Job 23:10 But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.
Zec 13:9 And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God.
Mal 3:3 And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness.
Sometimes as I observe and contemplate the world around me trying to tie in the lessons God has signatured in His creation some thoughts will rise and constantly stir around in my mind. I thought it interesting as I was looking at some beautiful gold artifacts being displayed at how much effort and technique it took to get the raw material from the earth and the process(es) taken from the point of extraction to getting the finished product to the display case. I love how scripture continually points us to the natural, physical world to gleen His spiritual Truths.
Gold
Although the Earth's crust averages a mere 0.004 grams of gold per ton, commercial concentrations of gold are found in areas distributed widely over the globe. Gold occurs in association with ores of copper and lead, in quartz veins, in the gravel of stream beds, and with pyrites (iron sulfide). Seawater contains astonishing quantities of gold, but the process of recovery is not economical. The ancients found quantities of gold in Ophir, Sheba, Uphaz, Parvaim, Arabia, India, and Spain. By the time of Christ, written reports were made of deposits in Thrace, Italy, and Anatolia. Gold is also found in Wales, in Hungary, in the Ural Mountains of Russia, and, in large quantities, in Australia. The greatest early surge in gold recovery followed the first voyage of Columbus. From 1492 to 1600, Central and South America, Mexico, and the islands of the Caribbean Sea contributed significant quantities of gold to world commerce. Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, and Hispaniola contributed 61% of the world's newfound gold during the 17th century. In the 18th century they supplied 80%. Following the discovery (1848) of gold in California, North America became the world's major supplier of the metal. From 1850 to 1875 more gold was discovered than in the previous 350 years. By 1890 the gold fields of Alaska and the Yukon edged out those in the western United States, and soon the African Transvaal exceeded even these. Today the world's unmined reserves are estimated at 1 billion troy oz (31 billion grams), about half in the Witwatersrand area of the Republic of South Africa.
The distribution of gold seems to validate the theory that gold was carried toward the Earth's surface from great depths by geologic activity, perhaps with other metals as a solid solution within molten rock. After this solid solution cooled, its gold content was spread through such a great volume of rock that large fragments were unusual; this theory explains why much of the world's gold is in small, often microscopic particles. The theory also explains why small amounts of gold are widespread in all igneous rocks; they are rarely chemically combined and seldom in quantities rich enough to be called an ore. Elemental gold has a melting point of 1,063 deg C and a boiling point of 2,966 deg C.
Although each ounce of gold recovered requires the processing of about 100,000 ounces of ore, there is so much gold deposited in rock veins that this method accounts for more than half of the world's total gold production today. The gold in the veins may be of microscopic particle size, in nuggets or sheets, or in gold compounds. Regardless of how it is found, the ore requires extensive extraction and refining.
Crushed to powder;
When alluvial deposits were exploited, the separation of the mineral from the burden occurs as part of the panning/sluicing operations; the same process was often applied to the ores mined from other deposits. In this case it's necessary at first to crush and sieve the ore in water. The crushing of ore to a powder was performed first by heavy iron pestles in stone mortars followed by grinding mills with a vertical axis by the Roman times. The Laurion mines used a system in which the powdered ore was spread over a large, plastered, slightly inclined table surrounded by water channels. Water played over this (and recycled!) could be used to partially separate the metal from the ore. In the Roman period, alluvial deposits were excavated using large volumes of water - as much as 34 million litres per day provided by multiple aqueducts at a single site. The water could be delivered as a continuous stream or in waves to help remove unwanted components of the ore.
Not only fire but pass the salt please!
Gold and silver could be separated ("parted") by a process called salt cementation. In ancient times cementation required that gold be beaten into thin sheets and placed in a coarse earthenware container with salt (sodium chloride), heated between 600 and 800C for a few days. On heating, the salt evolves chlorine gas and HCl. The latter reacts with water vapour from the wood fire and ferric oxides found in the earthenware container to produce FeCl. The various chlorine compounds react with the silver, particularly along grain boundaries in the metal to produce AgCl which is volatile. The silver in the bulk of the grain diffuses to the boundaries and also reacts, the gold remains. The silver contaminates the container and the furnace from which it can be recovered by cupellation. The parting process is still the standard assay process; when the result of parting is no decrease in the weight of gold, the gold is pure.
I thought this was interesting, some very pertinent parallells don't you think?
His Peace and Wisdom to you,
Joe