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 about this business. He could, first of all, use a liquid process, which involved dissolving the material brought to him, or he could use liquids to cause the metal to separate and either sink or float, as the case may be. Or, if he was working with different types of metals, he could heat the material in a furnace so that slags of borax or lead were formed.

Whichever method he used, the next step was always the same - he merely had to weigh the residues on the balances to determine the porportion of gold, silver, or other metal. There is a very famous story of an ancient king who thought that he was being cheated by his chief treasurer, so he called in his mathematician-in-residence and asked him how he could prove this treasurer’s dishonesty. He was told to melt down the treasure at the next accounting and compare it with the treasurer’s report. He had this done, and found that this amount of pure gold was much less than the treasurer had reported - this scoundrel had replaced part of it with dross! We can be sure that he became a rather grisly example to would-be cheaters!

Unfortunately, perhaps, the work of the assayer wasn’t - and isn’t - nearly so dramatic as this. But we do find that the role of the assayer is used in the Bible in a figurative, moral sense, as in our test - as the assayer separates the precious from the dross, so too the moral assayer chosen by God will be able to separate the faithful soul from the unfaithful.

Again, we have a very ancient parallel to this. We have found many hieroglyphics on the walls of Egyptian tombs and temples, which show the soul of the deceased being weighed in the balance before the decision is made as to his fate - either to the world of the lost or the world of the blessed.

Just as the assayer refines and tests, so too God has ways to test and weigh the deeds and thoughts and merits of man. God is then the Ultimate Assayer.