Job 20:24

24. Bow of steel Not steel, but brass or copper. As bronze tools were used for engraving or sculpturing the rocks, and even in working the quarries, the ancient Egyptian must have possessed some lost art for tempering copper. Wilkinson found a chisel at Thebes with very little alloy; of 100 parts, 94.0 being copper, 5.9 tin, 0.1 iron, the point of which was intact, while the top was turned over by the blows it had received from the mallet. Anc. Egypt, P.A., 2:158. The verse evidently contains a proverb similar to the classic Scylla and Charybdis. Compare Amos 5:19; Isaiah 24:18. The German would say, “He escapes from the smoke, but falls into the fire.” Nothing could escape him, and he can not escape his fate.