Sharpen Your Own Tools (2) - All The LORD is near Daily Devotionals for 2025

They had a file for the mattocks, and for the coulters, and for the forks, and for the axes, and to sharpen the goads.

The charge for a sharpening was a pim for the plowshares, the mattocks, the forks, and the axes, and to set the points of the goads.
1 Samuel 13:21; 1 Samuel 13:21

Sharpen Your Own Tools (2)
Yesterday we gained a helpful spiritual lesson from , which shows the danger of a wrong alliance with the religious world. But it's also good to consider this passage for another moment in order to deepen our faith in the reliability of the Bible.

The Hebrew text of verse 21 contains the unique word "pim," used only here in the entire Old Testament. For centuries, Bible translators were uncertain about its meaning. It was generally understood as an alternate form of a similar-looking Hebrew word that meant "mouth" or "edge." Therefore the King James Version mentions a "file" used for farming tools, and other translations refer to the "edge" of the tools in some way.

Then, in the early 1900s, two archaeologists independently published their discovery of polished stones, all of the same weight, inscribed with this word "pim." Since then, many such stones have been found. Their purpose is clear as a unit of weight used to verify payments of about two-thirds of a shekel. Bible translations completed since that time have reflected this understanding. Although the term had been lost to history, the object itself was simply waiting to be rediscovered.

The Bible is not primarily a history book, but it does reside in the context of accurate historical details. In the face of critical skeptics, we who believe its truth are not threatened by studies in archaeology and language. On the contrary, we welcome them! Such details only serve to shed more light on the truth of the Scriptures, which have been faithfully preserved for us through the ages by their Author.

Stephen Campbell