Reflections on the Proverbs Podcast

Today’s reflection on the Proverbs comes from Proverbs chapter 6:

“My son, if you have put up security for your neighbor, have given your pledge for a stranger, if you are snared in the words of your mouth, caught in the words of your mouth, then do this, my son, and save yourself, for you have come into the hand of your neighbor: go, hasten, and plead urgently with your neighbor.”

Now, this seems like good financial advice for a father to give a son. In fact, my father gave me this advice. He said, “Never co-sign a loan. Never, never, never, never.”

And he told me about somebody at work. I think the man had been a contractor, and everybody knew him. I don’t remember exactly what the relationship was, except that he asked some people to co-sign a loan. And people said, “Oh yeah, he’s good for it.”

Well, he wasn’t.

The guy didn’t pay the loan, so the people who had co-signed had to pay his debt. That is really, really bad.

So I have always known: never co-sign a loan. Just don’t do it.

Even with family members, you have to be very careful. It can cause great harm within a family. Maybe there are circumstances where a father co-signs a loan for a son, but that may not be the best thing to do either.

So this is good financial advice.

But I think there is another way to look at this.

If you look at the history of Israel, Israel had been in bondage in Egypt. They were slaves. They had to work at the behest of Pharaoh and his slave drivers. And God delivered them out of that bondage.

So this particular warning has a redemptive-historical ring to it.

Don’t put up security for your neighbor. Don’t put yourself into somebody else’s hand. Don’t become a slave.

And notice how urgent the language becomes:

“Give your eyes no sleep and your eyelids no slumber; save yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the hand of the fowler.”

Get out.

And I think there is a warning here about legalistic religion as well. I think we can canonically read it this way.

Don’t put yourself back into bondage to false teaching. Don’t let somebody take away your Christian liberty.

You can see this in Galatians. Christ has set us free. Don’t submit yourself again to the weak and beggarly elements of this world. Christ has bought us. He has paid for us. He has freed us. We do not live under that slavery anymore.

So don’t let anybody enslave you with their interpretation of the law and, ultimately, with a false gospel.

And so I think we can read this passage in two registers.

First, don’t co-sign a loan. That is good financial advice and good family advice. Be very careful what you do with debt.

But second, don’t become enslaved again to the elementary principles of this world. Christ has redeemed you from bondage. Don’t go back into it.

And that ends the reflection on the Proverbs for today.

This is today’s reflections on the Proverbs for October 5th, which means we will be reading parts of chapter 5. There are two ways you can read this chapter.

You can read it as a father directing his son not to commit adultery, not to pursue a woman who lacks moral character, but instead to remain faithful to the wife of his youth. It certainly can be read that way. In fact, it should be read that way.

But it can also be read in a biblical-theological, redemptive-historical way. I’m going to give a little bit of both, but mainly the redemptive-historical view.

It starts off:

“My son, be attentive to my wisdom;incline your ear to my understanding,that you may keep discretion,and your lips may guard knowledge.”

Once again, this is a father teaching his son. Then, in verse 3, he introduces another voice:

“For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey,and her speech is smoother than oil.”

Well, the very first forbidden woman was Eve when she was deceived by the serpent. The serpent used smooth words to entice her and seduce her into a false worldview. The fall involved something forbidden. It involved a forbidden tree, but it also involved a kind of spiritual fornication.

The Bible so often describes false worship in sexual terms. True worship is faithfulness. False worship is fornication and adultery. It has this sexual and idolatrous register.

So, in some sense, you can think of the fall of mankind as a seventh-commandment event. It had to do with unfaithfulness. Eve listened to another voice. That other voice spoke to her, beguiled her, and seduced her to eat from the tree that God had forbidden.

I know that may sound a little strange at first, but this is the redemptive-historical way of reading it.

Proverbs continues:

“Her feet go down to death;her steps follow the path to Sheol.”

That’s certainly true if you’re someone who wants to pursue loose women. That path leads to destruction.

But in the redemptive-historical view, that’s also exactly what happened in the fall. The fall wasn’t simply unwise. It led to death. Her steps followed the path to Sheol.

Then we come to verse 7:

“And now, O sons, listen to me,and do not depart from the words of my mouth.Keep your way far from her,and do not go near the door of her house.”

The word “listen” is shema. Here shema is in the imperative. Listen. Hear. Pay attention. Obey. The father is commanding his sons to listen to his voice rather than the voice of the forbidden woman.

What the father is teaching the son is certainly true of human relationships, but it’s also true of our relationship with God.

The forbidden woman represents false religion. It’s the religion of the world. It’s the world, the flesh, and the devil. It promises life, but it’s not the way to life. Her feet go down to death.

Lady Wisdom, on the other hand, is the good woman. It is God speaking His wisdom through His church.

This is why it’s important to realize that if God is your Father, the church is your mother. That’s the old saying from Cyprian: you cannot have God as your Father without having the church as your mother.

The church is feminine. Jesus is the Bridegroom, and the church is His bride. If we belong to the Bridegroom, we have to love His bride. We have to be in the church. We have to listen to the church as she faithfully speaks the Word of God, and we have to work for her purity.

Then Proverbs says:

“Drink water from your own cistern,flowing water from your own well.”

Notice that “drink” is an imperative. It’s commanding you to drink this water.

On the level of human relationships, that’s pretty straightforward. A man should love his wife, and he should be satisfied with her. “Drink” is a command for sexual fidelity. Don’t go looking for another cistern. Rejoice in the wife God has given you.

But in the larger biblical picture, you can think of this sacramentally. Take the cup of salvation. Participate in the Lord’s Supper. Listen to the preaching of the Word. Be an active member of your church. Drink from your own cistern. Make Christ’s church yours.

You see something similar in the Song of Solomon. It speaks about human love and human relations, but it also gives us this larger biblical picture of the bride and the bridegroom, Christ and His church.

“Let your fountain be blessed,and rejoice in the wife of your youth.”

I think that’s where I’ll end the reflection for today.

Proverbs 5 operates on two registers. On the level of human relations, its warning is straightforward: do not commit adultery. Do not pursue the forbidden woman. Rejoice in the wife of your youth.

But there is also a spiritual register. Don’t listen to the forbidden woman. Don’t be seduced by the world. Don’t listen to the smooth talk and flattery that takes you down to Sheol.

Listen to the pure Word of God preached in His church. Love the bride. Love Lady Wisdom. Drink from your own cistern. Make Christ’s church yours.

That is the path to life.

This ends the reflection on the Proverbs for today.

Epilogue

Eve was seduced by the serpent, and then she seduced her husband into sin. That is how I am reading her act of giving him the fruit, which he willingly ate. This is why I call the fall the first spiritual adultery: they turned from God and listened to another voice.

And before anyone suspects that I am writing a sequel to Knox’s The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, let me clarify: I am not teaching the moral superiority of men. Women and men are equally sinners. Adam was fully responsible for his own disobedience. I am describing the sequence of the fall, not ranking the sexes. :)

Today is October 4, so today’s reflections on the Proverbs come from Proverbs chapter 4:

I am going to focus on the first four verses:

Proverbs 4:1-4

Listen, my sons, to a father’s instruction; pay attention and gain understanding. I give you sound learning, so do not forsake my teaching.

For I too was a son to my father, still tender, and cherished by my mother. Then he taught me, and he said to me, “Take hold of my words with all your heart; keep my commands, and you will live.”

After having read this passage, the first thing that stands out is the very last verse: “Take hold of my words with all your heart.” This is not saying to take them casually.

This reminds me of the Shema: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” Then comes the command to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might.

The word Shema means “hear,” and it can also carry the sense of obeying. Hearing properly involves responding in obedience. So when we read, “Take hold of my words with all your heart,” we are talking about more than simply hearing the words.

Then we have, “Keep my commands, and you will live.” There is an Edenic register to this passage. It takes us back to Eden: the connection between obedience and life. Mankind started in the garden as garden keepers. In Hebrew, the word for “guard” is shamar, which sounds like shema. We were to hear, keep, and obey in the garden. Part of keeping was obeying. Keeping the commandments means obeying them.

Now, there is certainly a practical application for children. If they heed their parents’ voices and follow their instruction, that guidance is conducive to preserving their lives. What parents teach them can protect them from danger and help them live wisely.

But I understand the life in view here as more than physical life. I believe this passage also directs us to the question of eternal life. What does it mean to keep the commands and live?

For this connection to eternal life we need to look at Leviticus:

Leviticus 18:5

Keep my decrees and laws, for the person who obeys them will live by them. I am the LORD.

Is Moses saying that if you keep the law you will be saved? Is this teaching salvation by works? Well, of course not. God’s people have always been saved by grace and not by the works of the law. Law keeping won’t save you because no one can perfectly keep the law. Is that what is in view here—perfect law-keeping? Or is this a law-keeping as evidence of life? One who walks with the Lord will walk as the Lord has commanded.

Check out the following quotes:

“Yet by the covenant of grace this life is promised to all that obey God’s commands sincerely, though not perfectly.” by Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible, on Leviticus 18:5.

“The person who responds rightly to God’s grace (‘does’) will enjoy life under God’s pleasure (‘shall live’).” from ESV Global Study Bible, note on Leviticus 18:5.

Walking according to God’s law is not how you get saved, but how you demonstrate that you are saved. It all comes back to that hymn—Trust and Obey for there is no other way. We can’t be in Christ without a transformed life, yet the law-keeping is not perfect nor is it meritorious. It is the evidence of our life in Christ. We were saved unto good works, not because of our good works.

Let’s look at how the New Testament handles the passage in Leviticus:

Romans 10:5-8

Moses writes this about the righteousness that is by the law: “The person who does these things will live by them.” But the righteousness that is by faith says: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the deep?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the message concerning faith that we proclaim:

Here is what I understand this to mean. Moses is not teaching a different way of salvation. He’s teaching a way of salvation that is by faith that manifests itself in works. But the error Paul was confronting was treating obedience to the law as a means of obtaining righteousness before God. Those who sought righteousness this way had confused the fruit produced by faith with the means by which a person is saved. They had misunderstood Moses.

Many of the Pharisees and teachers of the law had confused the fruit which is produced by faith with the means by which a person is saved. It has always been by faith. The Old Testament never taught salvation by the works of the law. The works show the evidence of living faith. If a person served Baal, they would evidence a lack of faith. They would not have life.

The difference, then, is how the Old and New Testaments speak of salvation. The Old Testament focuses more on evidence of faith. The New Testament focuses more on the means or instrument of salvation. We are saved by faith, but not because of our faith. Faith is the hand that receives the grace of God, not the hand that produces it. Faith can’t be a work either.

Galatians 3:11-13

11 But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith.

12 And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them.

13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:

Now, when you read this passage, Paul says that no man is justified by the law. Well, the law was never given to justify anybody. It was given as a picture of what a holy life looks like. It was given to convict us of sin and to show us what true life is. It did not have the power to save anybody.

But the people Paul was correcting were treating obedience to the law as a means of obtaining righteousness before God. They thought that by their effort to keep the commands, they would have eternal life.

What the Old Testament was teaching was this: here is the law; here is what life looks like. Salvation came through trusting God’s promise of the Redeemer, who was pictured in the types and shadows of the sacrificial system. That trust in God would produce a holy life because of the work of the Spirit in the believer. Being regenerated, a person would begin to manifest that life. Law-keeping, then, was evidence of life. It was not the means of getting it.

To make obedience the means of obtaining life is to put the cart in front of the ox. Faith receives the grace of God, and living faith produces works.

The error need not be a claim that we save ourselves entirely by our own effort. It can be a system in which we acknowledge grace but then make our obedience part of the basis on which God accepts us. The distinction matters. Our good works come from the grace of God. Through the work of the Spirit, trusting His promises will manifest itself in true obedience, however imperfect.

Then Paul says, “And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them.”

Here is how I understand the distinction. The law is not the instrument by which we receive salvation. It describes the holiness that God intends to produce in His people. When the command to obey and live is separated from God’s gracious promises and made into a means of earning life, it becomes a works system.

In its Old Testament setting, I understand “the man that doeth them shall live in them” as describing obedience that flows from faith. The person trusts God, and by the work of the Spirit, that trust bears fruit in obedience. This is the evidentiary way of expressing faith that we have been considering.

But when obedience is made the basis of justification, the law confronts us with our failure and its curse. Our imperfect obedience cannot rescue us. That is why Paul’s next statement is so important: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.”

Christ is the Redeemer. Our law-keeping is not. He bears the curse that we cannot remove by trying harder.

The law sho…

Today’s reflections on the proverbs comes from Chapter 3:

Proverbs 3:1–2

“My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments, for length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you.”

One of the things that comes across when you read Proverbs is that a lot of times we think, well, what kind of book is this? Is this a book just to teach you how to get things done? Is it a book on practical advice for living? Is it like a self-help book? You do this, and you’ll be successful.

But I think sometimes we miss the genre if we don’t understand that this is a gospel message. It comes to us in the shape of wisdom.

Wisdom is not something in addition to our salvation. It is part of it. In other words, we’re saved unto good works. We are being conformed to the image of His Son, and He is wisdom. He is righteousness. He is holiness.

So when it’s the call of wisdom, it’s the call of God. Christ is the wisdom of God. This call, this encouraging and preaching that you be wise, is telling you basically to come to Jesus.

You see this when it says, “My son.”

This is a family grammar. This isn’t simply a civil ruler talking. This is a father talking to a son: “Do not forget my teaching.”

What’s his teaching? His teaching is the gospel.

And when we think of what forgetting means, we have to think about faith. Faith is trust in God, moment by moment. Remembering is faith looking backward at what God has done in the past. Faith in the present is trusting God now, and faith in the future is our hope.

So you can look at faith, trusting God, from the perspective of time: past, present, and future.

And when it says, “Let your heart keep my commandments,” think about that. Your heart. A changed heart. That is the work of the gospel: keeping.

And in Hebrew, that’s shamar. Shamar is keep.

That was what we were told to do in the garden: keep. We were to keep the garden. We were to have dominion over it. We were garden keepers.

But when it says, “Keep my commandments,” you know, the Ten Commandments weren’t in the garden because they weren’t necessary. Nobody had sinned. It wasn’t even a thought. They were simply told to keep the garden.

So when we look at how the law came later, it was to show us what it was like living in the garden. Sin necessitated the naming of it. The law is saying, this is what is not Edenic. Don’t do this.

But as we know, when we interpret the law, the law has a positive as well as a negative aspect. If it says, “Do not commit adultery,” it is also, at the same time, saying, “Love your wife.”

When it says, “Length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you,” the fifth commandment says, “Honor your father and mother, that your days may be long upon the land that the LORD your God is giving you.”

The land reminds us of Eden.

We were kicked out of the land. If we want to get back into that land, we have to listen to the preached gospel. We have to honor those authorities God has placed over us.

If you hear the preaching of the Word and submit yourself to it, that is the way back into the garden.

And that’s why the fifth commandment is so important. It is showing us a way back into the garden, and it’s the only commandment that comes with a promise: that your days may be long upon the land the LORD our God is giving us.

When we see that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, we see the way back into the garden. It’s in the heart of the law.

And who preaches this faith, this gospel truth?

It’s God’s messengers, primarily the ministers of the Word. But it’s not only them, because there is such a thing as the general office of believers.

We preach to one another. We present the truth to one another and in our families. How many people have been brought to faith because of a mother or a father teaching them this gospel?

And here in the book of Proverbs, we see that the call to wisdom is a call to come to Jesus.

Now this becomes especially clear when you look further down in the chapter and see one of the Beatitudes of the Old Testament.

Proverbs 3:13–18

“Blessed is the one who finds wisdom, and the one who gets understanding, for the gain from her is better than gain from silver and her profit better than gold. She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed.”

That long life is fifth commandment language.

Now listen to this: “She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed.”

See, this Beatitude is telling us to grab hold of wisdom.

And who is wisdom? It’s the Lord Jesus Christ.

And it’s a promise of long life in the land, which has its eschatological fulfillment in our return to Eden, the perfected Eden, when heaven and earth are one.

This is telling us to take hold of that tree, and you will have eternal life.

This ends the reflection on the Proverbs for today.

Today’s Reflections on the Proverbs

Proverbs chapter 2 begins with:

“My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, make your ear attentive to wisdom and incline your heart to understanding. Yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.”

You have to seek this.

I think it’s interesting that it begins with “My son.”

Once again, this is a father teaching a son. I can’t help but think that, in biblical-theological terms, this is an archetypal relationship of father and son.

The father is obviously a human person in this passage, but the archetype is the Father and the Son.

And as Jesus was the Son of Man, he had to learn obedience through that which he suffered.

So, in a sense, the father-son exchanges we have in the book of Proverbs are retelling us the story of Jesus.

Now, of course, he was sinless. In our case, we are born in sin, and we need correction.

And this father tells his son: Listen.

This goes back to the Shema: “Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.”

You have to listen.

And in Hebrew, listen is shema. In its biblical context, it means listening and obeying. If you don’t listen and you don’t obey, you really haven’t heard it.

So being told to listen carefully and receive it is an appeal.

This is a gospel appeal.

And you go down, and it says that if you do this, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.

“Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path. For wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. Discretion will watch over you, and understanding will guard you.”

Guard is shamar, which is what we were told to do in the garden. Keep the garden. Shamar.

Shema. Shamar.

Those two words sound similar. You have to hear and keep.

This knowledge, this wisdom, will deliver you from the way of evil, from men of perverse speech, who forsake the path of uprightness to walk in ways of darkness.

This will deliver you.

But then you get to verse 16, and we have our first appearance of that other voice that was heard in the garden.

And who was it?

It was the forbidden woman, the adulteress with her smooth words. When Eve was deceived she became that other voice in the Garden.

They were smooth words that came from a serpent that deceived Eve and all mankind.

She “forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God.”

Once again, this is the fall of man in its archetypal setting. But it’s the fall of everyone when we listen to the false word of the evil one.

This isn’t simply talking about a loose woman. This is talking about devilish religion.

It’s a false word.

It’s a dragon’s word.

“For her house sinks down to death, and her paths to the departed. None who go to her come back, nor do they regain the paths of life.”

“So you will walk in the way of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous. For the upright will inhabit the land, and those with integrity will remain in it. But the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.”

And that land would be restored Eden.

Well, listening to that serpent got us kicked out of the garden. Proverbs is teaching us how to get back into the Garden. It is a gospel call.

A Biblical-Theological Reading of Proverbs

Just a bit of explanation here.

I think when you read the book of Proverbs, you have to realize that there’s an archetypal relationship of the father to the son.

You know, all of our human relationships, because we are created in the image of God, have an archetype. And the relationship of father to son, the archetype of that is the Father and the Son.

Even when you think of begetting. You know, it says in the Old Testament that Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob, and so forth. Those genealogies, those begattitudes, as they’re sometimes called, have their archetype in the eternal begottenness of the Son.

The Father eternally begets the Son.

They’re not the same kind of begetting, of course, but there’s an archetype. It is analogical.

So that’s one register.

The second one is the two calls: the call of Lady Wisdom and the call of Lady Folly.

Lady Folly represents Eve fallen, Eve listening to the voice of the serpent, and all who follow that voice.

It’s not saying that Eve is the devil, or that women are inherently evil or more susceptible to wickedness . It’s saying that’s where the fall came. Satan deceived Eve first, and then she gave the fruit to Adam. But they both fell.

And so when you look at this woman, this forbidden woman, well, they were forbidden to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve did the forbidden thing. She became the forbidden woman. Eve ate, and she convinced Adam to eat as well.

That’s the forbidden woman. That’s the fallen woman.

But then the woman comes back as the redeemed woman, and that is pictured as the church.

And the Messiah was born of a woman. Mary bore the Redeemer.

So this is my understanding of a biblical-theological reading of Proverbs. And when you read it this way, it becomes very gospel-shaped.

The call: Learn wisdom. Hear, O Israel. Come to the fountain of living water.

And the other call is: Disobey and live however you want.

It’s calling you to the obedience of faith.

And wisdom is how to live rightly. What better way to live rightly than to follow the way of wisdom?

Who is the wise person we’re going to come to in chapter eight?

It’s Jesus.

But Jesus imparts that wisdom to his bride. And so we participate.

When we participate in Christ, we obtain his wisdom, his righteousness, his holiness, and his inheritance.

And thus ends the meditation.

Today is October 1st, so we are back at Proverbs 1.

When we get down to verse 20, we read about the call of Wisdom:

“Wisdom cries aloud in the street;in the markets she raises her voice;at the head of the noisy streets she cries out;at the entrance of the city gates she speaks.”

Notice the gender of Wisdom. Wisdom is a woman.

And one of the things you begin to realize as you read through the book of Proverbs is that there are really two women crying out for our attention. There is Lady Wisdom, and there is Lady Folly.

But who are these women?

I think we need to read them not only as literary figures, but also biblical-theologically. Proverbs presents Wisdom as a woman calling us to come to her, listen to her, and find life. As the biblical story unfolds, Christ is revealed as the wisdom of God, and the Church is His bride and His body.

So I think there is a biblical-theological sense in which Lady Wisdom points us toward the Bride of Christ, the Church. The Church is the place where we come to learn the wisdom of God.

And where does this woman get her wisdom?

From her Savior, the Lord.

As the Church participates in Christ, she receives His wisdom. It is given to her, and she freely declares it to everyone who will listen. In that sense, the book of Proverbs is teaching us to marry this woman. Marry her. Make her your chiefest joy. Listen to her voice and learn the wisdom that leads to life.

But there is another woman calling.

Lady Folly.

And Lady Folly takes us back toward the other voice in the garden, where Eve was led astray by the serpent. It is the voice that promises wisdom apart from God. It is the voice of rebellion, deception, and ultimately death.

So there are two women calling.

Lady Wisdom calls us toward life in God.

Lady Folly calls us toward the wisdom of the serpent.

The question Proverbs continually puts before us is: Which woman are you going to listen to?

That is the meditation for today.

Reflections on the Proverbs

Yesterday morning I did what fathers should do: I read Scripture to my son before I went to work. I happened to turn to Proverbs 29 because it was the twenty-ninth day, and I read verses 1 through 14.

It was funny when I got to the section that says, “He who loves wisdom makes his father glad, but a companion of prostitutes squanders his wealth.” I didn’t want to use the word “prostitutes” because my son is ten. So I paused and said, “Keeping company with foolish women will squander his wealth.” That’s for sure, because such company is foolishness.

But one of the things I noticed in reading this short section is how much it says about ruling:

“When the righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people groan.”

There’s a lot in Proverbs about ruling and about the king.

“By justice a king builds up the land, but he who exacts gifts tears it down.”

I explained to my son what it means to accept gifts in this context, because you might think it means presents. Hey, that’s fine. But no, they’re bribes.

I gave him an example. Suppose you give money to a judge, and the judge rules in your favor, but in doing so he perverts justice. He actually destroys civil authority. People no longer respect it because it is corrupt.

If you keep going through this short section, you read:

“A righteous man knows the rights of the poor; a wicked man does not understand such knowledge.”

That’s because he doesn’t care.

“If a ruler listens to falsehood, all his officials will be wicked.”

And then:

“If a king faithfully judges the poor, his throne will be established forever.”

When the book of Proverbs talks about the king, it is talking about the good king. It is talking about what it means to rule and reign.

If you think about our calling as Christians, Jesus is the prophet, priest, and king. But we are little prophets, little priests, and little kings, in the sense that we reign with him. So we have to learn how to rule.

You may have heard of the threefold office. I sometimes wonder if it isn’t a fourfold office, in the sense that you have prophet, priest, king, and sage.

Every civil government has a cadre of counselors, whether it’s a monarchy, a presidency, or a republic. Whatever the form of government, it needs counselors. The president has a cabinet. The king has a Privy Council. You can’t have a king without a council.

Counselors are the ones who guide and advise, because a king can’t do everything himself. You need wisdom. So we have to be instructed in how to be wise counselors, as well as prophets, priests, and kings.

I believe that’s one of the offices we forget. It’s not enough to know what is right and wrong. That knowledge is inherent to ruling. But to learn how to rule, you have to learn when to do what, how to present an idea, and how to persuade people to follow you.

There is such a thing as holy politics, and you find a lot of it in Proverbs.

That is the meditation for today.

Whoever multiplies his wealth by interest and profit gathers it for him who is generous to the poor.

Is taking interest unlawful? Is it any interest, or only excessive interest?

The Protestant position on this has generally been that it is excessive interest that is the problem. Calvin recognized that there was a difference between loans that were meant for the help of the poor and loans that had a commercial purpose. He made a distinction between the two.

Here is a summary of Calvin’s position as reproduced by Logos Bible Software’s Logos Max:

John Calvin stands as a prominent early Protestant theologian who permitted interest on loans[1]. Rather than viewing interest as inherently sinful, Calvin drew an analogy between charging interest on money and collecting rent for the use of land, treating interest as the cost of borrowing money[1].

What made Calvin’s position significant was his departure from centuries of Christian tradition. Medieval theologians like Aquinas and Reformation figures like Martin Luther had both condemned all interest as usury[2]. Calvin ultimately opened the door to accepting interest, though not entirely by design[3]. He shared a cautious opinion in correspondence with Oecolampadius, hesitating to make concessions because he feared that yielding slightly would lead others to exploit the opening[3]—and his concerns proved warranted. His reservations were subsequently overlooked as his position was seized upon and expanded[3].

Importantly, Calvin maintained ethical boundaries. While he condemned those who exploited the poor through excessive loans, he believed that a just rate of interest aligned with Christian teaching[1]. This distinction between moderate and exploitative interest became foundational to Protestant economic thought. Following the Reformation, the exaction of interest became defended in Protestant circles, with only exorbitant rates condemned as usurious[2]—a shift that fundamentally transformed Christian approaches to lending and commerce.

The Westminster Larger Catechism explicitly condemns “usury,” and the Heidelberg Catechism condemns it as well in its exposition of the Eighth Commandment. Some modern translations qualify this as “excessive interest.”

But that raises the obvious question: What exactly is excessive interest?

One of the interesting things this research shows is that Calvin himself was cautious about the door he was opening. He feared that once an allowance was made, people would take that allowance much further than he intended. And I suspect that if Calvin could see some of the ways his position has subsequently been interpreted, he would not be altogether pleased with the result.

Whatever else Calvin permitted, he certainly did not believe that lending money gave you permission to harm your neighbor. That qualification matters. The question is not simply, “Is interest permitted?” The question is also, “What does love of neighbor permit?”

Personal Note

We have to look at this in the light of scripture, and I think one of the things that comes across, when you read the Proverbs, is that this is an agrarian society.

It was not a commercial republic.

When you think of commercial republics, you think Babylon, you think of empires.

And, you know, what happened when this door was opened?

It led to these empires, you know, the Dutch East India Company, the British East India Company, the financialization of everything, stock markets, and then when you get to the Book of Revelation, you see the W***e of Babylon, it’s merchandising.

I don’t know what the answer is.

This is simply a reflection.

And it’s the thought for the day.

[1] Kenman Wong and Donovan Richards, “Commercialization and Microfinance Interest Rates: Usury or Just Prices?,” Journal of Markets & Morality, (Spring and Fall 2014) (2014), 17:2:388–389.

[2] Mortimer J. Adler, ed., The Syntopicon: An Index to the Great Ideas, Great Books of the Western World (Chicago; London; New Delhi; Paris; Seoul; Sydney; Taipei; Tokyo: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1990), 826.

[3] Claude Hermann Walter Johns et al., “USURY,” in Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings, John A. Selbie, and Louis H. Gray (Edinburgh; New York: T. & T. Clark; Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908–1926), 12:552.

“Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds. For riches do not last forever, and does a crown endure to all generations?”

I think one of the things that’s very helpful when you read the Proverbs is to recognize that these were farmers. These were an agrarian people. We started in a garden as gardeners, and tilling the ground and husbandry of the land is native to our call, our vocation.

Now, that doesn’t mean we all have to be farmers. But something happened in the transition through the Industrial Revolution that broke our connection with the land and nature, and with knowing how to make the land produce where we live. Our food comes from all corners of the world, and we depend on a logistics chain that is very complex. It may reduce the price of things, but it also gives us a disconnect from where our food comes from and how to cultivate what is around us.

Then you see here in verse 25: “When the grass is gone and the new growth appears, the vegetation of the mountains is gathered.” Once again, this is farming imagery. The lambs will provide for your clothing. We have to buy our clothing, but these people were able to shear the sheep and make clothes out of the wool. The goats are the price of a field. There will be enough goats’ milk for your food, for the food of your household, and for the maintenance of your girls.

In order to have a farm, it takes a lot of labor. We have machines that do much of it now, but even today, if you’re going to harvest apples, you still need people to go out there and pick them. Much farming still requires manual labor, and I think there’s something very good about manual labor. It is something that is purifying to the soul. It puts us under the sweat of our brow. It helps us keep perspective: we came from the dirt, and we live from the cultivation of it.

Wendell Berry died this year, and I have to confess I’ve never read any of his books. But some of the things I’ve written about apparently resonate with things he said. I only know that because of AI discovery. It said, “This sounds like Wendell Berry.” I thought, What? How? I don’t even know who the guy is. Having read what others have written about him and his concern for the land and our connection to it does resonate with some of my thinking.

Maybe sometime in the future I’ll read some of his work. But for now, that ends today’s reflection on the Proverbs.

Today’s Reflection on the Proverbs is from chapter 26 starting in verse 17:

“Like one who grabs a stray dog by the ears is someone who rushes into a quarrel not their own.”

Boy, if that isn’t the truth. People like to quarrel. They get involved in other people’s business. But you don’t have to. The better part of wisdom is knowing when a quarrel is not yours to enter.

Beginning in verse 17, this chapter has a lot to say about speech. It compares someone who deceives a neighbor and then says, “I was only joking,” to a maniac shooting flaming arrows. Words can do real damage. Calling them a joke afterward does not undo it.

Then comes this: “Without wood a fire goes out; without a gossip a quarrel dies down.”

I worked on ships, and on a ship there is nowhere to go. When your watch is over, you live with the same people you work with. It is a self-contained universe. Gossip spreads like gangrene, and it can make life aboard miserable.

I learned early that the best thing to do was often to say nothing. You don’t have to contribute to every conversation, especially when the conversation is about somebody else.

There are times when you have a responsibility to speak. If you are in charge and someone is not doing their job, you need to address it. But you address it with that person. You don’t go telling everybody else about it. You keep the matter confidential. You don’t talk about people behind their backs. That is good common sense, and it is what it means to use your speech judiciously.

Once, someone had a problem with me and was talking behind my back. Other people tried to draw me into it, asking what I thought of him. I didn’t take the bait. Eventually, word got back to him that I had not answered him in kind. He later apologized and explained that he had been upset. After that, we got along fine.

That is the point: don’t grab a dog by the ears. Don’t get into a fight you don’t need to enter. Don’t keep feeding the fire.

The chapter compares a quarrelsome person to charcoal on embers and wood on a fire. Some people seem determined to keep a quarrel going. They want to fight. But their willingness to argue does not obligate you to join them.

And gossip can be tempting. Its words are described as “choice morsels” that go down into the innermost parts. We take them in, and they affect how we see another person. Gossip poisons relationships. It breaks things.

The chapter also warns about pleasant speech that hides an evil heart. Like a coating of silver dross over earthenware, the outside can look good while concealing what is underneath. Charming words do not always reveal honest intentions. We need discernment in what we believe, just as we need restraint in what we say.

So today’s meditation is simple: watch your speech. Stay out of quarrels that are not yours. Speak when responsibility requires it, and speak directly to the person involved. Don’t backbite. Don’t gossip.

Without wood, the fire goes out. Sometimes the wisest thing you can do is stop supplying the wood.