Quarry

(to hew)

The hard limestone of the Promised Land had many uses. It could be made to store water or the remains of loved ones. It could become a message board or a building that could endure both weathering and the withering assault of an enemy. But in order to obtain these and other products, the limestone had to be quarried or hewed from its parent rock.[182]

People quarried stone because of both the need to build chambers and the need to acquire stone used for constructing palaces, defensive walls, grinding mills, or stelae. Hewed stone chambers were used as the final resting place for loved ones, to capture and store surface water, or to collect the valuable juice from the grapes as they were stomped. Hand-hewed tombs, wine pressing floors, and cisterns or wells are formally mentioned in the Bible (Deut. 6:11; Isa. 5:2; 22:16; Jer. 2:13; Matt. 27:60). The virgin stone that quarrymen extracted from projects such as these, as well as from dedicated rock quarries, could become a tablet or stela on which to write a message (Exod. 34:1; Job 19:24), but the majority of quarried stone was trimmed into the large, square building stones called ashlars (1 Kings 6:7).

Hewed stone chambers became the final resting place for loved ones who had died.

When we think about any form of quarrying, and in particular when we think about the hewing of ashlars, we need to understand the tremendous effort required to obtain the desired results. In Bible times there were no powerful machines that could hew on command and there were no explosives to drive rock from its longtime resting place. Instead stone was hewed by men whose muscles ached for the effort, aided only by pick, hammer, chisel, and lever. This was particularly true of the ashlar stones, which were cut so that they had six flat surfaces, each at a ninety-degree angle to its neighbor.[183] They were extracted from the quarry by first defining their outline by incising a long, narrow groove (5 to 10 centimeters deep by 30 centimeters long) around the perimeter of the stone or by drilling holes in a line that defined the intended shape of the stone. At times it was possible to crack the nascent ashlar from its parent rock by the use of chisels and levers. When this proved unproductive, wooden stakes were driven into the crack or drilled holes. Then water was poured on the stakes, causing them to expand and break the building stone from its resting place. The final symmetry of such stones was achieved by the deft blows of iron chisels, which produced stones that gave public buildings the sharp architectural lines desired. While their shape changed, their capacity to endure did not, eroding so slowly that stones excavated thousands of years ago can still be seen doing their job in ancient foundations excavated today.[184]

When the biblical authors mention quarrying like this or the stone that comes from quarries in real-life contexts, they are frequently leveraging one of two connotations: (1) the effort required of the excavators to free the stone, or (2) the enduring nature of the stone. As the Lord led the Israelites toward the Promised Land, he whetted their appetites for what was to come by telling them that they would be taking over water systems that other people had already excavated, thus avoiding the backbreaking labor excavating would otherwise have required (Deut. 6:11). After Moses broke the first set of tablets on which the law was written, the Lord directed him to hew out another set so the Lord could write them down a second time (Exod. 34:1; Deut. 10:1, 3). And repeatedly as the temple was rebuilt or refurbished, the biblical authors noted or alluded to the fact that it was composed of quarried stone (1 Kings 5:15, 17–18; 7:9–11; 2 Kings 12:12; 1 Chron. 22:2, 15; 2 Chron. 2:2, 18). In contrast to other construction techniques, the use of quarried stone in shaping this building helped to define the structure as unique and able to endure. These same connotations are also tied to the quarried stone on which the Ten Commandments were written. The unique writing surface drew attention to the message while creating a surface on which the message would endure.

An ashlar building block was being cut from this ancient Jerusalem quarry when quarrying operations ceased.

Quarrying also appears as a metaphor with various connotations associated with the quarrying of stone. We find the enduring nature of a quarried stone mentioned in Job. Through his pain, this man grasped at the only hope he could see: a living Redeemer who would allow him to live beyond death. This idea was so important to him that he longed for this message to be “engraved in rock forever” so that it would stand as an eternal monument (Job 19:24–27). The metaphor was also used by the prophets when they alluded to the amount of energy and force required to hew out stone when building a cistern or excavating rock from a quarry. Rather than enjoying what the Lord had offered them—“the spring of living water”—the Israelites immersed themselves in man-made religion, digging their own cisterns (Jer. 2:13). Hosea prophesied that unrepentant Israel would meet the hammer and pick blows of the prophets striking against the recalcitrant rock in the hard quarry of their hearts. God declared he would cut them in pieces with his prophets (Hosea 6:5). But to those who repented and looked for restoration, this invitation was offered: “Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn” (Isa. 51:1). In the same way that most qualities of the parent rock were transferred to the quarried ashlar, the promises made to Abraham, the rock from which they were cut, extended to his descendants as well.