Sapphire turns up in four places, and each time it stands for something worth more than money. Job says wisdom “cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire.” Isaiah speaks to a people “afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted,” and hears God promise to lay their foundations with sapphires. In Revelation, the second foundation of the city wall is sapphire, set among “all manner of precious stones.” A hard, bright stone becomes a picture of what lasts. Read Isaiah 54 for the promise, then Revelation 21 for the city.
4 verses
O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires.
And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald;
Matthew George Easton, 1897
Associated with diamonds (Ex. 28:18) and emeralds (Ezek. 28:13); one of the stones in the high priest’s breastplate. It is a precious stone of a sky-blue colour, probably the lapis lazuli, brought from Babylon. The throne of God is described as of the colour of a sapphire (Ex. 24:10; comp. Ezek. 1:26).
William Smith, 1884
(Heb. sappir), a precious stone, apparently of a bright-blue color, set: (Exodus 24:10) the second stone in the second row of the high priest’s breastplate, (Exodus 28:18) extremely precious, (Job 28:16) it was one of the precious stones that ornamented the king of Tyre. (Ezekiel 28:13) The sapphire of the ancients was not our gem of that name, viz. the azure or indigo-blue, crystalline variety of corundum, but our lapis lazuli (ultra-marine).