Anvil

The anvil appears in the English Bible only at Isaiah 41:7, where the prophet describes craftsmen encouraging one another in the making of an idol: the smith smooths the work with a hammer and the one who beats on the anvil pronounces the soldering good. The Hebrew word translated “anvil” (pa'am, meaning “a beat” or “stroke”) reflects the function of the anvil as the surface against which metal is shaped by repeated hammering.

Isaiah's ironic portrait of idol-making craftsmen toiling with meticulous care over objects that are ultimately powerless stands in sharp contrast to the portrait of Yahweh that frames it: the God who calls the nations to account and who raises up Cyrus from the east to accomplish his redemptive purposes. The detailed description of the ironworker's craft in this passage provides one of the more realistic glimpses of ancient metalworking in the Hebrew prophetic literature.