זָהָב, which suits the pyrite inclusions characteristic of Badakhshan lapis. Third, worked corundum is not archaeologically attested in the Levant or Egypt before the Roman period, whereas lapis is abundant in Mesopotamian and Egyptian jewelry from the third millennium onward. Harrell, Hoffmeier, and Williams reach the same conclusion in their survey of the Old Testament gemstone vocabulary. The classical descriptions agree: Theophrastus (On Stones) and Pliny (Natural History, book 37) describe sapphirus as opaque and flecked with gold, a description of lapis and not of corundum. Two clusters of usage are distinguishable. The theophanic passages (Exodus 24:10; Ezekiel 1:26; 10:1) use the stone comparatively for the platform or throne beneath the divine presence, and Block notes that Ezekiel's throne vision is anchored to the Sinai tradition of Exodus 24. The crux at Exodus 24:10 is לִבְנַת, taken by most as a form of לְבֵנָה "brick, paving block" and by others as "whiteness" from לבן, the ancient versions themselves divided. The remaining passages treat the stone as a commodity: the breastpiece lists, the wisdom poem's price comparison (Job 28:16), the Tyre oracle's nine stones (Ezekiel 28:13, where the Septuagint supplies twelve in a harmonization to Exodus 28 that most commentators reject), the inlay of Song 5:14, and the promised foundations of Isaiah 54:11. Lamentations 4:7's סַפִּיר גִּזְרָתָם is referred variously to the blue of veins beneath fair skin, to the sheen of a well nourished body, or, with emendation, to the hair.