Leithart
PROVERBS 22:3
Like many Proverbs, this one treats wisdom and prudence as a matter of foresight. The imagery is of a pathway along which the prudent and the foolish are walking. The prudent sees trouble/evil ahead, and avoids it, while the naïve simpleton keeps going, stumbles right into trouble, and pays for it.
The richness of the passage is heightened by allusions to the temptation and fall in Genesis 3. The word for “prudent” is the same word used for the serpent in Genesis 3:1, and the prudent man is said to hide himself, as Adam hid himself among the trees of the garden. The allusions to Genesis 3 go in opposite directions. On the one hand, Adam is the simpleton who does not see trouble coming and stumbles ahead and is punished. On the other hand, he seems to act like the prudent man in the fact that he hides himself from the punishment that he knows is coming. But Adam’s is not prudent hiding; there is hiding before evil comes – which is prudent – and there is hiding after evil has already happened – which is irresponsible. The hiding of the prudent is different, different in timing above all, from the hiding of an Adam or an Achan.
This verse also sheds light on Jesus’ exhortation to His disciples to be “wise as serpents.” To be “shrewd” as the serpent was means, in Proverbs 22:3, to avoid evil and hide away. This the serpent did, though in a perverse form. He hid his true intentions under a show of concern for Eve’s well-being. Again, there is hiding and there is hiding. There is the hiding of godly wisdom, which avoids evil; there is the hiding of satanic wisdom, the hiding of the serpent who was a deceiver from the beginning.
PROVERBS 22:4
The verse may be translated, woodenly, as “The end of humility and the fear of Yahweh – riches, honor, and life.” The word translated as “end” can mean “wages” or “reward,” but the first meaning is end. Reward is what comes at the end, what follows a process, what closes out a sequence. Humility and the fear of Yahweh have a telos, a built-in eschatology, a terminus ad quem. This is “reward” so long as we recognize that the reward is not extrinsic to the process that leads to it; the reward is “internal” to the process that it rewards, the natural climax.
Humility certainly includes humility before Yahweh, as this verse shows by connecting humility with the fear of Yahweh. But Proverbs is also clear that humility is humility before men – a willingness to take counsel, to hear rebuke, to suffer discipline from other human beings.
Humility and fear of God have a triple reward: riches, honor, life. We are reminded of the promise of Romans 2, that life and honor and immortality will be given to those who persevere in doing good. And the triple reward perhaps corresponds to the three gifts of the ark of the covenant – law, rod, and bread; which in turn perhaps link with the triple office of priest, king, and prophet.
It is worth noting again that the life of wisdom and fear endorsed the Proverbs is a life of fear of Yahweh. The Proverbs do not provide generic a-religious advice, but describe aspects of faithfulness to the living God.
PROVERBS 22:5
Thorns take us back again to Genesis 3, this time to the curses that Yahweh pronounces against Adam because of their sin. The earth will produce thorns, and as the Bible develops these thorns are typically thorny, clinging, painful human beings. Cain made life rough going for Abel, and finally ended his life altogether; thorny people, thorny rulers and parents, thorny elders – all of these make life challenging. Snares are also associated with people, especially in the Psalms, where the wicked lay snares for the righteous.
The Proverb says that these thorns and snares inhibit the progress of the “perverse.” The word can mean “deceitful, false,” and this Proverb warns that unfaithfulness in speech or conduct will make life difficult. The garden of the deceitful produces thorns and briars.
The solution is to guard oneself. The image is interesting. Guarding usually involves protection of another, or of a place. But the Bible speaks with some regularity about the need for self-guarding. As the Levites protected the sacred space of the tabernacle, so the wise will protect the sacred space of his own life to keep thorns and snares from finding a place there. Self-policing, self-protection is an essential Christian discipline, and the only way to achieve productive Christian living. Without self-policing of words, behavior, thoughts, we are liable to stumble into traps and have to tear our way through briars.
PROVERBS 22:6
The Hebrew says, cryptically, “Train a child in the mouth of his way.” It is famously ambiguous. Is this saying “according to his own desire (mouth)” and thus serving as a warning? Or is it a promise that if we set our children on a trajectory early in life, they will continue on the same trajectory into old age?
The ambiguity is possibly deliberate. Either way, the child is father to the man. If we train children in the ways of wisdom and godliness, the fear of Yahweh, we can hope for them to persevere in that way. On the other hand, if we leave them to what their own mouths desire, we can expect them to persevere in that pathway, stubbornly doing what they please to the end of their lives.
PROVERBS 22:7
Moderns resist hierarchy, but it is inevitable. There are always rulers and ruled; hierarchy and inequality are built into the world. One of the leading forms of hierarchy is one of wealth. The rich rule from on high, while the poor are low subordinates. Solomon is not making a value judgment about this; it is simply a fact of human life.
Money gives power – the power to purchase things and people’s time, the power to mold life into the image of our desires, the power to control and to avoid consequences. Wealth comes in various forms; it is not always monetary. But “wealth” of status or honor translates into power as well. It is not accident that we instinctively think of kings as “wealthy.” Wealth rules.
The second line gives a specific applicati
on of this universal reality. The lender is the rich, richer at least than the borrower in some respect, while the borrower is the poor. The lender thus rules the borrower, and the borrower is, to one degree or another, his slave. In
The Bible never forbids debt as such. But it discourages it in various ways. Paul says that we should owe no one anything except the debt of love, and Paul also exhorts us to avoid submitting ourselves to slavery once we have been liberated in Christ.
Yet, Christ brings a great reversal of this Proverb. He who has no debts, who owes no man anything, became a debtor for our benefit, paying the price of our release from debt and slavery, becoming a slave to redeem slaves. So ought we to do to one another.
PROVERBS 22:8
Solomon uses agricultural imagery to describe realities of life. Like Paul and Jesus, he says that we reap as we sow. Our actions are always a kind of planting. We are always sowing seed that will come to fruition later on. If we sow righteousness, we will reap eternal life; if we sow iniquity, we reap “vanity,” that is to say, insubstantial nothing.
The image suggests that this connection of cause and consequence is a “natural” one. We can no more reap weight and glory by sowing sin than we can harvest barley after sowing broccoli. There is a natural connection between what we reap and what we sow.
The second line of this Proverb is obscure. The one who sows iniquity is still in view, and he now has a rod rather than seed. The point seems to be twofold: On the one hand, the man who sows iniquity will find that he reaps nothing, and will be furious in his frustration. On the other hand, his frustration will be ineffectual. He won’t have authority or power because he will have no wealth (v. 27), because he harvests nothing.
The Lord is the great sower, who sows the word of His righteousness and reaps abundantly. And his rod is not frustrated.
PROVERBS 22:9
The NASB translation doesn’t get the specific image of the Hebrew, which says “The good (of) eye he shall be blessed, for he gives from his bread to the poor.” Jesus uses the image of the “eye” when talking about wealth as well: “If you eye is clear, then is your body full of light” (Matthew 6). The eye is an organ of judgment in Scripture, and it is also therefore an organ associated with valuations, including valuations of wealth. In the context, Jesus is talking about setting our hearts on storing heavenly treasures, and the “dark eye” is associated with a false valuation of earthly treasure while the “clear eye” is associated with a right evaluation of heavenly and earthly treasures.
There is, again, a connection with Genesis 3. Adam and Eve had their eyes opened by eating from the tree of knowledge. In that context, the eyes are eyes of judgment and rule, the eyes of kings. By eating from the tree, they were elevated to a royal status for which they were ill prepared. But if we connect that thematic with Proverbs 22:9, we can conclude that part of the elevation to kingship is elevation to generosity. A king is one with a good eye – to discern between good and evil, and to give to those who are in need.
Part of having a “good” or “clear” eye is generosity, as this verse makes clear (and as Jesus also makes clear in talking about alms-giving). One with a good eye is one who casts a kind eye on the needy and poor. Solomon says, as Jesus does, that God repays generosity to the poor. Those with good eyes will be blessed.
It is significant that the Proverb says that the man with a good eye gives “from” his bread, or as the NASB says “some of his bread.” That might sound less than fully generous: Why doesn’t he give it all away? Is Solomon endorsing a residual selfishness? I think instead we should view this as a description of hospitality. What happens to the rest of the bread? The man with a good eye consumes it, but consumes it along with the poor. The picture is of a man eating bread, confronted by a poor man, who gives part of his bread to the poor man. Hospitality, not unilateral dispossession, is the biblical ideal. Those who have should give to those who don’t have, but they give in such a way that they share the goods together . To put it another way, the economic reality of charity is part of the larger “social” reality of fellowship. The Table (like Jesus’ table during His lifetime) is the model.
PROVERBS 22:10
Scoffers are haughty and mock at all that is right and good. As mockers, they cause strife, and as long as there are mockers about the strife will not cease. Conflict is the inevitable result when there’s someone in the community who’s always snorting at the leaders, flouting the rules, tearing down what is good, using the acids of irony to eat away at the foundations. On a smaller scale, this happens in families, when parents get away with mocking children or children parents or children children. It can happen on a cultural scale, when a people develops habits of irony and scoffing.
Solomon says that expulsion is the only solution. A mocker may be rebuked, but Paul says that the time for rebukes comes to an end. We don’t rebuke forever and ever. At some point, the only solution to mockery is to guard the community from the mocker by getting rid of him.
PROVERBS 22:11
Purity of heart doesn’t refer to a purity that is completely inward. Rather, purity of heart refers to the unalloyed devotion of the heart. The term comes from the sacrificial and cleanliness system of
Jesus says on a number of occasions that there is a direction connection between the he
art and the tongue. Out of the treasures of the heart the mouth speaks. Solomon says the same. A man with a pure heart speaks words of grace. This doesn’t mean that he speaks soft words. It means that his words edify, build up, because they express the devotion of his heart. He is not a yes-man, whose words are always “nice.” Jesus’ words were not always “nice,” but they were always full of grace, intended to and effective in building up His hearers.
Solomon says that a man of pure devotions, whose lips speak out the purity of his heart, will be a king’s friend. A king’s friend is an advisor to the king, not merely a king’s pal. Jesus calls the disciples king’s friends in this sense; they know what the King is doing, and they have the privilege of offering their advice to Him. We are all king’s friends, privileged to offer our words to King Jesus in prayer.
Solomon certainly has earthly kings in view, and the same principle holds. Who gets the ear of King Jesus? Whoever is pure of heart and speaks words full of grace. Who gets the ear of the king? Whoever is devoted, honest, straightforward, full of edifying speech. The way to political authority is not compromise, but faithfulness.
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