Jeremiah 6:27 - "I have made you an assayer and tester among my people, that you may know and assay their ways."

Accustomed as we are to Westerns in our movie theaters and on our television screens, we are throughly familiar with the assayer in the Old West (and, probably, today as well), who took the crude material brought in from the deserts and weighed and tested it for the presence of gold or silver. Now, of course, we hunt mainly for radio-active materials. But, whatever the object of our search, we need a professional to tell us what we have found and in what amounts.

And this was the job of the professional assayer in biblical times, as well. He also tested ores and alloys and then analyzed them to determine the value of the metals found.

There were various ways in which he went …