The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold, but Yahweh tests the hearts.
⛓ Read Proverbs 17 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion1
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
'The crucible is for silver and the furnace for gold, but the LORD tests hearts' is the proverbial matrix for faith 'tested by fire... more precious than gold.' High thematic coherence; gold-tested-by-fire is a stock wisdom topos Peter applies to faith.
High confidenceEcho4
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
The crucible for silver and furnace for gold, with the LORD testing hearts, supplies the proverb that God assays human worth by fire. Paul's 'fire itself will test what sort of work each man's work is' applies this assaying principle to deeds at the Day. The shared furnace/testing logic gives medium coherence.
Medium confidence'The crucible is for silver, and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests hearts.' The refining-as-testing metaphor that James assumes for faith is a wisdom commonplace rooted here.
Medium confidence'The refining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests hearts (kardias dokimazei).' Supplies the metallurgical sense behind dokimazo and may stand behind Paul's 'approved/tested' (dokimasmetha) in v. 4. Faint and contested as a direct source, but it reinforces the availability of the heart-assaying idiom.
Low confidence'The refining pot is for silver... but the LORD tests the hearts' belongs to the wisdom tradition of divine testing that informs Paul's language of approval and being 'reprobate/disqualified' (adokimos). The link is conceptual rather than verbal and competes with the Psalms as a closer source. Marked contested for its faintness.
Low confidence