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through a glass darkly. There is a division of opinion among commentators as to whether
the world "glass" refers to a mirror "by" which objects are seen, or to a semi-transparent
window, "through" which objects are seen. Bloomfield understand esoptron, "glass", to
refer to the lapis specularis of the ancients, thin plates of some semi-transparent
substance with which windows were glazed. But as he admits that there is no other
example of the use of this word esoptron for dioptron his case is very weak. Alford's
comment on this usage is:
The idea of the lapis specularis, placed in windows, being meant, adopted by
Schöttgen from Rabbinical usage . . . . . is inconsistent with the usage of esoptron, which
(Meyer) is always a MIRROR . . . . . the window of lapis specularis being dioptra"
(Strabo 12: 2, p.540).
If we keep to the known examples of the use of esoptron, we must reject the idea of
the specular, the semi-transparent window, and retain the figure of a mirror. The only
other occurrence of the word in the New Testament is James 1: 23, where the fact that a
man is said to behold his natural face "in a mirror", makes it impossible to translate
esoptron by the word "window". Two occurrences in the Apocrypha are helpful.
"The unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of His goodness"
(Wisdom 7:26).
"Never trust thine enemy: for like as iron rusteth, so is his wickedness. Though he
humble himself, and go crouching, yet take good heed and beware of him, and thou shalt
be unto him, as if thou hadst wiped a mirror and thou shalt know that his rust hath not
been altogether wiped away" (Ecclus. 12:11).
From these references we may learn two items of interest:
(1)
That it was no uncommon thing for a mirror to be spotted.
(2)
That the reference to "iron rust" indicates that such mirrors were made of metal,
not of glass.
That the mirrors which the women of Israel brought out of Egypt were made of
"brass" and not of "glass", we know, for out of them were made:
"the laver of brass, and the foot of it" (Exod. 38: 8).
Job compares the firmament to "a molten mirror" (Job 32: 8); and Nahum speaks
of the nation of Israel becoming a "gazing stock", or perhaps better, a "mirror", so that
the nations might see in Israel's punishment an example for themselves. The LXX
departs from the literal here, and translates the Hebrew by paradeigma, "an example"
(Nah. 3: 6). Shakespeare's conception of drama runs parallel with this Biblical usage:
"Whose end, both at the first, and now, was, and is, to hold, as `twere the mirror up to
nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn here own image, and the very age and body
of the time, his form and pressure" (Hamlet 3: 2: 23).
The writer of the article on "glass" in "Kitto's Encyclopaedia" thinks that a mirror
cannot be intended in I Cor. 13:, for "face to face" he contends, presents an improper
contrast, for in a mirror, "face answers to face" (Prov. 27: 19). This objection however