Carbuncle

(Ex. 28:17; 39:10; Ezek. 28:13). Heb. barkath; LXX. smaragdos; Vulgate, smaragdus; Revised Version, marg., "emerald." The Hebrew word is from a root meaning "to glitter," "lighten," "flash." When held up to the sun, this gem shines like a burning coal, a dark-red glowing coal, and hence is called "carbunculus", i.e., a little coal. It was one of the jewels in the first row of the high priest's breastplate. It has been conjectured by some that the garnet is meant. In Isa. 54:12 the Hebrew word is 'ekdah, used in the prophetic description of the glory and beauty of the mansions above. Next to the diamond it is the hardest and most costly of all precious stones.

ברקת, Exod. xxviii, 17; xxxix, 10; Ezek. xxviii, 13; and ἄνθραξ, Eccles. xxxii, 5; Tobit xiii, 17; a very elegant and rare gem, known to the ancients by the name ἄνθραξ, or _coal_, because, when held up before the sun, it appears like a piece of bright burning charcoal: the name _carbunculus_ has the same meaning. It was the third stone in the first row of the pectoral; and is mentioned among the glorious stones of which the new Jerusalem is figuratively said to be built. Bishop Lowth observes that the precious stones, mentioned Isa. liv, 11, 12, and Rev. xxi, 18, seem to be general images to express beauty, magnificence, purity, strength, and solidity, agreeably to the ideas of the eastern nations; and to have never been intended to be strictly scrutinized, and minutely and particularly explained, as if they had some precise moral or spiritual meaning. Tobit, in his prophecy of the final restoration of Israel, Tobit xii, 16,17, describes the new Jerusalem in the same oriental manner.