Why did Joseph Smith use the word "molten out of rock" in Ether 3:1, when obviously the word should have been "quarry"? According to Roy Weldon, the brother of Jared made sixteen small stones out of one large rock. The fact that they lost their consistency and became clear like glass shows that they were melted and not quarried. The early Babylonians in Sumer and Akkad knew the art of smelting both ores and stones. [Roy E. Weldon, Book of Mormon Deeps, Vol. III, p. 303]
According to Randall Spackman, a common technique for refining glass in the latter half of the second millennium B.C. was to melt the raw materials in a crucible and let the crucible cool. When the glass had hardened, the crucible and all scum and sediment were then knocked off, and the refined glass was crushed and re-fused. . . . The earliest glass was always opaque, like stone. . . however 2nd millennium B.C. glasswork reached a significant level of art . . . with the refinement of transparent glass and, on rare occasions, colorless glass. Thus the simple description in Ether 3:1, "Jared . . . did molten out of a rock sixteen small stones, and they were white and clear, even as transparent glass," could not be more in context. [Randall P. Spackman, The Jaredite Journey to America, p. 101, unpublished]