Bible dictionaries

Tongs

What Bible dictionaries say about “Tongs”, one article after the other.

Easton’s Bible Dictionary & Webster’s 1828 Dictionary

Tongs - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

TONGS, n. plu. An instrument of metal, consisting of two parts or long shafts joined at one end; used for handling things, particularly fire or heated metals. We say, a pair of tongs, a smith's tongs.

Matthew George Easton, Easton’s Bible Dictionary; Noah Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language (1828)

The article in Easton + Webster 1828

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE 1915)

tongz (melqachayim): This word is, where it occurs in the King James Version and the English Revised Version, with two exceptions, changed in the American Standard Revised Version into "snuffers" (Ex 25:38; Nu 4:9; 2Ch 4:21; see SNUFFERS), The exceptions are 1Ki 7:49, "tongs of gold," and Isa 6:6, "taken with the tongs from off the altar."

In Isa 44:12, where another word (ma`atsadh) is used, "the smith with the tongs" of the King James Version is changed in the Revised Version (British and American) into "the smith maketh an axe" (compare Jer 10:3).