THE GOLD OF THAT LAND: Biblical Minerals & Rocks  

56.     sand

Hebrew: chôwl, tiny rolling grains. Genesis 22:17 and 22 other references.

Greek: psammos. Matthew 7:26; Romans 9:27; Hebrews 11:12; Revelation 13:1, 20:8.

Mineralogy: "sand” in modern geological usage denotes sedimentary particles ranging in size from 2 to 0.005 mm on the Wentworth grain size scale, and it does not apply to any specific mineral.

The coastal sands of Israel and Lebanon today consist mainly of quartz grains with a leavening of fine shell fragments and grains of such resistant minerals as feldspars, magnetite, zircon, topaz, or tourmaline. Their abundance became a biblical metaphor for an infinite number, like the number of stars, and for the nation of Israel. In Matthew 7:26, Jesus uses shifting sand as a metaphor for the vanity of any enterprise that ignores God.