I thank all my readers for feedback on my books. Recently I updated the footnotes in my Hebrew reader for 1–2 Samuel in order to correct several minor mistakes. Most were minor changes, or mistagged words. One of them, however, stood out as far more interesting.

וְֽהָיְתָ֞ה הַפְּצִ֣ירָה פִ֗ים לַמַּֽחֲרֵשֹׁת֙ וְלָ֣אֵתִ֔ים וְלִשְׁלֹ֥שׁ קִלְּשׁ֖וֹן וּלְהַקַּרְדֻּמִּ֑ים וּלְהַצִּ֖יב הַדָּרְבָֽן׃

and the charge was two-thirds of a shekel for the ploughshares and for the mattocks, and a third of a shekel for sharpening the axes and for setting the goads. (1 Samuel 13.21)

The hapax פִּים (pîm) in 1 Sam. 13.21 is an interesting word. The classic Hebrew dictionary Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) records פִּים as a corrupt form of פֶּה (peh, mouth). Therefore, given פֶּה is a common word it was not previously glossed in the footnotes of my Hebrew reader. However, a more plausible explanation for פִּים was possible with the archaeological discovery of an ancient coin in 1907 (the year after the publication of BDB). On that coin are inscribed to letters פים which refers to a weight 2/3rds of a shekel.^[1] It’s an example of the assistance that archaeology can bring to understand details within the scriptures.

I thank the Charlie Skrine for his feedback and observation that this gloss differed from English translations and other dictionaries. He has been working through and teaching 1 and 2 Samuel while using my readers.