Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Proverbs 17:3
The refining pot [is] for silver, and the furnace for gold: but the LORD trieth the hearts.
3. trieth the hearts ] q.d. man can try the precious metals, but only God the hearts (Jer 17:9-10). The thought that He tries them to refine them, which is suggested here by the parallelism, is elsewhere expressed clearly. (Psa 66:10-12; Mal 3:3-4; 1Pe 1:7. Comp. Sir 2:5 .)
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Wonderful as is the separation of the pure metal from the dross with which it has mingled, there is something yet more wonderful in the divine discipline which purifies the good that lies hid, like a grain of gold, even in rough and common natures, and frees it from all admixture of evil. Compare Mal 3:2; 1Pe 1:7.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Pro 17:3
The fining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold: but the Lord trieth the hearts.
Gods fining pot and furnace
The text is a parabolical description of Gods almighty power and wisdom, for the discovery and reformation of the closest, and subtlest, and perfectest thing in the world, which is the heart of man.
I. The proposition. First part of the verse. The metals mentioned are silver and gold. The instruments are the fining pot and the furnace. Good men are like gold and silver in sundry regards.
1. From the solidity and substantialness of their principles.
2. From the purity and sincerity of their conversation.
3. From the splendour of their example.
Their hearts are like gold and silver, but it is like gold and silver in the ore, which has a great deal of dross mixed with it, and must be separated from it by Gods instruments of purification. The fining pot represents the Word of God, the furnace represents the rod of God, or affliction. The furnace is not for the hurt of the gold, but for its advantage. Labour to be bettered by every hand of God upon us, that so therein we may close with His gracious ends.
II. The reddition. But the Lord trieth the hearts. This adversative particle hath a threefold emphasis in it.
1. An emphasis of proportion. Taking but for so. The Lord is no less able or careful to try the hearts of the sons of men than the goldsmith is his silver and gold. God tries the heart either in a way of discovery or of purification. He tries them so as to discern them, and make known what they are. This kind of trial has two seasons, this present time and the world to come. He tries them to purge them, and remove their corruptions from them. This He does out of love to themselves, that He may make them vessels of honour. In reference to their works, that they may bring forth more fruit. For the sake of others.
2. An emphasis of exception. As restraining the skill of the refiner in this particular. He may be able to refine his metals, but he cannot try the heart.
3. An emphasis of appropriation. The Lord trieth the hearts, i.e., the Lord alone does it. This is His prerogative. None other can try the heart thus authoritatively, and none can try it so effectually. (T. Horton, D. D.)
Heart tests
The chemical analyst has different tests for different poisons. If he suspect the presence of arsenic, he will use one thing to detect that; if he is looking for antimony, he will take another to discover that; if he is trying for strychnine, he will employ quite another to bring that to light. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
Religious lessons from metallurgy
To get the dross out of us, this is the sovereign aim of our training in this world. In education the main purpose is to free the mental faculties of the dross of sloth and prejudice. In active life the great success is in confirming the fibre of energy and character. In higher relations the object of the Almighty is to burn out the dross of the spirit and make us noble and pure. What is dross in human character? Suppose you are inclined to avarice, the excessive love of money. If you think of your own character as strengthened, made better, do you think of that quality of avarice as untouched? Do you think of it as stronger than it is now? Or do you think of it as weaker, as melted down in part, and poured off from your soul like scum? Now consider profanity, levity, intemperance, lust, moral sluggishness, vanity, haughtiness, insolence of words or manners, irreverence, rebellion in feeling against Providence–translate these into natural language, into the language of metals and the crucible, what are they?–valuable elements or foul ones, dross or gold? But take the converse qualities–reverence, purity, zeal for good, aspiration, generous use of money, the spirit of sacrifice, charity, devotion to the will of God–how do you represent these in your imagination? You say at once these are the precious elements of human nature and human life. These are the pure silver and gold of the moral world. Now, God is seeking to bring out these qualities into greater concentration and prominence by His moral government. Left to ourselves, to the wandering, undirected impulses of our constitution, mentally and morally, we should always be in the ore state. The hardships of life, the tough conditions that surround the attainment of truth and the training of character, are Gods reducing and refining processes. I do not mean to maintain here that all the hard conditions of life can be explained by this figure, or by any figure or theory of mans device. But a world without hardships to such beings as we are would be a far worse, a far more disastrous world than the present. What would a ton of ore, taken out in one slab, be likely to say if it could be conscious, when carried to the batteries of the mill, and then washed for gold, and roasted to drive off sulphur, and pounded again, and mixed with quicksilver, and heated once more to drive off the mercury, and melted again into a mixed bar, and assayed, and still once more melted and granulated into cold water, and then gnawed by nitric acid, to take up the silver and leave the gold as sediment, and then precipitated from the acid as pure silver powder, and washed, and packed into cakes by hydraulic presses to squeeze the water out of it, and melted again in bars, and run through rollers, and punched, and milled, and stamped–thus becoming fit to serve the daily necessities of civilisation? Suppose it should be told, half-way in the process, that all this was good for it, was part of a great plan, supremely wise, for its permanent benefit I Would it not be likely to say, Why did you not leave me in my sluggish content in the darkness of the mine? I was happy there. I had no dream there of a higher and better lot. I should have never known these terrible buffets and scourgings and bitings and pressures if I had been left there. Oh, for that gloom and calm again! In its silver-bar state, afterwards in its coin-state, will it say so? It can look back then on the trials and pains, and see their meaning and read their bitter but splendid benevolence. We see enough now to show that the best qualities of human nature are brought out and tested by difficulty and suffering. To the choice characters of the world God can say now, as the Spirit said through Isaiah, I have refined thee, but not with silver: I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. And if this world is designed not as the final state for the enjoyment of God, but as the state in which we get the preparation of quality within for the true knowledge and enjoyment of Him, we find the whole secret of life–of its terrors and its hidden mercy–when we follow the ore from its cave to its appearance as the clean silver and the flaming gold. Do not fail either to receive the searching lesson as to judgment hidden in this analogy. The ore is tested thoroughly at the final process of its history. The assayer, by balance and fire, determines exactly what its quality is and its worth. And the processes of Gods government are taking us to judgment. It is to be known and seen one day just what we are. To the great judgment of truth you and I, and all the millions living, are moving with every heart-beat, and nothing can save us from its severity and its rewards. The fining-pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold; but the Lord trieth the hearts.
1. If we pass now to consider sectarian divisions and strifes in the Christian Church, we can gain some help in a right estimate of them and for a wise charity, from analogies in the science of metallurgy. The great object of the New Testament and of Christianity is to increase religious qualities practically in the world, to add pure working forces to life, so that men will be nobler and happier in themselves and in their relations to each other. God has made different kinds of ores, and equally rich in different kinds. For some kinds of mineral one process is admirable; for other kinds a very different treatment is essential. And human nature is analogous. Evils are thrown off from men, and good is practically brought out, by a variety of spiritual methods; and that Church or system of training is the best for a soul which fits its temperament and quickens its will. In some men the good is quickly and easily appealed to and developed. A simple faith and administration will reach and awaken it. Others have the sulphurets in the soul. They are obstinate. Common batteries and cool washings do not do the work. They need heat, fire, the treatment of the element of fear; that takes hold of them. Calvinism is the process that reduces their stubborn self-will and makes them agents of good. Give the proper temperaments to each Church: let the Episcopalians take those that can be best reached by their methods, and the Methodists take their natural material, and the Swedenborgians and the Quakers and the Calvinists theirs, and the Unitarians theirs, and great good will be done. The world of character will be richer. The work of the Spirit will be variously and properly performed. There are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. In science men appeal to the facts. If you put in a ton of ore and take out a pound of gold, you may say that there ought to be two pounds, but you cant say that the process does not produce any gold. And if a system of Christian administration produces honesty, integrity, principle, charity, interest in worship, interest in good ideas and good government and liberty and order, quiet and elevated homes, readiness to serve others and to hold gifts and treasures partly in trust for others–are these qualities to be denied to be good because the process which produces them is different from the ordinary customs? The melter and assayer does not make coin; society does not allow him to put his stamp on money and say, All gold is spurious which is not poured from my crucibles. It is his office to produce gold. The Government coins and issues it, and allows that great office to no private hands. So the business of Churches is to produce purity, reverence integrity, charity, readiness to do good in all forms. God rates and stamps the products, and His judgment is the final and the only one as to the honesty or spuriousness of the products of the sanctuaries. There is one other point upon which I wish to make our subject bear in illustration.
2. There is a great discussion now about the Bible, especially the Old Testament, and its religious value. Is it a verbally inspired, completely accurate, and authoritative revelation? The Old Testament is a very wonderful book, and its value in the religious and providential training of the world cannot readily be stated. But it is not a continuous revelation. It does not offer you concentrated spiritual truth in all its pages, the pure silver and gold of the Spirit. The Old Testament is a great lode, or precious mineral vein, upheaved and winding through the strata of a national history. There are different kinds and qualities of ore in it, some easy, some difficult of reduction to the pure standard of moral truth. The Old Testament, compared with all other ancient national literatures, is a religious gold and silver vein immensely, incalculably, divinely rich. That is its distinction in the world, and will be its distinction for ever. And by the statement and authority of Jesus Himself, we get its concentrated value in the laws of love to God and our neighbour. If you understand little of commentaries and theological discussion and council lore, and have these, you have what Jesus Christ called the essentials. Knowledge of mining is good, but its practical value is in furnishing the silver for human use. This spirit of love is the silver into which the inspiration collected from the ore of the Bible is finally reduced. If you do not possess this spirit, your Biblical learning is only intellectual wisdom, your soundness of faith is only correct thinking; and though you may be baptized every day in the name and forms of the most orthodox creed, you advance not by a step towards the kingdom of heaven. (T. Starr King.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 3. The fining pot is for silver] When silver is mixed, or suspected to be mixed, with base metal, it must be subjected to such a test as the cupel to purify it. And gold also must be purified by the action of the fire. So God tries hearts. He sends afflictions which penetrate the soul, and give a man to see his state, so that he may apply to the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning, to destroy what cannot stand the fire, to separate and burn up all the dross.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The hearts of men cannot be searched and known by any human art, but by God only.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
3. God only knows, as He tries(Psa 12:6; Psa 66:10)the heart.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
The fining pot [is] for silver, and the furnace for gold,…. Refiners of silver have their fining pots, in which they purify the silver from the dross; and goldsmiths have their crucibles to melt and purify their gold, by which assays of the worth and value of it may be made;
but the Lord trieth the hearts; there is no vessel, as Gersom observes, in which they can be put and tried by creatures; a man does not know, nor can he thoroughly search and try his own heart, and much less the hearts of others; God only knows and tries them, Jer 17:9; The Septuagint, Vulgate Latin, and Arabic versions, render it by way of similitude, “as the fining pot is for silver”, c. as silver is refined in the pot, and gold in the furnace, so are the hearts of God’s people, and their graces tried and purified by him in the furnace of affliction the variety of troubles they are exercised with are made useful for the purging away of the dross of sin and corruption, and for the brightening of their graces, 1Pe 1:7.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
3 The fining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold: but the LORD trieth the hearts.
Note, 1. The hearts of the children of men are subject, not only to God’s view, but to his judgment: As the fining-pot is for silver, both to prove it and to improve it so the Lord tries the hearts; he searches whether they are standard or no, and those that are he refines and makes purer, Jer. xvii. 10. God tries the heart by affliction (Psa 66:10; Psa 66:11), and often chooses his people in that furnace (Isa. xlviii. 10) and makes them choice. 2. It is God only that tries the hearts. Men may try their silver and gold with the fining-pot and the furnace, but they have no such way of trying one another’s hearts; God only does that, who is both the searcher and the sovereign of the heart.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Lord Tests the Heart
Verse 3 declares that as men test silver and gold by fire, so the LORD trieth the hearts. Reasons for such testing are stated in Mal 3:3; Jer 17:10; Jer 6:26-30; 1Ch 29:17; 1Ch 4:12-13.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Pro. 17:3
THE TRIER OF HEARTS
We have here an analogy implied between mens hearts and gold and silver.
I. Both have an intrinsic worth. Gold and silver have not only an artificial value, but they have qualities in themselves which render them of especial worth. So the heart of manthat spiritual and immortal part of him which constitutes him a manis of priceless worth because of its infinite capacities of good and evil, its infinite capabilities of enjoyment and of suffering.
II. Both must be separated from worthless alloy if they are to attain their real value. Gold and silver are comparatively worthless until they are separated from every other mineral; they must be unalloyed with baser metal, or nearly so, before their intrinsic excellences and capabilities become apparent and they can be put to the uses for which they are so peculiarly fitted. So the human soul cannot rise to the high destiny to which it is appointed until there is a separation made between it and sinful habits, motives, and desires.
III. Both human souls and precious metals are subjected to a testing process. The gold and the silver ores are thrown into the crucible and placed over the fire, in order that it may be made manifest how much there is of real worth in them, and the human soul is subjected to trials of various kinds by the Great Searcher of hearts, in order that both the good and the evil that is therein may be seen, and the one separated from the other. The proverb seems rather to refer to the testing, than to the purifying process.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Trying is more than simply discerning. The Lord does not need to try in order to make any discovery for Himself. He knoweth what is in man. But He tries, in order to bring to light what may lie concealed from men, and especially from the individual himself. And this He does in order to the persons conviction and benefit; and that He may be vindicated in His final judgments He tries, in different respects, both the wicked and the righteous. By the dispensations of His providence He often elicits the latent evils that are in the hearts of the ungodly and the worldly. He brings out their hidden abominations. He manifests the deceitfulness, the hypocrisy, the desperate wickedness of their inward parts, their rebellions and unsubdued dispositions. He exposed the simulation of dissemblers, and of those whose religion only seems to thrive when their profession of it brings no suffering, and demands no sacrifice. In the same manner, too, does God try and bring out to view the inward graces and virtues of His children. And while disclosing He refines and purifies them, He detects and removes the alloythe dross and tin of self and the world, separating the vile from the precious, and so rendering the precious the more excellent.Wardlaw.
Silver is refined by getting the silver out from among the dross. Christians are refined by putting the silver in among the dross, and refining the dross away. Men in a natural state are not an ore of silver, but are dross, and they are nothing else. He who sits to purify them (Mal. 3:3) does not disengage the gold, but supplies it as He goes along. In other respects the emblem is complete.
(1) The furnace takes out the dross. So does Jehovah.
(2) The furnace burns out the dross. So does Jehovah, with biting flames.
(3) The furnace is a gradual worker. So is God.Miller.
Man trieth many things, and many things in man are tried by man. The silver of a mans word is tried by a wise care: the gold of a mans deeds is tried by the fruit of them: the silver of a mans wit is tried by dangers and distresses, the gold of a mans understanding is tried by weighty and important business; the gold of a mans strength is tried by hard and burdensome labour; the gold of his knowledge by hard and difficult questions; the silver of a mans diligence is tried by the haste of affairs; the gold of a mans faithfulness by trust reposed in him: the silver of a mans estate is tried by a careful account, the gold of his virtues by troubles and temptations. Thus there is a fining-pot for the silver, and a furnace for the gold: and the heart of man trieth other things, but the trier of the heart is the Lord alone. The fine silver, the pure gold that lie in that, can be proved by nothing but by His touch. Whoever else taketh upon him to search the secrets of the heart, layeth open his own sin and folly. The heart itself cannot try itself; God is the goldsmith for it. Or else the original will bear well this sense, that God, by troubles, trieth the heart of man. Wherefore Tertullian saith, When we are burned in the heat of persecution then are we tried in the hold-fast of our faith. And surely if Seneca could say, I gave thanks unto fortune because she would try how much I esteemed honesty, so great a thing ought not to stand me in a little, then certainly the servants of God ought to thank God when He, by troubles, trieth how well they love Him.Jermin.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(3) The fining pot is for silver.See above on Pro. 2:4.
The Lord trieth the hearts.By allowing sorrows and temptations to assail them, in order that they may come out of the trial as pure gold (Rev. 3:18; 1Pe. 1:7; 1Co. 3:13; Mal. 3:3), purged of earthly infirmities.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
3. The fining pot Better: The cupel for silver, and the furnace for gold; but the prover of hearts is Jehovah. He tries and purifies. On the first clause compare Pro 27:21; on the second clause Pro 15:11; Pro 16:2; Pro 21:2; Pro 24:12; Malachi 3:23; 1Pe 1:7; Psa 26:2; Jer 17:10.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
v. 3.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
The fining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold: but the LORD trieth the hearts. A wicked doer giveth heed to false lips; and a liar giveth ear to a naughty tongue. Whoso mocketh the poor reproacheth his Maker: and he that is glad at calamities shall not be unpunished. Children’s children are the crown of old men; and the glory of children are their fathers. Excellent speech becometh not a fool: much less do lying lips a prince. A gift is as a precious stone in the eyes of him that hath it: whithersoever it turneth, it prospereth. He that covereth a transgression seeketh love; but he that repeateth a matter separateth very friends. A reproof entereth more into a wise man than an hundred stripes into a fool. An evil man seeketh only rebellion: therefore a cruel messenger shall be sent against him. Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man, rather than a fool in his folly. Whoso rewardeth evil for good, evil shall not depart from his house. The beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water: therefore leave off contention, before it be meddled with. He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the LORD. Wherefore is there a price in the hand of a fool to get wisdom, seeing he hath no heart to it? A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
I am constrained again to pause over this verse, in which methinks I see a volume that might be made of it concerning Jesus. He is indeed both the friend and the brother. For verily (saith an apostle) he took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham. Heb 2:16 . As such therefore, he both belongs to our nature and is a true descendant indeed of Abraham. Hadst thou, blessed Jesus, when thou camest to redeem us come only as an angel, and in an angel’s nature; though that would have been according to our view of things, staying nearer at home in point of dignity; yet in this case, though thy people still must have loved thee for thy works sake in redeeming us, if redemption could have been accomplished that way; yet surely we should not have known thee as we now know thee; neither have felt our hearts drawn as we now feel them into the sweetest of all loves, in beholding thee as our brother. Neither, dear Lord! could thy people have felt the confidence which they now feel, in coming to thee under all their multiplied wants, and the ten thousand times ten thousand occasions, which they find for thy love, and grace, and mercy, to be displayed, upon them, and thy endearing manifestations towards them. Oh! what a source of inexpressible joy doth my poor heart this moment find in this one view of Jesus, the friend that loveth at all times, and the brother born for adversity.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Pro 17:3 The fining pot [is] for silver, and the furnace for gold: but the LORD trieth the hearts.
Ver. 3. The fining pot is for silver, &c. ] God also hath his “fire in Zion, and his furnace in Jerusalem”; Isa 31:9 his conflatories and his crucibles wherein he will refine his, “as silver is refined, and try them as gold is tried.” Zec 13:9 Not as if he knew them not, till he had tried them; for he made them, and therefore cannot but know them; as artificers know the several parts and properties of their works. Sed tentat ut sciat, id est, ut scire nos faciat, saith Augustine. He therefore tries us, that he may make us know what is in us, what dross, what pure metal; and that all may see that we are such as, for a need, can “glorify him in the very fires,” Isa 24:15 “that the trial of our faith being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though tried in the fire, may be found to praise, and honour, and glory.” 1Pe 1:7
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
the LORD. Hebrew. Jehovah. App-4.
trieth the hearts. Illustrations: Abraham (Gen 22:1); Israel (Deu 8:2); Hezekiah (2Ch 32:31); Martha and Mary (Joh 11:5, Joh 11:6); young man (Mat 19:16-22); woman (Mat 15:23-28).
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Pro 17:3
Pro 17:3
“The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold; But Jehovah trieth the hearts.”
“The smelter for silver, the furnace for gold, and the Eternal for testing the heart”! “As silver is tried by fire, and gold in the furnace, so the Lord trieth the hearts. The Douay rendition here appears to be the best, because it stresses the fact that God will indeed try men’s hearts, even as he tried that of Abraham (Gen 22:1 ff).
Pro 17:3. Just as men refine gold and silver (Pro 27:21), so does God refine men. Through the Word (Joh 15:3), but especially through chastening (Isa 48:10; Heb 12:11) and persecution (1Pe 1:6-7; Jas 1:2-3; and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (2Co 3:18), does He refine us. Mal 3:2-3 aptly predicted this refining in the Christian dispensation.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Pro 27:21, Psa 26:2, Psa 66:10, Isa 48:10, Jer 17:10, Zec 13:9, Mal 3:2, Mal 3:3, 1Pe 1:7, Rev 2:23
Reciprocal: Gen 22:1 – God Exo 15:25 – proved Deu 8:2 – prove thee Jdg 2:22 – prove Jdg 3:1 – prove 1Ch 28:9 – the Lord 2Ch 32:31 – to try him Job 23:10 – he hath Job 28:1 – where they fine it Psa 7:4 – If I Psa 139:23 – know Pro 25:4 – General Jer 6:29 – the founder Eze 22:18 – in the midst Dan 11:35 – to try Rom 8:27 – And he 1Th 2:4 – but God Heb 11:17 – when Jam 1:12 – when