Thou puttest away all the wicked of the earth [like] dross; therefore I love thy testimonies.
Two verses earlier, the psalmist asks God to hold him up so he can keep God's statutes (v. 117). Then he looks away from himself to what God does with everyone else. He sees a whole class of people swept away like waste metal. That is what makes him say he loves God's testimonies.
Dross, Not Silver Waiting to Be Refined
The image comes from metalworking, but the point turns on what the verse does not say. It does not show God purifying a mixed lump of metal.
"Hold me up, that I may be safe," he prays. He depends on God's hand to hold him up. So he will be safe, and he will be able to keep God's statutes always (v. 117). But those who choose to stray from His statutes can expect God to reject them. Their deceit is not just a twisting of the truth. It is deliberate lying. God discerns the inward motives. He puts away all the wicked of the earth like dross. He does not just burn the dross out of the silver. There is no silver in them at all. They are all dross (v. 119).
Another writer states the same distinction and adds what the psalmist does with it:
So God treats them. They are not silver that still needs its dross purified away. They are dross itself and nothing else. The psalmist sees this judgment and agrees with it. So he holds even more tightly to the testimonies that save people from the road to destruction.
Who "the Wicked" Are
The word sounds harsh until you see who the psalm has in view. These are not people who missed the way by accident.
But notice what kind of people this verse describes: they "go astray from your statutes." They do not go wrong in their minds through ignorance. They go wrong in their hearts through stubbornness. They turn away from God on purpose. They are like the people in the story Jesus told who say, "We do not want this man to reign over us" (Luke 19:14). They say, "We do not desire the knowledge of your ways" (Job 21:14). Verse 119 rightly calls them "the wicked"!
Why Judgment Makes Him Love the Word
The "therefore" is the hinge of the verse. God throws out what is worthless. That sight does not make the psalmist cold. It warms him toward God's testimonies.
But the very fact that God disposes of the dross is an added reason for the believer to love His testimonies. So the judgment of the wicked strengthens the faith of the godly. It gives a believer a healthy fear of God. He trembles as he thinks about so great a Creator, and holy fear of His judgments quiets his soul.
Where the Believer Stands
The psalmist is not a spectator at a distance. God holds him up in the same world where others are set aside. One writer adds that Christians stand in a different place still.
God rejected them and treated them as nothing, as dross. That encouraged the heart in God's testimonies. The heart had kept their way despite the wicked who sneered at them. But there was fear, and rightly so, at the thought of these judgments. We ourselves shall be above them. We shall be taken out of the hour of trial that is coming on all the earth. Meanwhile the word encourages us, and even the judgment does, as we look up to Him from whom it came.
Commentators differ in emphasis here: some read the verse as a coming judgment believers are kept out of, while others draw it into telling true from false today.
The Verse Applied Now
God once used this same language of dross about His own people. So no reader can treat the verse as a comment about outsiders only.
Today there are people who claim to be Christians while "having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power" (2 Tim. 3:5). Paul says, "Avoid such people." Of Israel it is said: "Son of man, the house of Israel has become dross to Me… Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Because you have all become dross… so I will gather you in My anger and in My wrath, and I will put you in and melt you" (Ezek. 22:18-20).
The psalmist's own response is what the reader is meant to copy:
We shall be able to discern these false spirits only when we know what the Word says. "Therefore I love your testimonies" is the positive stand the psalmist takes. We do well to follow his example!
Summary
- Dross, not ore. God is not shown refining these people. There is no silver in them at all — the whole mass is waste, and God throws it out instead of purifying it.
- Chosen, not stumbled into. They "go astray from your statutes" by stubbornness of heart, not by ignorance of mind. Their deceit is deliberate lying.
- Held, not discarded. The psalmist's own safety is not his integrity but God's hand: "Hold me up, that I may be safe" — that hand is the only thing separating him from the dross.
- Loved, not merely observed. God's dealing with the dross becomes one more reason to love His testimonies. Judgment strengthens the faith of the godly and fills the soul with holy fear.
- Warned, not exempt. God once called Israel itself dross, so the warning turns inward. Turn away from a faith that has the look of godliness but no power — and only knowing the Word lets you tell the difference.