Far Above Rubies: Why Earthly Worth Is Not Final

Scripture is quoted from the 1599 Geneva Bible with modernized spelling (words and word order unchanged), with the names Yahweh and Yashua restored throughout.

Walk into any jewelry store and the prices tell you what the world thinks is valuable. A good diamond costs a month's pay, maybe more. A fine ruby can cost more than a house. In 2015 a 25.59-carat ruby ring sold at auction for over $1.26 million per carat, a record for a colored gemstone (GIA).

Scripture knows all about precious stones. They were set on the High Priest's chest and built into the walls of the New Jerusalem. But almost every time the Bible names a gem, it does so to point past it, at something worth more. This article digs into the stones themselves: what the Hebrew words actually mean, what scholars think they really were, and what Yahweh says is worth more than any of them.

The virtuous woman: "far above"

The best-known gem verse in the Bible is the opening of the virtuous woman poem:

"Who shall find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above the pearls." (Proverbs 31:10)

If you grew up on the King James, you remember it as "her price is far above rubies." The Geneva Bible says "pearls." Neither is wrong, exactly. They're two honest guesses at one Hebrew word, and we'll get to it below.

What makes her worth more than the stones? Not her looks. The same chapter says so outright:

"Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vanity: but a woman that feareth Yahweh, she shall be praised." (Proverbs 31:30)

Her worth is in what she does and who she trusts. "The heart of her husband trusteth in her" (Proverbs 31:11). "She will do him good, and not evil all the days of her life" (Proverbs 31:12). "She stretcheth out her hand to the poor, and putteth forth her hands to the needy" (Proverbs 31:20). And look at what comes out of her mouth: "She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and the law of grace is in her tongue" (Proverbs 31:26). The Hebrew there is torat chesed, the torah of kindness. A woman who carries Yahweh's law in her mouth is worth more than anything a jeweler can sell you.

A stone sits in a box. A woman like this builds a household, feeds the poor and raises children who "rise up, and call her blessed" (Proverbs 31:28). Husbands, if you have one, you already own the most valuable thing in your house.

Wisdom: worth more than every stone

Solomon uses the same comparison for wisdom, over and over:

"Blessed is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise thereof is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof is better than gold. It is more precious than pearls: and all things that thou canst desire, are not to be compared unto her." (Proverbs 3:13–15)

"For wisdom is better than precious stones: and all pleasures are not to be compared unto her." (Proverbs 8:11)

"There is gold, and a multitude of precious stones: but the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel." (Proverbs 20:15)

Notice the word "merchandise." Solomon talks like a trader. He's saying that if you're going to invest, invest here, because wisdom pays better returns than silver and gold. "How much better is it to get wisdom than gold? and to get understanding, is more to be desired than silver" (Proverbs 16:16). And once you have it, keep it: "Buy the truth, but sell it not: likewise wisdom, and instruction, and understanding" (Proverbs 23:23).

Job: you can't buy it at any price

Job 28 is the deepest passage in Scripture on this. It opens in a mine. Men know where to dig for silver and gold. They tunnel through rock and bring hidden things to light. Then Job asks the question no miner can answer:

"But where is wisdom found? and where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof: for it is not found in the land of the living." (Job 28:12–13)

"Gold shall not be given for it, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. It shall not be valued with the wedge of gold of Ophir, nor with the precious onyx, nor the sapphire. The gold nor the crystal shall be equal unto it, nor the exchange shall be for plate of fine gold. No mention shall be made of coral, nor of the gabish: for wisdom is more precious than pearls." (Job 28:15–18)

The whole treasure room of the ancient world is emptied out on the table: Ophir gold, onyx, sapphire, crystal, coral and pearls. None of it buys wisdom. "The depth saith, It is not in me: the sea also saith, It is not with me" (Job 28:14). Only one Person knows where it lives: "But Yahweh understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof" (Job 28:23). Then he gives it away:

"And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of Yahweh is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding." (Job 28:28)

The most valuable thing in the world is free and unbuyable at the same time. You get it by fearing Yahweh and turning from evil. James says the same thing: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of Yahweh, which giveth to all men liberally, and reproacheth no man, and it shall be given him" (James 1:5).

Lamentations: when the jewels turned to coal

Lamentations 4 shows how fast earthly worth can vanish. It describes Jerusalem after the Babylonian siege:

"How is the gold become so dim? the most fine gold is changed, and the stones of the Sanctuary are scattered in the corner of every street." (Lamentations 4:1)

"Her Nazarites were purer than the snow, and whiter than the milk: they were more ruddy in body, than the red precious stones; they were like polished sapphire." (Lamentations 4:7)

Then the very next verse: "Now their visage is blacker than a coal: they can not know them in the streets: their skin cleaveth to their bones: it is withered like a stock" (Lamentations 4:8). Men who once looked like gems were unrecognizable. "The noble men of Zion comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers" (Lamentations 4:2). Sin did that, and no amount of gold could stop it. Glitter isn't final, and neither is the world's idea of what a person is worth.

The breastplate: twelve stones over the heart

Yahweh told Moses to make a breastplate of judgment for the High Priest, set with twelve stones in four rows:

"Then thou shalt set it full of places for stones, even four rows of stones: the order shall be this, a ruby, a topaz, and a carbuncle in the first row. And in the second row thou shalt set an emerald, a sapphire, and a diamond." (Exodus 28:17–18)

The workmen did exactly that: "And in the second row, an Emerald, a Sapphire, and a Diamond" (Exodus 39:11). Each stone carried a tribe's name: "And the stones shall be according to the names of the children of Israel, twelve, according to their names, graven as signets" (Exodus 28:21). And they went where the High Priest's heart was:

"So Aaron shall bear the names of the children of Israel in the breast plate of judgment upon his heart, when he goeth into the holy place, for a remembrance continually before Yahweh." (Exodus 28:29)

That's the point of the stones. They weren't there to make Aaron look rich. They were there so Israel's names would be carried into Yahweh's presence, close to the heart, every time. The stones were costly because the people they stood for were precious to him.

The point of a diamond, and a forehead like adamant

Two prophets use the hardest stone they knew as a picture.

Jeremiah uses it for sin cut so deep it can't be scrubbed off:

"The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond, and graven upon the table of their heart, and upon the horns of your altars." (Jeremiah 17:1)

Ezekiel uses it for courage. Yahweh is sending him to a stubborn people, so he makes the prophet harder than they are:

"I have made thy forehead as the adamant, and harder than the flint: fear them not therefore, neither be afraid at their looks: for they are a rebellious house." (Ezekiel 3:9)

Zechariah turns it around again for the people who refused to listen: "Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the Law and the words which Yahweh of hosts sent in his spirit by the ministry of the former Prophets" (Zechariah 7:12).

So the same hard stone can mean three things: sin that's carved in, a heart shut against the Law, or a prophet who won't back down. But even a diamond-cut heart isn't final. Yahweh promised to write something new on that same tablet: "I will put my Law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be their Yahweh, and they shall be my people" (Jeremiah 31:33). And through Ezekiel: "I will take away the stony heart out of your body, and I will give you an heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 36:26). The Law isn't erased. It's moved from stone into the heart. That's the New Covenant, and Hebrews 8:10 quotes it word for word.

Eden and the king of Tyre

Ezekiel 28 is a lament over the king of Tyre, a merchant king who got rich off trade. Yahweh describes him dressed in jewels:

"Thou hast been in Eden the garden of Yahweh: every precious stone was in thy garment, the ruby, the topaz and the diamond, the chrysolite, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, emerald, and the carbuncle and gold" (Ezekiel 28:13)

Many read the passage as looking past the human king to the fallen cherub behind him. Either way, the stones didn't save him. "Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, and thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness" (Ezekiel 28:17). "By the multitude of thy merchandise, they have filled the midst of thee with cruelty, and thou hast sinned" (Ezekiel 28:16). He had every gem on Yahweh's list and lost his wisdom anyway. That's the opposite of Job 28. Wealth without the fear of Yahweh ends in a fall.

What were these stones, really?

Here's where the English gets slippery. Ancient people named stones by color and use, not by chemistry, so modern names don't always line up with the Hebrew. Four words matter most here.

Peninim (Strong's H6443), "rubies" in the KJV. This is the word in Proverbs 3:15, 8:11, 20:15, 31:10, Job 28:18 and Lamentations 4:7, its only six uses. The KJV says "rubies," the Geneva says "pearls" or "precious stones," and the standard Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon (BDB) says "corals," possibly from a root meaning "branch," like branching coral. It notes that others read "pearls" (BDB at Bible Hub). Lamentations 4:7 says the Nazarites were "more ruddy" than peninim, so the stone was red, which fits red coral better than white pearls. Either way, it probably wasn't the ruby we buy today.

Odem (H124), the "ruby" of the breastplate. In Exodus 28:17, 39:10 and Ezekiel 28:13 the Geneva says "ruby." The word comes from the Hebrew for "red," the same root as adam and Edom. BDB defines it as "carnelian" and notes that the Greek Septuagint translates it sardion, sardius (BDB at Bible Hub). Chemist Susan Meschel, writing in the Jewish Bible Quarterly, points out that carnelian has been found in Egyptian royal tombs as early as 3100 BC and is easier to engrave than true ruby. She calls it the probable identity (Jewish Bible Quarterly 46:4, 2018). A true ruby is red corundum, rated 9 on the Mohs hardness scale, second only to diamond (GIA).

Yahalom (H3095), the "diamond" of the breastplate. In Exodus 28:18, 39:11 and Ezekiel 28:13. It seems to come from halam, "to strike, hammer," because of its hardness. But BDB marks it "jasper? … or onyx?", following the Septuagint and the Vulgate (BDB at Bible Hub). The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906) says "diamond" has been suggested, "but the art of cutting diamonds is of a much later date" (JewishEncyclopedia.com, "Gems"). Diamonds came from India, where trade in them may go back to the fourth century BC (GIA), a thousand years after Moses. And you can't engrave a tribe's name on a diamond with anything softer than a diamond. In modern Hebrew yahalom does mean diamond, but scholars doubt that's what the word meant at Sinai.

Shamir (H8068), the "diamond" point in Jeremiah 17:1. The same word is "adamant" in Ezekiel 3:9 and Zechariah 7:12. In Isaiah it means thorns. BDB gives "adamant," a stone used for its sharpness and hardness (BDB at Bible Hub). The Jewish Encyclopedia says the traditional "diamond" identification "should be abandoned" and links the word to the Egyptian asmer, meaning emery or corundum, the gritty stone engravers used to cut other stones. The rabbis later told legends about a shamir worm that cut the stones for Solomon's Temple (Talmud, Sotah 48b; Gittin 68a), which the same article takes as a sign that the word's exact meaning had already been lost.

So is it "rubies" or "pearls," and "diamond" or "jasper"? Translators did their honest best with words whose exact stones are lost. But the meaning of every verse stands either way. Whatever the most precious thing in the jeweler's case was, wisdom and a woman who fears Yahweh are worth more.

The diamond's price is partly a sales pitch

It helps to know that some of what we "know" about gems came from advertising. In 1947 a copywriter named Frances Gerety at the N.W. Ayer agency wrote the line "A Diamond Is Forever" for the De Beers diamond cartel. It first ran in 1948, and De Beers' ads also set the rule that a man should spend a month's salary on the ring, later two (BBC News; The Marketing Society). In 1999 Advertising Age named it the slogan of the century.

A diamond isn't forever. Yashua told us what happens to earthly treasure: "Lay not up treasures for yourselves upon the earth, where the moth and canker corrupt, and where thieves dig through and steal. But lay up treasures for yourselves in heaven" (Matthew 6:19–20). "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Matthew 6:21). He also told the story of the merchant "Who having found a pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it" (Matthew 13:46). That's the one gem worth everything, and it's the Kingdom.

Yahweh's own jewels

Here's the turn. Scripture says the true jewels are Yahweh's people.

"Then spake they that feared Yahweh, every one to his neighbor, and Yahweh hearkened and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared Yahweh, and that thought upon his Name." (Malachi 3:16)

"And they shall be to me, saith Yahweh of hosts, in that day that I shall do this, for a flock, and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him." (Malachi 3:17)

The King James reads "in that day when I make up my jewels." The Hebrew word is segullah, which BDB defines as "valued property, peculiar treasure," always meaning the people Yahweh has chosen for himself (BDB at Bible Hub). It's the same word Yahweh used at Sinai, which the Geneva translates "chief treasure": "Now therefore if ye will hear my voice in deed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be my chief treasure above all people, though all the earth be mine" (Exodus 19:5). And again: "For Yahweh hath chosen Jaakob to himself, and Israel for his chief treasure" (Psalms 135:4).

Notice who they are in Malachi. They fear Yahweh, talk to each other about him and think on his Name. Those are the same marks as the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31 and the wise man of Job 28. Peter carries segullah into the New Testament, writing to believers: "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal Priesthood, an holy nation, a people set at liberty" (1 Peter 2:9). Its Greek wording echoes the Septuagint's "peculiar people" of Exodus 19:5. Zechariah says it with gems: "for they shall be as the stones of the crown lifted up upon his land" (Zechariah 9:16).

A city built of gems

Isaiah speaks to a people who feel like broken rubble:

"O thou afflicted and tossed with tempest, that hast no comfort, behold, I will lay thy stones with the carbuncle, and lay thy foundation with sapphires, And I will make thy windows of emeralds, and thy gates shining stones, and all thy borders of pleasant stones." (Isaiah 54:11–12)

Some modern translations render one of those stones (kadkod, H3539) "rubies," and BDB says "perhaps ruby" (BDB at Bible Hub). And the very next verse shows what the real treasure is: "And all thy children shall be taught of Yahweh, and much peace shall be to thy children" (Isaiah 54:13).

John saw the same city finished:

"And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones: the first foundation was Jasper: the second of Sapphire: the third of a Chalcedony: the fourth of an Emerald" (Revelation 21:19)

The list goes on through sardonyx, sardius, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprasus, jacinth and amethyst. Then:

"And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, and every gate is of one pearl, and the street of the city is pure gold, as shining glass." (Revelation 21:21)

In that city the street is made of the gold men kill for here. Pearls are gates people walk through every day. The stones that rule markets in this age are building materials in the next. The breastplate carried twelve stones for twelve tribes over the High Priest's heart. The New Jerusalem has twelve gates with "the names written, which are the twelve tribes of the children of Israel" (Revelation 21:12) and twelve foundations bearing the apostles' names. The pattern from Sinai is still there at the end of the Book. Yashua didn't scrap it. He finished it.

What you're worth

The world prices you by your paycheck, your looks, your followers and your past. Jeremiah said sin can be cut into a heart like a diamond point. But Yahweh says his people are his segullah, his chief treasure, carried on the High Priest's heart, written in a book of remembrance, and set as stones in a crown.

Diamonds come from deep pressure and darkness. So do a lot of the people Yahweh calls jewels. Whatever crushed you, it isn't final. The world's price on you isn't final either.

Sources

• Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon, via Bible Hub: peninim H6443, odem H124, yahalom H3095, shamir H8068, segullah H5459, kadkod H3539
• Susan V. Meschel, "The Gems in the High Priest's Breastplate," Jewish Bible Quarterly 46:4 (Oct–Dec 2018): jewishbible.org
• Jewish Encyclopedia (1906), "Gems": jewishencyclopedia.com
• Gemological Institute of America, "Ruby": gia.edu, and "Diamond History and Lore": gia.edu
• BBC News, "De Beers myth: Do people spend a month's salary on a diamond engagement ring?": bbc.com
• The Marketing Society, "A tagline is forever": marketingsociety.com