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Ch. 3: Signet Rings

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III SIGNET RINGS
we pass over the scene between Judah and his laughter-in-law Tamar, related in Gen. xxxvii,
12-26, where the patriarch leaves his signet (not neces­sarily a signet ring) his bracelets and his staff, as pledges for a promised gift, the earliest Hebrew notice of a ring is in Genesis xlii, 42, where we read that in return for the interpretation of his dream and for the valu­able counsel as to laying up a stock of grain in Egypt to forestall a coming famine, the Pharaoh of the time " took off his ring from his hand, and put it upon Joseph's hand." This might refer to a period about 1600 b.c., or possibly somewhat earlier, always provid­ing the tradition be accepted as in a certain sense exact. Centuries later, in the Desert, when the Lord com­manded offerings for the Tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant, and for the ephod and breastplate, among the gifts proffered are enumerated " bracelets, earrings, and rings " (Exodus, xxxv, 22). The Book of Daniel, written not earlier than the sixth century before Christ, and more probably, in its present form, a work of the second century b.c., relating the imprisonment of Daniel in the lions' den, states that when at the reluctant com­mand of King Darius he was shut up therein, " a stone was brought, and laid upon the mouth of the den; and the king sealed it with his own signet, and with the signet of his lords " (Dan. vi, 17). Still, these might have been of the well-known Babylonian type of " roll­ing seals " and not rings.
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