Metals have always been important to man and all of them are of use and value. We have even given humans metal characteristics: good as gold, dirty copper, you sunk like lead. In the Old Testament of the Bible God told Jeremiah, that he was to be a tester of metals and that the Israelites were the ore that Jeremiah was to observe and test. With God having given Jeremiah this command, I wondered what lessons there were to be learned. (Jeremiah 6:27)
In the Bible Israel is described as being a “land flowing with milk and honey” but it only had copper and iron as naturally occurring metals. Lead, tin, silver, and gold all had to be imported by dealing with foreign nations. So let us look at the six metals (In the Bible six represents the number of man.) that were used in Israel during Bible times and see if we can observe something about people and how we behave.
Lead, then as now, was used to make fishing weights, solder, and it was something to be inscribed into. Lead may have been imported in pure form into Israel; if it was an impurity in another metal, such as lead in silver, the refining process required great heat and air so that it could burned out or separated from the other metal.
In people, lead symbolizes the things from outside of us that keep us held down in the spirit and in the natural. Worrying, fighting, and just dealing with these “imported” things can “solder” us together and give shape to our lives. Only the heat and wind of the Holy Spirit will refine the lead out of our lives. An example of “lead” was the grumbling aliens that followed Israel out of Egypt to the Promised Land. The aliens kept complaining and caused Israel to stumble. Another example of “lead” would be if you have ever been told by someone that you are useless and no good and you have believed what was said about you instead of believing what God says about you.