ANVIL

an'-vil (pa`am): The word is used only once to mean anvil. The passage (Isaiah 41:7) refers to the custom still very common of workmen encouraging each other at their work. See CRAFTS . Just how pretentious the anvil of the ancients was we do not know. Most work requiring striking or beating, from the finest wrought jewelry to the largest copper vessels, is now done on an anvil shaped like an inverted letter L which is driven into a block of wood, or into the ground, or into a crack between two of the stone slabs of the workman's floor. The only massive anvils seen in the country today are modern and of foreign make.

James A. Patch

From the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Edited by James Orr, published in 1939 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.