Job 28:1-28
Job has already understood one important thing: his faith will emerge as gold from the refiner’s crucible after this testing which God is making him undergo (Job 23:10). But he does not realise how much dross will first have to be cleared away. "Surely there is . . . a place for gold where they fine it" (v. 1; see also Zechariah 13:9 and Malachi 3:3). This place is the crucible of testing. The Lord, like a wise goldsmith, knows the heat and length of time necessary for this fire to purify His silver and His gold, in other words, His precious redeemed ones. The perfect "Diamond merchant" knows how many heavy chisel blows He must make before His onyx, sapphires, rubies and topaz will shine in all their brightness.
Man achieves considerable feats of engineering: dams, tunnels, motorways, etc. He extracts all kinds of precious materials from the ground (vv. 9-11). But there is one thing he hardly bothers at all to search for — wisdom. However it is more precious than pearls (v. 18) or rubies, declares the book of Proverbs which speaks to us so much of this divine wisdom (Proverbs 3:15; Proverbs 8:11). Compare too the important statement of v. 28 with Proverbs 9:10 and Psalms 111:10.