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Silver spread into plates; it was not wood washed with gold, nor massy silver or gold, but covered over with plates of silver or gold, Exo_39:3.
From Tarshish; from some remote place, probably from Spain, whence the best gold came; Tarshish is the proper name of a sea-town in Cilicia, Eze_27:12,25 Jon 1:3; and being a noted port, from whence they had passage to Africa, India, and other remote countries, it is usually put for the ocean, and may as well signify from any place beyond the sea. If you take it properly, then possibly it is noted as the best silver coming from thence, as Uphaz for the best gold; for though we read also of gold coming from thence, 1Ki_10:22 2Ch_9:21, yet where the most proper commodities of it are mentioned we read of no gold, Eze_27:12, unless what seems rather to be brought thither, Jer_10:22.
Gold from Uphaz, i.e. probably the best gold, coming from thence in those days, as the best silver from Tarshish, and that here was the best gold is probable from Dan_10:5. There are various conjectures at what place this points at, whether the same with Phas, or Fez, by an aphaeresis, or Ophir, a place not far from Tarshish; and divers other places are conjectured; and some think it refers to no place at all, but to point at the excellency of the gold only. But it is not the design that this comment should swell with things rather conjectural than profitable, it is enough to know that this place intends the purest gold.
The work of the workman, and of the hands of the founder: thus, saith he, the artificer takes it, and each, according to his art, shapes it and adorns it; fits the silver and the gold for it.
Blue and purple is their clothing: expositors differing about the materials out of which they were dyed, do differ also in the colours, which here are called blue and purple; the dispute is not worth the while in a vulgar comment, they that will may consult the English Annotations. Either this relates to the further adorning those rich idols of silver and gold; or it implies other artists, such as shape, or sew silk or cloth, woollen or linen, made use of to make these garments for those idols of more inferior materials, as wood or stone, the other being sufficiently beautified without them.
They are all the work of cunning men, i.e. the choicest men in their respective arts were picked out for this work, that there might be nothing wanting as to exactness, richness, and curiosity; all this the prophet speaks the more to ridicule their idols, as if all this would put any thing of power, virtue, or excellency in them, still deest aliquit intus.