Gold, Silver, Bronze & Iron · The Symbolism of Scripture
Gold, Silver, Bronze & Iron
Four metals in a king’s dream, arranged so that the worth falls all the way down while the hardness rises all the way down — and both halves are stated in the text rather than left to a reader to guess at.
What It Stands For
worth, and the other thing metal is measured by
Everyone knows the first scale. Gold (zahab, H2091) is worth more than silver (keceph, H3701), silver more than bronze, bronze more than iron (barzel, H1270). That scale is why a metal can stand for glory at all.
The second scale is the one the Bible keeps putting beside it, and it runs the other way. Gold is so soft it can be worked cold and beaten into leaf; iron is so hard it cuts everything else. A blacksmith and a banker would rank these four metals in exactly opposite orders. Both rankings are true at once, and Scripture uses both.
Iron was regarded as inferior to either of the other metals specified, and yet was well adapted to denote a kingdom of a particular kind - less noble in some respects, and yet hardy, powerful, and adapted to tread down the world by conquest.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Daniel 2:33
“Inferior … and yet hardy, powerful.” Barnes has both scales in one sentence, which is the whole symbol.
The Ladder That Runs Two Ways
a statue read downward, and the two things that change as you go
| The metal, and where it stands | What it is worth ↓ | How hard it is ↑ | What Daniel says |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goldthe headDaniel 2:32 | the most valuable metal in the ancient world | soft enough to be worked cold, and it will not hold an edge | “Thou art this head of gold.”Daniel 2:38 |
| Silverthe breast and armsDaniel 2:32 | second, and the ancient world's money | harder than gold, still soft | “another kingdom inferior to thee”Daniel 2:39 |
| Bronzethe belly and thighsDaniel 2:32 | a working metal, not a treasury metal | harder again: the ancient world's weapon and armour before iron | “another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth”Daniel 2:39 |
| Ironthe legs, and the feet with clayDaniel 2:33 | the cheapest of the four, and the commonest | the hardest: and the only one of the four that breaks the others | “strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things”Daniel 2:40 |
The head of the statue was pure gold, its chest and arms were silver, its belly and thighs were bronze, its legs were iron, and its feet were part iron and part clay.The metals in order, top to bottom: and then the feet, where the fourth metal is mixed with something that is not a metal at all.
But after you, there will arise another kingdom, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule the whole earth.The descent stated out loud, in the same sentence that names the metal.
On ancient coins states are often represented by human figures. The head and higher parts signify the earlier times; the lower, the later times. The metals become successively baser and baser, implying the growing degeneracy from worse to worse.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Scottish, nineteenth century
Daniel 2:32
The inferior value of silver as compared with gold will naturally suggest some degree of decline or degeneracy in the character of the subject represented by the metal; and so in other members, as we proceed downward, as the material becomes continually baser, we naturally infer that the subject deteriorates, in some sense, in the like manner.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Daniel 2:32
Jerome, reading the chapter in the fifth century, states the rung itself as a formula: silver is what it is because of what is above it and what is below it:
which bears a resemblance to silver, being inferior to the preceding empire, and superior to that which is to follow.
Jerome· Commentary on Daniel, Chapter Two, 420Latin, fifth century
Daniel 2:39
And John Wesley, on the third kingdom, reaches for a word that belongs to the workshop rather than the counting-house: “Third kingdom - This was the Grecian monarchy under Alexander the great, called brass, because coarser than the other.” Coarser — not merely cheaper. The scale that matters to a metalworker is already doing the talking.
Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom as strong as iron; for iron shatters and crushes all things, and like iron that crushes all things, it will shatter and crush all the others.The rising half of the ladder, stated as plainly as the falling half was one verse earlier.
Just as iron breaks to pieces and overcomes all else, so it shall break to pieces and shatter all these preceding empires
Jerome· Commentary on Daniel, Chapter Two, 420Latin, fifth century
Daniel 2:40
Where the Ladder Stops
iron mixed with clay, and a list read backwards
As you saw the iron mixed with clay, so the peoples will mix with one another, but will not hold together any more than iron mixes with clay.The one join in the statue that does not hold: and the verse says why in the language of the workshop: iron does not mix with clay.
The hardest metal on the ladder ends the statue mixed with the one material that will not bond to it. Whatever a reader concludes about which kingdoms are meant — that question belongs to the study of the dream itself — the metallurgy is the point being made: strength without cohesion. Jerome, writing while the empire he had lived in was coming apart, noticed the same thing from inside it:
For just as there was at the first nothing stronger or hardier than the Roman realm, so also in these last days there is nothing more feeble, since we require the assistance of barbarian tribes both in our civil wars and against foreign nations.
Jerome· Commentary on Daniel, Chapter Two, 420Latin, fifth century
Daniel 2:43
And just as you saw a stone being cut out of the mountain without human hands, and it shattered the iron, bronze, clay, silver, and gold, so the great God has told the king what will happen in the future. The dream is true, and its interpretation is trustworthy.”Read the metals in this verse in the order they are given. It is the order of the dream, reversed.
The dream is told from the top down and the breaking is told from the bottom up. Every earlier list in the chapter begins at gold. This one begins at iron, because that is where the stone lands, and the sentence follows the damage upward through the whole ladder to the head. It is a small thing to notice and it is in the text, not in a commentary.
The Same Three Metals, Laid Out as a Map
gold inside, silver underneath, bronze in the open air
The tabernacle chapters use three of these metals, and they are not scattered. Gold is on everything in the inner rooms. Silver is in the sockets the gold-covered boards stand in, and in the hooks and bands of the courtyard pillars. Bronze is the altar out in the open, and the sockets of the courtyard posts. The metals fall in value as a person walks outward: or rise in value as he is brought in.
Overlay it with pure gold both inside and out, and make a gold molding around it.Gold inside and outside, on the ark: the innermost object in the whole structure.
with forty silver bases under the twenty frames—two bases for each frame, one under each tenon.Silver where the weight rests. Forty sockets under twenty boards.
Make a horn on each of its four corners, so that the horns are of one piece, and overlay it with bronze.Bronze where the fire is, on the altar in the open court.
and thou shalt overlay it with brass; with plates of brass, that it may endure the fire, and preserve the wood from being burnt with it
John Gill· Exposition of the Old Testament, 1763Particular Baptist
Exodus 27:2
Gill gives the plain reason first, and it is a workshop reason: bronze is on the altar so that the altar can take fire without burning. The cheapest of the three is where the heat is, and it is there because it can be there.
And the silver has an origin the text states outright. It is not donated bullion. It is census money: half a shekel from every man counted, called atonement money:
Take the atonement money from the Israelites and use it for the service of the Tent of Meeting. It will serve as a memorial for the Israelites before the LORD to make atonement for your lives.”The purpose given for the money before a single socket is cast.
The hundred talents of silver were used to cast the bases of the sanctuary and the bases of the veil—100 bases from the 100 talents, one talent per base.And what was made out of it: the hundred sockets the whole building stands on.
The tabernacle stands on ransom money. That is not an allegory; Exodus 38:27 says which silver the sockets were cast from and Exodus 30:16 says what that silver was.
The gradient, and the place it does not holdan honest look at the one arrangement that breaks the pattern
The pattern is real and it is easy to overstate. The screen at the door of the tent has five pillars overlaid with gold, with hooks of gold: and their five sockets are bronze (Exodus 26:37). Gold above, bronze on the ground, in one object. The courtyard pillars are the mirror image: bronze sockets, silver hooks and bands (Exodus 27:10, 17).
So the honest statement is that the metals track nearness in the broad arrangement — gold in the holy places, bronze out where the fire and the traffic are — and that the joins between zones are mixed, because they are joins. A page that tidied that away would be tidying away the actual building.
What Scripture does not do anywhere is assign a fixed spiritual meaning to each metal. That gold means deity, silver redemption and bronze judgment is a teaching of long standing and it is a reading, offered by teachers rather than stated by the text. The one piece of it Scripture supports out loud is the silver: Exodus says where that silver came from.
Six Materials on One Foundation
the same ladder, in a builder's yard
If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, his workmanship will be evident, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will prove the quality of each man’s work.Six materials listed in one breath: and the next verse supplies the test they are listed for.
- Goldthe most costlycomes through
- Silvercostlycomes through
- Precious stonescostly, and cut to lastcomes through
- the fire“the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is” (3:13)Woodcheap, and it burnsdoes not
- Haycheaper, and it burns fasterdoes not
- Stubblewhat is left in a field after harvestdoes not
John Chrysostom will not let the picture become a price list. What is being tested, he says, is not the cost of the material but what it does in heat:
But just as if a man having golden armor on were to pass through a river of fire, he comes from crossing it all the brighter; but if he were to pass through it with hay, so far from profiting, he destroys himself besides; so also is the case in regard of men's works.
John Chrysostom· Homily on 1 Corinthians 9, 407Greek, fourth century
1 Corinthians 3:13
He also settles what is being weighed, and it is worth having plainly, because the passage is often read as though a man’s faith were on trial: “For in the faith all ought to be equal, since "there is but one faith;" but in goodness of life it is not possible that all should be the same.” The foundation is not what burns. What burns is what was built on it.
What an Assayer Meant
the fining pot, the dross, and a verdict nobody wanted
A crucible for silver and a furnace for gold, but the LORD is the tester of hearts.Each metal gets its proper apparatus: and then the proverb names who does that work on a heart.
Remove the dross from the silver, and a vessel for a silversmith will come forth.The refining is not the end of the process. A vessel is.
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.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Proverbs 17:3
not out of the furnace, a vessel formed and shaped, but pure silver shall come out of it for the refiner; of which a vessel may be made, very honourable, beautiful, and fit for use
John Gill· Exposition of the Old Testament, 1763Particular Baptist
Proverbs 25:4
Clarke names the actual instrument: the cupel, the porous dish an assayer used to burn lead and base metal away and leave the silver behind. That is the world these verses come from, and it makes the next one land properly.
They are called rejected silver, because the LORD has rejected them.”The end of a passage in which the whole refining process is described and then reported to have failed.
Bronze and iron are all corrupted, the bellows in the fire have failed (which the Greeks more significantly call a 'puffer'), the lead is consumed, the refiner has vainly blown
Jerome· Commentary on Jeremiah, 420Latin, fifth century
Jeremiah 6:29
Bellows, lead, the blast: Jerome is reciting a real procedure. In ancient cupellation the lead was added on purpose: it carried the base metal off and was consumed doing it. Jeremiah’s complaint is that the lead is gone, the fire has been blown, and nothing separated out.
Reprobate - See the margin; not really silver, but the dross. The Lord hath rejected them - This then is the end. The smelter is Gods prophet: the bellows the breath of inspiration: the flux his earnestness in preaching. But in vain does the fervour of prophecy essay to melt the hearts of the people.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Jeremiah 6:30
That is what reprobate silver is: not silver with dross in it, which is ordinary and fixable, but a batch that has been through the process and yielded none. It is a technical verdict, and the prophet uses it as one.
It is a verdict on a generation’s conduct, spoken by a prophet who spends the rest of his book pleading with the same people and promising them a new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34). It has been quoted as though God had finished with Israel. He had not, and Jeremiah is the last writer who could be made to say so.
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.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Proverbs 17:3
Where It Points
gold offered to people who thought they had some
Yet He knows the way I have taken; when He has tested me, I will come forth as gold.A man with nothing left says what he expects to be when the testing is over.
I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, white garments so that you may be clothed and your shameful nakedness not exposed, and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.Said to the church at Laodicea, three verses after they had described themselves as rich and in need of nothing.
Gold in the furnace is advanced to the brightness of its nature, whilst it loses the dross.
Gregory the Great· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVI, 604Latin, sixth century
Job 23:10
As gold that is tried in the crucible, and that comes forth the more pure the intenser is the heat. The application of fire to it serves to separate every particle of impurity or alloy, and leaves only the pure metal.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Job 23:10
Gregory’s phrase is exact and worth keeping: gold in the furnace is advanced to the brightness of its nature. Nothing is added to it. What comes off is what was never gold in the first place.
Which is why the last use of the image in the Bible is an offer, and why it is addressed to the one church that had just called itself wealthy. Cyprian preached it in the third century to a rich woman in his own congregation, and did not soften it:
You therefore, who are rich and wealthy, buy from Christ gold tried by fire. Then you may be pure gold, with your filth burned out as if by fire.
Cyprian of Carthage· Treatise VIII: On Works and Alms, 258Latin, third century
Revelation 3:18
They professed to be rich, but were not; and he counsels them to obtain from him what would make them truly rich.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Revelation 3:18
Gold purified in the fire - True, living faith, which is purified in the furnace of affliction.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Methodist
Revelation 3:18
The ladder ends where it started, at the top rung: and the gold at the top is not for sale to the people who could afford it. It is offered by the one who owns it, to a church that had already been told it was poor.
What Scripture says outright
- Daniel 2:38-39
“Thou art this head of gold”, then “another kingdom inferior to thee”. Both the identification and the descent are given by the interpreter, not inferred by a reader.
- Daniel 2:40
The rising half: iron is named for what it does: it “breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things”.
- 1 Corinthians 3:13
Paul lists six materials and then names the test himself: fire, and what sort of work each turns out to be.
- Exodus 30:16
The silver of the sockets is identified in the text as atonement money taken at the census: the one metal in the tabernacle whose meaning Scripture states.
What readers have heard in it
Readings of long standing, named as readings.
- Exodus 25:11
That gold always means deity, silver always redemption and bronze always judgment. The arrangement of the metals is real; the fixed dictionary is a teaching, and Scripture supplies it for none of the three.
- 1 Corinthians 3:12
That each of the six materials stands for a named virtue or vice. Early readers matched them off in several different ways, which is itself the evidence that the list is a scale rather than a code.
- Daniel 2:43
Every identification of the iron-and-clay feet with named modern nations or institutions. The verse gives the property: two things that will not bond: and no roll-call.
Its Presentation Through Scripture
the metals in the order the Bible uses them
Overlay it with pure gold both inside and out, and make a gold molding around it.
The first metal in the tabernacle instructions is gold, and it is on the innermost thing: inside and outside, on the box that goes in the holiest place.
with forty silver bases under the twenty frames—two bases for each frame, one under each tenon.
Under the gold-covered boards, forty sockets of silver. The metal that holds the weight is the second one down.
Make a horn on each of its four corners, so that the horns are of one piece, and overlay it with bronze.
Out in the courtyard, where the fire is, the altar is overlaid with bronze. The metal that meets the flame is the third one down.
Yet He knows the way I have taken; when He has tested me, I will come forth as gold.
The oldest book in the Bible already has the figure: a man under testing says he will come out as gold.
A crucible for silver and a furnace for gold, but the LORD is the tester of hearts.
A proverb that names the right tool for each metal: and then names the one who does the same work on a man.
Remove the dross from the silver, and a vessel for a silversmith will come forth.
What comes out of the refining is not a pile of clean metal. It is a vessel: something usable, which the dross was preventing.
They are called rejected silver, because the LORD has rejected them.”
And the verdict an assayer dreaded: not silver needing work, but a batch that turns out to hold no silver at all.
The head of the statue was pure gold, its chest and arms were silver, its belly and thighs were bronze, its legs were iron, and its feet were part iron and part clay.
Four metals in one statue, in order, top to bottom. This is the passage the whole symbol is built on.
But after you, there will arise another kingdom, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule the whole earth.
'Inferior.' Daniel decodes the descent out loud, in the same breath he decodes the metal.
And just as you saw a stone being cut out of the mountain without human hands, and it shattered the iron, bronze, clay, silver, and gold, so the great God has told the king what will happen in the future. The dream is true, and its interpretation is trustworthy.”
The list read backwards: iron, brass, clay, silver, gold: because the stone hits the feet and the break runs upward.
If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, his workmanship will be evident, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will prove the quality of each man’s work.
The same falling ladder in a builder's yard: three materials that come through fire and three that do not.
I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, white garments so that you may be clothed and your shameful nakedness not exposed, and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.
The last word on metal in the Bible is an offer, made to a church that had just called itself rich.
The Voices
with the work named
The useful commentary on this symbol is the commentary that keeps the metal in view. Albert Barnes is the one who says both halves of the ladder in a single sentence: inferior, and yet hardier: and he is also the one who explains what an assayer meant by reprobate. Adam Clarke names the cupel. Jerome recites the bellows and the lead because he had watched refiners work, and reads the iron-and-clay feet against an empire he could see failing around him. John Gill gives the workshop reason for bronze on the altar before he gives any other.
John Chrysostom is the corrective the passage in 1 Corinthians needs: the test is not a valuation, and the foundation is not what burns. Gregory the Great supplies the sentence the whole page could end on: gold in the furnace is advanced to the brightness of its nature: and Cyprian, preaching to a wealthy congregation in Carthage, shows what the Laodicean offer sounds like when it is actually delivered to someone rich.
Where to Go Next
Where these metals are the whole scene
- The Statue and the StoneThe dream itself: the kingdoms, the stone cut without hands, and what the chapter settles.
- The Furnace & the Refiner's FireThe other half of this pair: what heat is for, and the Refiner who sits down beside it.
- The TabernacleThe building these metals are laid out in, room by room.
Where the fire does the sorting
Where the picture goes on
- Precious StonesThe third material on Paul's list of what survives fire: cut, named and set.
- The StoneThe other thing a builder handles: and the one the builders rejected.
- The CrownGold worn rather than measured, and the two Greek words English hides.
- The Symbolism of ScriptureThe whole index: every picture the Bible thinks in, in one place.
Its neighbours in the index
The Symbolism of Scripture gathers every picture the Bible thinks in. This one sits with: