The first half of this chapter is the best description of ancient mining in any literature, and it is accurate. There is a vein for silver and a place for gold where they refine it; iron is taken out of the earth and copper is melted out of stone. Men set an end to darkness and search out the farthest limit of the ore in the black rock — that is, they carry lamps into the shaft and follow the seam to its end.
The details are technical. He 'breaketh open a shaft away from where men sojourn' — mines were sunk far from habitation, where the ore was. Miners are 'forgotten of the foot' and hang and swing away from men, which describes descending on ropes down a vertical shaft. Fire is set under the rock to crack it, the oldest hard-rock mining method there was, used before iron tools could do the job. Channels are cut among the rocks, and the seeping water is dammed so the workings stay dry. Ancient copper mines in the Arabah south of the Dead Sea and Egyptian turquoise workings in Sinai show exactly this kind of engineering.
Above ground, none of it is visible. The earth grows bread on the surface while underneath it is turned up as by fire. The path is one no bird of prey knows and no falcon's eye has seen; the proud lion has not passed by it. Man alone goes there.
The second half asks where wisdom's mine is, and prices it against everything the trade routes carried: gold of Ophir, onyx, sapphire, crystal, coral, pearls, and the topaz of Ethiopia. It cannot be bought with any of them. The deep says it is not in me; the sea says it is not with me; destruction and death say only that they have heard a rumour of it. God alone knows the way, because he was there when he made a weight for the wind, measured out the waters, made a decree for the rain, and a path for the lightning of thunder. And the last line brings it home to the ash heap: the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.
