Category: Solomon Says

I wrote in my post on the ants in Proverb 6:

At some point, I will share my argument that sleeping in and missing work is the least of the problems Solomon is addressing. His larger point with sleep is that we need to pay attention to our lives and what we need. If we’re sleep walking through life we are not providing for our future needs because we’re not aware of them.

So let’s look again at what Proverbs 6 says about sleep: Continue reading “Sleepwalking through life usually makes it worse”

When Solomon says in Proverbs 6, “Go to the ant, O sluggard,” it is easy to completely misunderstand his meaning. We think of ants as mindless drones, so it sounds like we’re being told to engage in mindless labor. Maybe there’s some wisdom to that, but Solomon has a different view of ants. Continue reading “Solomon on Being Your Own Ruler”

The first project I plan to complete is a book for young adults on Proverbs. That’s more or less the reason I started “Solomon Says” (with gracious help from others, including the name of the website). I have written what I might use as a Preface to that book HERE.

The ability to drive a car is a necessary skill for most people in industrialized countries. As a result, it has become a rite of passage into adulthood.

I’ve taught three children how to drive and every one of them experienced not only changing abilities but expanded knowledge. Shortly before they started driving they showed little awareness of the network of roads and locations around our home, even when traveling on familiar routes to familiar places. I would ask them what direction we were heading or where I should turn, and they usually had no idea.

They were just along for the ride. Since they relied on someone else to drive, they didn’t waste mental capacity on such things.

But when they got behind the steering wheel that changed quickly. Suddenly, the maps inside their heads expanded to include virtually the entire metro area and surrounding counties. Learning to drive gave them a new dominion. They grew in their knowledge to accommodate their new powers for a larger realm. It was a profound transformation. When they took on adult responsibilities they transitioned to adult thinking.

So, let’s think about how a child develops when he learns how to drive.

Proverbs talks about creation and wisdom.

Trees of life spring up more than once.

There is a lot about sons being a source of sorrow to their mothers, who had originally praised God they had gotten a man with the help of Yahweh.

And there are fools refusing to listen to rebukes or instruction, when a wise person says, “If you do well, will you not be accepted?”

Lots of warnings about the sons of god desiring the daughters of men.

Violence receives a lot of attention.

What kind of counsel a wife gives is discussed.

And what sort of wife ought to be valued.

Diligence is promised to be rewarded with dominion.

And though wisdom is more valuable than the gold of Havilah, it is a way to get that too.

There are springs of life.

And how cities are built is an important issue.

It is easy to read Proverbs as a meditation on Genesis.

***

Proverbs is difficult for many reasons, one of which is how far “theology” has drifted from the story of the Bible. I’m not necessarily talking about false theology. Even correct theology as it is commonly taught turns Proverbs into alien territory.

Maybe I can explain what the problem is this way:

If you are a believer in a religion that is best expressed as four spiritual laws or a flow-chart or a chart about the dispensations of history, or a scheme of double predestination, or many other things (some of which may or may not be true–the issue is not veracity but primacy), then it will be a mystery to you why God wrote the book of Proverbs and put it in our Bibles.

But…

If you are a practitioner of a religion centered on a story that begins with how God made men and women to relate to Him and one another as they take dominion over the world, and move downstream from their garden home, and find gold, and start trading and have to raise children and eventually build cities that are supposed to further reflect the glory of God, then you will completely understand why the book of Proverbs had to be included as Scripture.

No matter how awesome you battle plan or how ingenious your general, a conflict can only be won by trained troops. If the soldiers run in the face of danger, don’t listen to orders, or don’t follow orders; if they get into arguments that distract them from their duties, they are doomed.

Soldiers can’t expect to do well without weapons and armor, but also weapons and armor will be wasted if the soldiers aren’t trained to constantly care for their equipment.

Likewise, sports. The greatest coach in the world cannot bring a team to victory if the players won’t exercise or practice.

Solomon knows that God has given the law. But he also knows that you can’t follow it naturally. No, I’m not talking about “the natural man,” I’m talking about the impossibility of relying on habits and impulses alone to guide you in a course of action.

Any course of action.

God made us this way. Sin had nothing to do with it at this level. If all humans were supposed to do one and only one thing throughout history, then it could have been wired into us. But God had more diversity in mind. So we can shape ourselves (or commit to shapelessness). We can drive ourselves (or be driven by forces outside our control).

And since this is the way we are, submitting to God’s commands takes a similar form. You can’t decide not to lust after a woman in your heart without mapping out and practicing certain responses with your neck, face, and eye muscles when you are walking across the mall and the Victoria’s Secret store is along your path. Oh, you can “decide” all you want. But until you’ve got your body parts working in formation, it will be a fruitless promise. “Let not him who puts his armor on boast as he who takes it off.”

I was talking to one of my sons about some of these concepts. He watches more basketball than I do. He told me that he’s noticed that some players, when they disagree with the referee, simply cannot shut up and end up getting their whole team penalized.

Here are people who have forced their bodies into shape doing amazing things and yet they are unable to overpower their own mouths?

You are not just a soldier in God’s army, you are a heavenly host. Your eyes, hands, feet, and mouth are your soldiers. Your soul is your drummer keeping time. You need to get him to slow down if he is prone to charge at the wrong occasion.

 

Proverbs begins with a promise of, and praise for, the value of wisdom. Verse 7 warns that fools despise it and/or despise being instructed in it.

Then we come to the first specific warning Proverbs:

Hear, my son, your father’s instruction,
and forsake not your mother’s teaching,
for they are a graceful garland for your head
and pendants for your neck.

My son, if sinners entice you,
do not consent.
If they say, “Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood;
let us ambush the innocent without reason;
like Sheol let us swallow them alive,
and whole, like those who go down to the pit;
we shall find all precious goods,
we shall fill our houses with plunder;
throw in your lot among us;
we will all have one purse”—
my son, do not walk in the way with them;
hold back your foot from their paths,
for their feet run to evil,
and they make haste to shed blood.
For in vain is a net spread
in the sight of any bird,
but these men lie in wait for their own blood;
they set an ambush for their own lives.
Such are the ways of everyone who is greedy for unjust gain;
it takes away the life of its possessors. (Proverbs 1:8-19, ESV)

So of all the sins Solomon could have described and warned against, why is this temptation the first concern of wisdom? Notice that the warning is not against “hate” or some other direct sin that gets pleasure from hurting other people. Violence is a means to an end–an end that Solomon does not think is wrong in itself. People need material wealth to survive and thrive in the world and so young men are tempted to band together and take wealth from other people. In a sense, the possibility of becoming a sadistic sociopath is a warning to the “son.” If he tries to provide for himself by robbery he will become one of those whose “feet run to evil” and who “make haste to shed blood.”

Solomon often seems concerned with how people drift into sin–how they start down a wrong path. In this case, a person who decides to live by robbing others is going against the reason God created humanity. The first recorded command in the Bible is to embrace a life of productivity. God gave this command when he created humanity:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26-28, ESV)

So what is the alternative? If you don’t want to take dominion over the world, you survive and attempt to thrive by taking dominion over other people. If you don’t live by being fruitful, you find those who have done so and cut them off, stealing the fruits of their lives and labors.

Notice how rejecting God’s ways are parasitic. Someone has to work the land and produce good things by labor and exchange. Without such people, human life is impossible. But some find it tempting to let others do the work, and then take a shortcut by using violence to plunder such people.

One implication of all this which I believe Proverbs repeatedly addresses, is that one can’t repudiate plunder without adopting the opposite way of life. Knowing you should not steal or rob is insufficient. You have to embrace as best you can a life of work and savings and investment. Otherwise, you will always find yourself tempted to resort to the other means of acquisition. In fact, by failing to work, you’ve taken the first step toward theft.

Proverbs consists of several books. Notice how the second book in Proverbs, which begins with chapter 10, shows the same concerns:

The proverbs of Solomon.

A wise son makes a glad father,
but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother.
Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit,
but righteousness delivers from death.
The LORD does not let the righteous go hungry,
but he thwarts the craving of the wicked.
A slack hand causes poverty,
but the hand of the diligent makes rich.
He who gathers in summer is a prudent son,
but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who brings shame. (Proverbs 10:1-5; ESV)

So the first temptation is the life of plunder because it will derail you from the life of productivity that God calls you to. And if you want to reject the temptation to live by plunder, the best way to guard yourself is to learn to be productive.

Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these days?” for it is not wise to ask that. — Ecclesiastes 7.10

How can Solomon make such a blanket statement?

The past almost always produces in our perceptions the illusion of stability. But what if every age is an age of transition?

If every age is an age of transition, the transition of the immediate present will always seems so difficult that every age in the past will be remembered as an age of stability. For one thing, other people dealt with past transitions. We the living are dealing with our own perceived disruptions. Actual experience and stress is always more vivid than records of the trials of other people who have long departed. Also, the perceived heritage of the past is perceived as a given that we are accustomed to, while the future is indeterminate and therefore threatening.

Egypt is always remembered as easy.

Thus the trap of trying to go back to a better time.

The common delusions of remembered youth may also be a factor here. About the time you start to get really aware of how life works life has changed from what it was when you were younger. But when you were younger you were protected from much of how life worked. So you think, always, of a past that was more stable than the future.

Time is real and it only goes in one direction. God wants you to trust him for it. The next year is always supposed to be better.