COPPER
The most ductile and malleable of the primitive metals after gold and silver. Bronze is an alloy of copper and zinc. In our English versions it is often called “metal” (see Gen. 4:22; 1 Kings 7:14; 1 Chron. 22:3, 14).
Many utensils were made from copper for use in the Temple (1 Kings 7:15-39). Ezra (Ezra 8:27) mentions “two vessels of clean metal, very good, precious as gold.”
It must have been an amalgam of copper and silver or gold, admired for its beauty, solidity, and rarity (1 Kings 7:45; Dan. 10:6). Copper may have been used in the manufacture of the mirrors mentioned in Ex. 38:8; Jb. 37:18. In Jer. 15:12 bronze is associated with the “iron of the north”, that is, steel.