Proverbs 10:21
The lips of the righteous feed many,
But fools die for lack of heart.

Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The righteous
Fools

Their Identifiers in that Order:

Feed many
Die because of lack

And Their Symbolic faculties:

Lips
Heart

Teaching of the Verse:

   The main contrast in this verse is between the fool dying of a sort of starvation, while the righteous has such
plenty he can feed himself and many others.
   The other contrast that catches our attention is between the righteous man's lips and the fool's heart (same as in the previous proverb, except there it was the righteous man's tongue).  The fool's heart is lacking, perhaps missing altogether.  Here his heart is seen as a tool of life, something that could've kept him alive.  When compared to the righteous man's activity, it seems that the fool's heart should have fed him or taken in sustenance.
   Is man's heart an entry port of nutrition?  Of spiritual nutrition, yes!

 Ps 119:11   Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You.

   Because the fool lacks the Creator's communications in his heart, he is a sheep that strays into barren or dangerous land, unable to find his way back.  On his own, his natural end is death.
   Because he acts ignorantly of God, he really is like an animal, with no sense of the Divine, guided only by what's in front of his face.

   The righteous man, on the other hand, has followed Scriptural admonitions and put God's wisdom in his heart:

  Prov 4:4  Let your heart retain My words; keep My commands, and live.

   His heart therefore seeks God:

Ps 27:8  When You said, "Seek My face,"  my heart said to You, "Your face, LORD, I will seek."

   And our hearts become an ever-expanding storehouse to hold more truth and desire for God than we could have imagined:

  Ps 119:32  I will run the course of Your commandments, for You shall enlarge my heart.

    This is the storehouse from which we are to feed many.  But most righteous folk hardly realize they are doing this when they are.  They are so full of Scriptures that the use of them is quite natural; and they are so aware of their own uselessness, that they would never think of themselves as the source of the good others receive from their counsel.  They are quite aware, however, that true good can only flow from the Scriptures.

   One last point of interest:  there is an odd 'mixed bag' here.  The righteous is paired with the fool rather than with the wicked as in all the previous verses.  This unusual pairing highlights the unity of the human spirit: the righteous and the wise are one and the same person; the wicked and the fool are also just different ways to describe the man of godless spirit.

Words of the Verse:

   This is a good place to consider the two different Hebrew words for "fool".  The word for fool in our verse is lywa, eviyl; the uses of this word seem to indicate a fool in his ignorance of God (that is, ignoring God).  This is the word for fool in 10:8, 10, and 14 so far.
   The other word for fool is lysk, kesyl.  This word is used when a more entrenched rejection of God is in view.  It is the word for fool in 10:1 and 10:18 so far.  Its root word means fat, bringing to mind the spiritual condition described in Isaiah 9:10,

  Isa 6:10  Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again, and be healed.


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Proverbs 10:22
 The blessing of the LORD makes one rich,
And He adds no sorrow with it.


Words of the Verse:

   The Hebrew word for "makes one rich" means "causes one to accumulate."  As stated on 10:4, this does not mean we will own as many yachts as shoes; it simply means that we will have more than enough earthly stuff;  enough to live comfortably.

Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The blessing of Jehovah
What comes with the blessing (or, more accurately, what is missing from it)

Teaching of the Verse:

    Here we have another proverb on the accumulation of earthly goods.
   Solomon told us early on that one means of accumulating earthly goods is to rob:

 Prov 1:10-13  My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent.  If they say, "Come with us, let us lie in wait to shed blood; ... We shall find all kinds of precious possessions, we shall fill our houses with spoil

   He has also taught us that hard work is a means of God granting goods:

 Prov 10:4  ... the hand of the diligent makes rich [literally, "causes accumulation" ].

   Our verse today continues the thoughts of these two verses by indicating that our hard work is the usual means by which God ordains to bless us with goods.  Robbery would not be a means by which God blesses with wealth.
   But today's verse indicates that God can bless us with goods by other means than diligence.  God can bless us with possessions, as an example, through an inheritance (See Proverbs 13:22, 17:2, 19:14, and especially 20:21 on inheritances).
   The point Solomon is making is that by whatever legitimate means God grants increase (and a hastily grabbed inheritance is specifically excluded from that list), he does not throw a rattlesnake into the bag with it.  God does not begrudge us the blessings of life.  He has much and to spare.  He is generous.

   Why is it, then, that rich people have so many worries?
   This is what Solomon is really teaching us today, where the worries of wealth come from.  The answer, in the first place, is this: the worries are not from God!

   There is plenty of Scriptural insight on where these worries do come from.  To stick with Solomon:

  Eccl 5:11-12  When goods increase, they increase who eat them; so what profit have the owners except to see them with their eyes?  The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eats little or much; but the abundance of the rich will not permit him to sleep.

   The sad thing is that wealth can come as a blessing and end as a curse.

   What's the real reason riches are so hard to bear?
   Later in Proverbs, another wise man, Agur, clues us in:

 Prov 30:8-9  Give me neither poverty nor riches --  Feed me with the food allotted to me;  lest I be full and deny You, and say, "Who is the LORD?"  Or lest I be poor and steal, and profane the name of my God.

   God has always warned His people about the dulling effects of increase:

 Deut 8:11-14  Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God ...  lest -- when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them; and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied;  when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God ...

   Of course, the goods themselves have no power to effectively erase God from our lives, though the association makes it seem so, but rather it is our sin nature that only needs the smallest excuse to claim independence from God.

   So how did men like Abraham, Job, and Joseph of Arimathea manage to be wealthy and yet godly?  How did they avoid the sorrow that wealthy men usually have?

  1)  They were aware of their own greedy tendencies indicated in all these warnings;
  2)  they truly knew that God, not themselves, granted and maintained their wealth; and
  3)  they would serve God just as happily without the wealth (Job 1:21  "The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD").
  4)  They did actually serve God with their wealth by helping the needy:

Job 29:12 - 16  For I delivered the poor who cried for help, and the fatherless who had none to help him. The blessing of the perishing came on me; and I caused the widow's heart to sing.   I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my judgment was like a robe and a diadem.   I was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame.   I was a father to the poor; and the cause which I did not know, I searched out.

    Godly rich men have no sorrow added to their wealth for the above reasons.  In one sense, you might not even call them rich, sense they count the money as God's, not their own.  Ungodly rich men cannot avoid sorrow with their wealth because they treat the money as their own, not God's.


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Proverbs 10:23
Doing mischief is as merriment to a fool,
But wisdom is as merriment  to a man of discernment.

Analysis of the Verse:

Being compared:

A fool
A man of discernment

Their Characteristics:

Mischief is as merriment
Wisdom is as merriment

Teaching of the Verse:

   This verse gives us an easy spiritual identifier for people.  Whatever is fun to them will tell you where they are spiritually (The Hebrew word for merriment is literally "laughter").
   A basic theological point here is that our affections are very much part of our spiritual makeup.  What we like is what we are.  A lion can't help liking meat; a giraffe can't help liking leaves.  So in the spiritual realm.  Man ultimately only takes in what he prefers.  A carnal man, not born again by the Spirit's power, will eventually 'spit out' any truth he happens to swallow.  It is not according to his palate.  Likewise, a spiritual man will eventually reject influences in his life that are contrary to the glory of his Savior.
   You can't fake what you like, at least not sincerely.
   Sadly, some people live their whole lives pretending to be something they are not.  Unregenerate (not born again) people who were told or who convinced themselves they were Christians live a miserable existence, either trying to invent a form of Christianity that they can tolerate or else suppressing the doubts raised by their dissatisfied spiritual appetites.
   Likewise, a child of God might spend some time in a pigpen (See the Prodigal Son story in Luke 15), but he will eventually realize that his family traits call for something better- for wisdom and its ways in particular.
    The Pharisees could not suppress their basic appetites.  Like pseudo-Christians of all time, their worldly attractions distorted their view of Scriptures on the one hand, and forced unmistakable hypocrisy on the other:

 Matt 23:1 - 4  Then Jesus spoke to the crowd and to His disciples, saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat.   Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, observe and do. But do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do.   For they bind heavy and hard-to-carry burdens and lay them on men's shoulders. But they will not move them with one of their fingers.

 Matt 23:25  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of extortion and excess.

    A close look at many 'big-time' Christians will reveal the same thing.  Fleshly appetites are driving them:  their desire for honor (pride) dwells right alongside their love of money and indulgence in various forms of excess- "mischief" (Heb., "scheming") of all sorts.  These are the attractions that motivate them and which they love to fulfill.

Application:

   What's fun to you ?

   Strange that a sort of silly question like that could reveal our spiritual identity, but according to Proverbs 10:23, it does.  If Biblical learning is not palatable to you (not necessarily a particular style of learning, but at least true learning), this proverb indicates you, at the least, are not a man of wisdom.  From that discovery, a man of any true wisdom would set out to make the pursuit of wisdom his passion, for there simply is no being a Christian without the pursuit of wisdom:

  1 Cor 1:29-30  But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God

   And if Christ is our wisdom, His source of wisdom is our source of wisdom too:

 John 8:31-32 Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, "If you abide in My Word, you are My disciples indeed."


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Proverbs 10:24  
That which the wicked fears shall come upon him,
but the desire of the righteous is granted.


Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The wicked person's fear
The righteous person's desire

Their Outcomes:

Comes to him
Is granted to him

Teaching of the Verse:

   The simplicity of the proverbs veils their scientific precision.
   With the commonest of terms Solomon conveys the depths of God's various dealings with men.

   The wicked person's fear means a bad outcome he can imagine happening in his life- an imagination he suppresses.
   The righteous person's desire is what he hopes to happen but does not necessarily expect.
   Two imaginations contrasted.

   The wicked man's fear is a prophecy in his conscience that the sin he has sown in his life he must therefore harvest.  It comes upon him as surely as the sun rises.
   The righteous man's desire is recognized by God and is granted to him as a reward for his endurance in doing good.
   Two imaginations becoming realities.

   Each new day on earth brings both of these outcomes to light over and over again.  One man's sin may take years to germinate, meanwhile vexing him over the coming feared harvest; but come it shall.  A good man's desires may also go unsatisfied for years, but God chooses the most appropriate time, and a time of the man's own proper ripening, to grant these desires.

   Are you ready to give up on desires you had thought God would grant?

Gal 6:9  But we should not lose heart in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we do not faint.


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Proverbs 10:25
When the whirlwind passes by, the wicked is no more,
But the righteous has an everlasting foundation.


Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The wicked
The righteous

Their Two Outcomes:

Gone after the whirlwind
An everlasting foundation

Teaching of the Verse:

   Here is another proverb to train the eye of faith.  The unbeliever looks quite secure in his earthly life.  See him, though, as gone, for so he shall be (and so the better to warn him and pray for him).  The believer looks meager and tossed about.  He is actually standing on an unmovable, though invisible, foundation.  Train the eye of faith to 'see' that foundation and be confident.

   The whirlwind in this verse represents the vicissitudes of life.  The Fall has brought all manner of catastrophe into the domain God gave us (that being earth).  Each of these is directed by God to accomplish His ends in the lives of all peoples on the earth.  His destructive providences include literal whirlwinds, meaning hurricanes and such:

Nah 1:3  ...The LORD has His way in the whirlwind and in the storm

Ps 83:15  So pursue them with Your tempest, and frighten them with Your storm [our same Hebrew word].

   By storms, earthquakes, epidemics, etc., God puts dramatic emphasis on the fact that He is the one who determines the day of each man's death, and men must always be ready should it be their day.  Solomon has already spoken of God's use of the whirlwind in the lives of those who ignore him:

  Prov 1:25-28  "Because you disdained all my counsel, and would have none of my rebuke, I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your terror comes, when your terror comes like a storm, and your destruction comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you.  Then they will call on me, but I will not answer"

   This is Wisdom calling out.  In Proverbs 8, Wisdom is portrayed as God's 'right hand man' (actually, 'woman') in all His works.  She is His handmaid.  So when she sends a hurricane, it is at God's bidding.

   In case you have heard that God does not send natural disasters (unfortunately, a common teaching in our day), just ask yourself, where else could they come from?  Is Satan a cosmic terrorist, actually succeeding in planting 'bombs' everywhere, with God playing the sympathetic but inept fireman, coming behind to put out the blazes?
   Did you notice who sent the storms in the above verses?  Furthering that notion, we see that God is actual speaking in the storm:

  Ps 29:3  The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders...  5 The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars, yes, the LORD splinters the cedars of Lebanon...  7 The voice of the LORD divides the flames of fire...  9 The voice of the LORD makes the deer give birth, and strips the forests bare; and in His temple everyone says, "Glory!"

   God not only claims storms unapologetically, His priests ministering in the Temple during the storm recognized them as specific manifestations of His glory, and so they worshipped.  Sad that so many have grown embarrassed of the works of God in our day.  Worse, they ascribe the works of God to Satan or to the blind forces of nature.

   This is by no means the main teaching of the verse, but it is an important truth, without which the verse cannot be understood.

   Solomon's real point is that the heavier trials of life, symbolized by and including the hurricane, will sift mankind, removing the unbeliever from his supposed immovable vantage point.  The same trials may remove many earthly advantages from a believer, but he will still be found clinging, all the more tightly, to the One who was his hope in the first place.


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Proverbs 10:26  
Like vinegar to the teeth, and like smoke to the eyes,
so is the lazy one to those who send him.


Analysis of the Verse:

Being illustrated:

The lazy one

Compared to:

Vinegar on teeth
Smoke in the eyes

Teaching of the Verse:

   To put this in a brief paraphrase:  "A lazy person is irritating to someone counting on him."

   Why would this be?

   Because:
       1)  A lazy person doesn't get the job done, or he does an incomplete job, or he messes up the task through a slothful approach to it; and
       2)  He is the master of excuses.  There are a thousand reasons he couldn't complete the task, or couldn't complete it on time, or couldn't do it as assigned.  His excuses come as naturally to him as his laziness.  These excuses are, of course, deceit, but so cleverly mixed with reality as to frustrate most any attempt to unravel them.

   Why is Solomon telling us this?
       1)  We're all lazy by nature; we need the tell-tale signs to expose laziness in ourselves.  Remember, laziness doesn't mean we don't have any energy.  Lazy people are usually as energetic as anyone else when they're doing something they like  their way.  
    If we're wondering why people who count on us are irritated with us, maybe it's because we're lazy.
      2)  We need to see through other peoples' laziness to keep from being frustrated by it.  When we begin to be irritated by someone, perhaps it is not that we are impatient.  Perhaps it is that they are lazy.  Smoke is going to irritate my eyes no matter how patient I am.
       3)  We need to know whom to get rid of in the job detail, perhaps whom to demote or reassign (any sensible person will at least keep vinegar off his teeth and close his eyes around smoke).  OR we need to know whom to hold strictly accountable, no excuses, until they abandon their lazy ways.


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Proverbs 10:27
 The fear of the LORD prolongs days,
But the years of the wicked will be shortened.


Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The fear of Jehovah being a man's lifestyle
Wickedness being a man's lifestyle

Their Two Outcomes:

Adding days to life
Curtailing years

Teaching of the Verse:

   The simple, if somewhat surprising, truth here is that godliness actually tends to lengthen life.  Ungodliness tends to shorten life.
   Such a claim accosts our modern judgment as an unscientific and therefore unreliable boast.  However, consider the ability of science to test such a claim.  Has a study ever been done which first of all divided its test groups according to Biblical descriptions of the God-fearing and the wicked?  If one did, and if God is the author of Scriptures, we should find that the average life span of the righteous man is noticeably longer than that of the wicked.  In fact, studies which approximate these categories already hint at this very conclusion.
   What do insurance companies base their life insurance rates on?  Actuarial tables:  statistics of certain lifestyles which put men into categories of longer or shorter lives.  A smoker gets one insurance premium, a non-smoker another.  The insurance company simply follows the statistics.  From our perspective, we can see this as one indicator, perhaps even one of the less significant indicators, of a godly lifestyle.  The God-fearing man sees a prohibition against harming his body because it is the creation of God, so he doesn't smoke.
   If we expanded the test parameters into all areas of godliness and ungodliness, we would see an even more marked difference between the life spans of the one lifestyle and the other.

   Notice that the good man is adding days, the bad man is shaving off years.  Of course, the righteous man's days can add up to years, but he is accumulating them slowly, naturally.  Godliness is simply the best lifestyle for the creature man.
   The more pronounced are a man's wicked practices, the more dramatically his demise hastens.  He can cut a decade or two off his life with a year or two of wild living, phobic worry, or vengeful anger.

   Don't forget that these are tendencies, borne out by mass statistics.  Individual cases may differ drastically, as Scriptures already affirm:
Eccl 7:15  I have seen everything in my days of vanity:  there is a just man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs life in his wickedness.

   But even the day by day quality of life is to be considered if you are comparing Christianity to its counterparts:
1 Tim 4:8  For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.

    Finally, what Paul here calls "godliness," Solomon is calling the fear of Jehovah.  Once again, this seems primitive to us.  Most Christians are hesitant to speak of fearing God.  It sounds like we have a vengeful little deity chasing us around with threats.  Rather, we must realize that fearing God is the only REAL way to approach Him.  We are to love God, but why?  Because He is good and loving.  But we must also fear God.  Any why?  Jesus said it best:

Luke 12:4, 5  And I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.  But I will warn you of whom you shall fear: Fear Him who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yea, I say to you, fear Him.

    Yes, this is a threat, but no idle one.  Jesus is telling His disciples how to relate to God.  All men are driven by some fear, some negative motivator.  Until God saves us, the fear of man drives us.  We care what people approve or disapprove of.  As Christians we learn that only God can threaten a consequence really worth avoiding.  It is therefore right to gear our lives towards avoiding His displeasure.  Again, this does not mean we stop loving Him.  Just like a good earthly father should be both loved and feared, so with our Heavenly Father.  Besides, the fear of God increases our lifespan.

   This is really our proper stopping place, but considering the statistics on obesity and overweightness in our culture, let us notice from the above verse that bodily exercise is not scoffed by the religious man.  It says bodily exercise is profitable.  It's just that its profit is limited by the impermanence of the body and is limited compared to the greater profit of godliness.  But the man who says bodily exercise is of no profit will likely be impinging even on his godliness eventually by the irritating mess his body will become.


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Proverbs 10:28  
The expectation of the righteous is gladness;
but the hope of the wicked shall perish.


Words of the Verse:

   The Hebrew words for "hope" and "expectation" are both used in some places for the righteous and other places for the wicked, so there is no moral or spiritual difference in the definitions of the words themselves.  The first word's root means to wait, while the second word literally means a cord, as in a hope held onto.

Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The righteous man's hope
The wicked man's expectation

Their Two Outcomes:

Gladness
Disintegrates, unravels

Teaching of the Verse:

   The first unusual sounding aspect of this verse is that the righteous man's hope is or shall be gladness, happiness.  Does this mean that he is hoping for happiness, or
that the result of his hope will be happiness, or
that, having this hope, he is presently happy?  
   Perhaps a combination of more than one of these possibilities?  None of the three possibilities is ruled out by any other truth in Scriptures.  Often, when the wording of a passage allows for more than one equally valid interpretation, I wonder if the Spirit has not, in fact, intended to convey multiple truths simultaneously, especially when they are complementary, as the three above, I believe, are.  The Christian hopes for happiness; he doesn't just expect bad things.  The end result of the Christian's hope will be happiness; much happiness in the short term, and permanent happiness later.  The Christian is happy now, tasting present fruits of righteousness.

   In any event, this proverb is a teaching about our futures.  One clear difference between men and animals is that men look towards the future with expectation and planning.  Men make plans based on hopes, and men have hopes in bringing those plans about.  This is not restricted to believers, nor even to religious folk in general.  Fallen mankind still has hopes for itself; men have hopes for their families, men have individual goals.  For most humans, their valuation of life itself can be measured by their hopes.  The stock they actually place in life is not in their present enjoyment, but in what they hope for the future.

   In our verse today we have mankind divided into its two relations to the future.  All men have hopes, but not all hopes are realized.  Why does God allow the wicked to even entertain hopes?  Is He just taunting them, setting up false expectations so He can dash them later?  
   No, but rather, the word to the unbeliever is:

  Rom 2:4  ... do you despise the riches of His kindness, and the forbearance and the long-suffering, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?

   God is giving the unbeliever room to hope as part of His overall patience with him.  God grants many of the unbeliever's hopes in His kindness; but that kindness is part of His extension of a call to repentance, a temporary clemency God grants in man's war with Him.  When the unbeliever decides to go on worshiping and serving the creature rather than the Creator, has he not justly called upon himself the outcome warned of in our verse today?

    "the hope of the wicked shall perish."

   On the other hand, isn't it nice to know that God has not only provided escape from punishment in His salvation through Christ, but He has also provided for our gladness.  We are not only rescued from misery, we are given an overwhelming joy.  That joy may be dimmed by many trials while we are being counted worthy for God's eternal kingdom, but the joy can be renewed as we remember that, by its very nature, hope ultimately awaits a day beyond this life, but a day as sure to come as God is faithful:

  Rev 21:4  And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. And death shall be no longer, nor mourning, nor outcry, nor will there be pain any more; for the first things passed away.


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Proverbs 10:29
The way of Jehovah is strength to the upright,
And ruin to workers of iniquity.

Words of the Verse:  

   "Way" is from the Hebrew word for "path".  "Strength" is the from the word for "fortress".  "Ruin" is from a word meaning to come apart, be undone.  "Iniquity" is from a Hebrew word for empty scheming.

Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The two ways Jehovah's path is received

The Two Receivers:

The upright
Workers of iniquity

Their Two Receptions:

Strength, a stronghold
Ruin, an undoing, an unraveling

Graphically:

The
Mischief
Upright
<< Fortress for <<<
Path of
>>> Undoing for >>
 Makers
Jehovah

Teaching of the Verse:

   Here is another proverb where the presence of God is central, as in 10:3, the results examined flowing from two different responses to Him.
   The main question the verse raises is from its second half:  how can Jehovah's path be the undoing of those who do not even travel it?  Is Solomon speaking of life as a path God lays out, the activators of nefarious deeds coming unhinged thereon?  OR is he speaking of workers of iniquity who are on God's path by being in church, making some kind of profession of godliness?
   Some take "the path of Jehovah" not as the path He sets out for man to walk, but the path He Himself takes in His dealings with the world; as in Psalm 25:10,

 Psa 25:10  All the paths of Jehovah are mercy and truth to those who keep His covenant and His testimonies.

      This means God takes the path of- operates according to- mercy and truth in dealing with His people.  But this does not accord as well with the path being a stronghold for the upright, for how can the path God Himself takes be a place of refuge for me, unless it is in my belief that He takes it?  Rather, the more straightforward reading is that God's path means the one He lays for us.  As His people walk the path He lays out, they are strengthened therein.

   So back to the 'problem' of the verse.  How can the rebellious interact with God's path in such a way as to ruin them?  Don't they avoid God's pathways?
   First, a confirmation that the wicked do actually walk God's path in some sense:  the same thing is said in nearly the same way by Hosea:

 Hos 14:9  Who is wise and discerns these things? Who is discerning and knows them? For the ways of Jehovah are right, and the righteous shall walk in them; but transgressors shall stumble in them.

   The word "ways" is the same Hebrew word as the one in our verse.  In fact, the whole idea of Hosea 14:9 is the same as our verse.  Still, the question remains:  Is every wicked man somehow on Jehovah's path in his ordinary life?
   To answer this we must ask:  Do God's directions, His ways, reach the lost man?  The answer to this is Yes:

 2Co 2:14- 16  But thanks be to God, the One always leading us in triumph in Christ, and the One revealing through us the odor of the knowledge of Him in every place.  For we are a sweet smell to God because of Christ in those being saved, and in those being lost; to the one, an odor of death unto death, and to the other, an odor of life unto life.

   God's Word reaches each man, either by the Creation outside himself,

 Ps 19:1-4 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork.  Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge.  There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard.  Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

   ... or by the creation that is himself:

 Rom 2:14-15  for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, 15 who show the work of the law written in their hearts

   So wicked men do know God's paths.  Their lives are basically a response to those paths.  That is how they are undone in those paths.  Their wickedness, 'caught' on God's Law, unravels them like a knit sweater caught on a nail.  
   That same nail is a welcome fastener in our lives:

 Eccl 12:11  The words of the wise are like goads, and the words of scholars are like well-driven nails, given by one Shepherd.

   Or, to summarize both responses in one verse:

 1Co 1:18 For the Word of the cross is foolishness to those being lost, but to us being saved, it is the power of God.

    One last important thought:  To the degree that I am upright (walking in the image of God in Christ), I exude strength.  To the degree that I part from uprightness, I undo myself, having invited God's displeasure.


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Proverbs 10:30
 The righteous will never be removed,
But the wicked will not inhabit the earth.


Words of the Verse:

   The Hebrew word for "earth" can also be translated "land".

Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The righteous
The wicked

Their Futures:

Never removed
Not inhabit the earth

Teaching of the Verse:

   Solomon has been like a forensic photographer in this first chapter of proverbs proper.  He is trying to capture for us, his audience, a complete study in contrast between the estranged twins, the righteous and the wicked.  He is snapping pictures from as many angles and in as many poses as he can.  He is showing us that these two brothers, both born enemies of God, are now as different as they can be.  One has now been reconciled to God; everything he formerly hated, he now loves, and vice-versa.  
   They still look like twins on the outside.  They're both still humans going about earthly life.  This is why Solomon is taking such care to highlight the differences.  We wouldn't see them unless they were pointed out.  Once we see them, everything is different.  We can scarcely believe both men were born of Adam, for one has now been adopted back into the family of Christ.
   Today's verse pulls back from the 'brothers-no-more' a bit to take in the surrounding landscape:  earth, mountains, valleys, rivers, seas- all contested ground.  All claimed by both men.
   Each brother has some right to claim the earth as his:

Ps 115:16   The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD's; but the earth He has given to the children of men.

   Earth was ours to do with as we pleased.  We pleased to sign it over to Satan.  Now we have become more or less his caretakers; he is the real ruler, as Jesus indicated:

John 14:30 I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me.

   Of course, in this verse, Jesus excepts Himself from Satan's reign.  Those under Christ's protection would, therefore, seem to have some claim to the same exception.  Satan no longer has dominion over us for the doing of his will.
   But does Satan have general authority in the earth?  Paul still calls Satan

Eph 2:2  ... the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience

   Satan is still a prince, not a deposed pretender.  Again, he has this right because 'the earth God has given to man,'  Ps 115:16, and God gave man the authority to sign it over.  God will take it back; there will be consequences for this unrighteous signing over; but for now it is still signed over.
   How far along is Christ in taking earth back?  This is a major fork in the road for various theologies, but I think we have already proved that He has not taken it back yet.  If He had  wanted to, He could have.  He is, in fact, 'at the door,' having won the right to reclaim earth, now awaiting only the matter of times which are in the Father's hands.  Satan is on borrowed time and on borrowed ground, but that has been true in some sense from the beginning.
   Our verse today tells us who will most assuredly 'inherit the earth' when all is said and done.  We are told this, once again, to train the eye of faith, for the answer is contrary to appearances.  The wicked seem to have firm hold of the earth.  Things seem to be going their way.  Things will largely go their way until God has deemed our numbers and our refinement complete:

Rev 13:7   It was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation.

   This is Christ's to give Satan, for He said,

Matt 28:18   "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth."

   Our claim in token of the fact that we will reign with Christ in righteousness (on earth, I believe, even before the new heavens and earth) is this:

Rom 6:18   And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

   We show our eventual permanence on the earth by our righteous lives.    
   The wicked show their impermanence by their disobedience to God.


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Proverbs 10:31  
The mouth of the just flourishes with wisdom,
but the perverse tongue shall be cut off.



Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The mouth of the just
The perverse tongue

Their Activities:

Germinates wisdom
Is cut off

Teaching of the Verse:

   Now we end chapter 10 with two more proverbs on the tongue.  This has probably been the single dominant theme in the chapter, with verses 11, 13, 14, 18, 19, 20, 21, and now 31 and 32 considering the tongue in at least half the verse.
   James indicates that the tongue is really the decisive element in man:

Jam 3:2  For we all stumble in many ways. If any one does not stumble in word, this one is a mature man, able also to bridle the whole body.

   Solomon is certainly on track with this.  Man is a unified being, all his parts working together, but the one aspect of us that most determines and defines our spiritual state is how we use our mouths.
   The word 'just' in this version (The Literal Version of the Holy Bible) is the same as 'righteous' in all the previous verses.  The righteous man shows what a mouth is made for.  His mouth blossoms forth the wisdom which has germinated down in his soul, from his listening to and meditating on Scriptures and from his ensuing humble conversations with God.  From there come his words, springing up with the nourishment of wheat, the beauty of flowers, and the healing of herbs.  His enriching words unfold from his soul as naturally as plants sprout from the earth.
   The words of the wicked, on the other hand, are like weeds that are only good to be cut down.  Solomon has already said this about the wicked themselves:

Prov 2:22   But the wicked will be cut off from the earth, and the unfaithful will be uprooted from it.
   More especially will their tongues be cut off.  Consider the previous proverb and man's authority over the earth.  God's authority is in His word,

Ps 33:9   For He spoke, and it was done;  He commanded, and it stood fast,

  therefore, man, as God's image, projects authority in his words:

Ps 12:4  "With our tongue we will prevail; our lips are our own; who is lord over us?"

   Man's prideful spirit is always given expression through his words:

Gen 11:4   "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves..."

   And so the cosmic contest is a war of words; not meaning a war devoid of real power and destruction, but a war of great power and destruction!

2 Cor 10:4-5  For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, 5 casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ

   The only weapons mentioned in this warfare are thoughts and words.  Yet that is where the battle is fought.  That's why our prayers, our confessions of God's will in request form, are so important:

Eph 6:12   For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

   These spiritual hosts have made a declaration with their leader:

Isa 14:13-14  'I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.'

   The righteous man makes the opposite declaration:  "I will be under the Most High."
   But the wicked has mirrored and continues to mirror Satan's declaration.  That is why we should see the justice in the final doom declared against man in our proverb today.  All his boasts, which are a direct confrontation with God, will be ended.  We should humbly say with the Psalmist:

Ps 12:3-4  May the LORD cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaks proud things, who have said, "With our tongue we will prevail... '


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Proverbs 10:32  
The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable,
But the mouth of the wicked what is perverse.



Words of the Verse:

   The Hebrew word for "acceptable" means pleasing, favorable, or delightful.
   The word for "perverse" is from a root word meaning to turn over, change, with an implication of fraud.
   By ellipsis, the second half of the verse says that the wicked mouth knows fraud.

Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

What the lips of the righteous know
What the mouth of the immoral knows

Things Known by Each:

Acceptable things
Bent things

Teaching of the Verse:

   This is indeed a surprising verse.  How can lips know anything?  Don't my lips just say what my mind knows?
   The point of this proverb is that the speaking function of the soul is not so much one mode of its operation as it is the automatic expression of whatever is in the heart (or whole inner man, however you label its components).  As we put it when considering Prov. 10:19, the tongue is 'hard-wired' to the spirit.  The tongue is an infallible guide to what is in the heart.
   So lips do know.  They are the automatic messengers of my inner being.
   Therefore, if my inner being is twisted by sin into non-conformity to God's ways, my lips are going to express that.  If my soul has been brought into alignment with God's Law, my tongue will make that known.  Not only this, my words are going to be as on target as my spirit is.  Every degree of spiritual immaturity in my spirit is going to have its expression in my unfortunate choice of or purely backwards words.
   This means that we have to be very careful in coming to understand God's Word.  If I am trying to express a Biblical point and cannot do it well, I have doubtless not understood that truth as well as I may have thought.
   Again, Solomon is telling us that, be they ever so clever, the unrighteous will ultimately be unable to hide their defective spirits.  The Pharisees couldn't do it in the presence of the Lord Jesus.  That's because Jesus knew from Scripture what is pleasing to God, and by this knowledge, the Pharisees' in-depth but false teachings were seen through and exposed.
   On the other hand, Jesus' own words were acceptable to God, including His harsh but accurate denunciations of the Pharisees.

   Righteous lips know because righteous ears are tuned in to Scriptures.
   Wrong-headed lips derive their knowledge from being tuned in to man's natural spirit; one which naturally tunes out Scriptures.


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Proverbs 11:1
Balances of deceit are an abomination to Jehovah,
But a perfect weight is His delight.

Words of the Verse:

   The Hebrew for "perfect" is 'shalem'; from the same root as 'shalom', peace; it means complete.
   The word for "delight" is the same as the one for "acceptable" in the previous proverb (10:32).
   The word for a "weight" is literally the word for a stone, since a standard type and size of stone was used as a balance to determine weights.  
   An "abomination" is something disgusting, revolting, or hateful.

Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

Balances of deceit
A correct weight

Their Descriptions Respectively:

Hateful to Jehovah
Delights Jehovah

Teaching of the Verse:

   This is a teaching about how God responds to men's business dealings.  Notice that God does not take a 'business-like' approach to business matters.  He is deeply affected by them.  This is because:
 Psa 11:7   ... the righteous Jehovah loves righteousness.

   This is one of the fundamental tensions between us and Him.  We tend to think of right and wrong as add-ons to life; there's life, then there's the rules you add on.  For God, right and wrong is at the core of things.  This is because:

 1 John 1:5   God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.

   Frankly, we see such rigid personality fixation as a limitation.  We associate strict right-and-wrongness with childish thinking; and if many Christians would voice what they really feel, they would confess that they don't conceive of God as a well-developed being.  He's all-powerful, so you can't argue with Him, but, come on!  Eternity in Hell for 70 years of sinning?  He's all-knowing, so you can't put one by Him, but I wonder if all that attention to countless details hasn't made Him a bit eccentric!
   This suspicion is as natural to us as breathing.  We were born in darkness.  God is altogether light.  Naturally there are going to have to be some big adjustments if we're going to have a relationship.
   Guess what.  God's not going to budge.  The fact that He bridged the chasm between Creator and creature, between finite and infinite, becoming a man to save us, indicates to our minds that He's willing to bend the rules to have us.  This appeals to us.  So when we read verses about His seeming inflexibility, we think we're seeing a less God-like side of Him.
   In fact, God compromised none of His fixed characteristics to save us.  That is the wonder of the Gospel.  God met all His own righteous requirements in Jesus' life and death.  
   So God loves righteousness and God loves me.  If He had to choose ...?  No question, righteousness will never go.  But that's the whole point.  He's going to have us by making us righteous (sanctification).  He began by declaring us righteous (justification), which, hopefully, we can now see is a very precious act to Him, since it is His clothing us with His own Son's righteousness.  The Gospel "delights" Jehovah because in it His Son takes our scales of deceit and sets them back to even.
    This verse also tells us why we need the gospel.  We come into this world operating on "balances of deceit."  Think of the paradox!  A balance is something that measures precisely, something built to 'tell the truth.'  Only a truly wicked creature could use a measurment of precision to tell a lie!  How desparately we need Christ's righteousness, both covering us (justification) and filling us (sanctification).

   Well, back to 'business.'  
   Balances were basic tools of commerce.  Put fish (or whatever you're buying) in one pan of the balance, and put the weighted stones in the other pan until the balance evens out.  The weight of the stones tells you how much the fish weighs.  Now compute the price by shekels (or dollars) per pound.
   The crooked merchant would find ways to overcharge his customer.  He might hollow out the weighing stones so the balance would hold more of them and the fish would seem to weigh more and so cost more.  Our verse says that this disgusts God.
   The righteous merchant, who has the customer at the same disadvantage as the crooked one, nevertheless holds himself to the correct weights.  God takes pleasure in this.
   Each of these approaches is a basic life posture on righteousness.  Each business philosophy is a confession of fundamental morals.  There is no easier place to assess a man's spirit than in his use of 'stuff'.  This is why Jesus says,

 Luke 16:11  Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon [earthly money and capital; what the world uses unrighteously, but you must turn to good use], who will commit to your trust the true riches?

   Here, both the pietistic and the worldly-wise Christian falls short.
   The pietist pretends that money is of no consequence.  Jesus says it is fundamental, elemental.
   The worldly-wise says, "Hey, play by the rules of the game!  Fair is fair!"  Meaning be unfair to others who are unfair.  But God says to hold a perfect standard always for His sake.

   How dreadful, eh?  That something so mundane could sell us out as fakes.  We'd prefer some complex spiritual formula that we could then interpret more loosely to our advantage.  Eventually, though, the true Christian will be brought to this position, and it will apply to his money as much as to anything else:

 Ps 11:7    For Jehovah is righteous, He loves righteousness.   (NKJV; above, Ps. 11:7 is from the Modern King James Version)


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Proverbs 11:2
Pride comes, then shame comes;
but with the lowly is wisdom.



Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

Pride
Lowliness

Their Accompaniments:

Shame
Wisdom

Teaching of the Verse:

  Here is our first proverb on pride.  Pride is the state of boasting in, glorying in, or honoring self.  There is a proper kind of boasting in Scriptures:

  Jer 9:23, 24   So says Jehovah, Do not let the wise glory in his wisdom, nor let the mighty glory in his might; do not let the rich glory in his riches; but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am Jehovah
   Or a boasting in God's works that bring Him glory:

  2 Cor 9:2   For I know your eagerness, of which I boast to Macedonia on your behalf, that Achaia was ready a year ago; and your zeal has aroused the greater number.
   But our proverb is talking about the wrong kind of pride- unfortunately, the usual kind of human pride.
   Whenever our boast is in ourselves or our own doings, shame has already been summoned to appear on our behalf.  It is an amazingly predictable occurrence.  Pride gets lodged in our system, then humiliation has to come along to splinter the logjam.  Notably, this is a great grace from God.  God is always working to keep pride from outright destroying us:

  Job 33:14 - 18  For God speaks once, yea, twice, but not one takes notice.  In a dream, a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on men; while they slumber on the bed; then He opens the ear of men and seals their teaching, so that He may turn man from his act, that He might hide pride from man.  He keeps back his soul from the Pit, and his life from perishing by the sword.

   This is certainly intriguing information about where some dreams come from.  Apparently, the upsetting weirdness of some dreams is to sap our confidence a bit and make us more cautious, less presumptuous (there are other Biblically stated reasons for dreams, too).  Imagine how violent the world would be without this (and other) ongoing graciousness on God's part.  All fostered by pride.

   So God has to knock man down a peg to better him.  This brings us to the second half of our verse.  
   With the lowly, the fellow who is already low, is wisdom.  This person has just as much inclination to pride as the other, but he has wisdom to see it as a destructive tendency; so he 'does God's work for Him' (actually, with Him), and knocks himself down a peg, as often as it takes.  This is the chief wisdom that is always "with" him, helping him.
   By the way, here's an obvious benefit of trials.  When we are battered by life's difficulties, the 'lowerating' we need is already being done for us.  Of course, the incorrigible boaster will still clench his fist at God / His providence; but God will remind him in the end that it really was for his own good.

   How harmful really is pride?  How seriously should you take humbling yourself generally?  Pride is the stated policy of someone we probably don't want to follow (oh, if we could only see his reflection whenever pride creeps over us!):

Isa 14:12 - 15   How you are fallen from the heavens, O Shining Star, Son of the Morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations!  For you have said in your heart, I will go up to the heavens, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north.  I will go up above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High.   Yet you shall be brought down to Hell, to the sides of the Pit.


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Proverbs 11:3
 The completeness of the upright guides them,
but the subversiveness of cunning ones will overwhelm them.



Words of the Verse:

   Here we have a group of Hebrew words (translated by completeness, upright, guide; subversiveness, cunning, overwhelm) either not used yet in Proverbs, or only used in the introductory chapters (1 - 9).  Perhaps Solomon is branching off of the idea of pride in the previous proverb as a main seedbed from which new problems in the human soul should be considered.

Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The upright man's completeness / maturity
The cunning man's subversiveness

Their Characteristics:

Guides
Will overwhelm

Teaching of the Verse:

   Notice the 'autonomy' of the upright man in this verse, if we may borrow a term usually reserved for rebellious man.  He is equipped with an internal guidance system.  It is his own spiritual maturity of character that is said to guide him.  The description of this inner rule is his 'completeness', a word God used in describing Job.
   Now considering how many verses tell us that the godly man is guided by God's words, by the Spirit's leading and not his own, we know that Solomon is not talking about absolute autonomy.  In fact, it is an autonomy based on autonomy's reverse.  The man who has a trustworthy inner compass is the man who has trained himself to listen completely and solely to God.  This has honed his soul to a fine edge; yes, he is sharp, like the two-edged sword that has sundered and shaped him away from his old self into something new.  But did God shape him into a mindless drone?  A little tin soldier who only salutes to keep from thinking?
   Apparently, God intends to reinstall His image in us such that we really are His representatives.  It would not accurately represent God for us to be machines.  God is free of any compulsion except His own righteousness, and that is how He will have us also.
   So the mature Christian will be so remolded as to be a truly fitting vessel for God's will.  He will not be an anomaly; His practice of righteousness will be from his real nature.  Actually, he will finally be 'at home' with his matured Christian character guiding him.

   Contrary to the upright, the cunning man (the one who, from the Hebrew word, operates from 'under cover'; he puts forth appearances to cover his true intentions, thus seeking to work situations and people to his own advantage) is guided by his natural inner subversiveness / manipulativeness.  Unfortunately, this man seems to have the run of the board, doing what comes naturally without having to relearn anything.  A little of his mischief goes a long way (Eccl. 9:18).
   However, this very inner impulse, convincing him of its great advantage, is only growing as a wave that will come crashing down on him.  It will be the beast he arrogantly rides until it bucks him and eats him.  The beast is named subversiveness (from a root meaning to wrench).  The man whose mind is all one big map of how he will manipulate his little world into the shape he wants or pay back anyone frustrating him, is not truly guided along a path as is the upright; instead, he is driven by his own desires.  They are his master, so he can never really be his own master.  He is the one Jesus describes:

John 8:34    Whoever practices sin is the slave of sin.

   So which do you give evidence of being: a free man guided by a God-trained character, or a droid whose defective programming is on a course for meltdown?


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Proverbs 11:4  
Riches do not profit in the day of wrath,
but righteousness delivers from death.



Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

Riches
Righteousness

Their Characteristics:

Can't hold off vengeance
Delivers from death

Teaching of the Verse:

   Solomon now returns to his first theme statement of the 'proverbs proper' (chapters 10 - 31).  Proverbs 10:1 was a summary of the underlying theme (authority) of the introductory chapters (1 - 9); Proverbs 10:2 opened the proverbs proper by introducing Proverbs'  fundamental characteristic- righteousness:

Prov 10:2  Treasures of wickedness profit nothing, but righteousness delivers from death.

   The second half of 10:2 and our verse today are identical.  The first halves are similar, with two intriguing differences:  In 11:4 it is just riches by themselves, and their uselessness is in reference to a particular situation.  Actually, Solomon could not have said that riches 'profit nothing' without qualification, because:

Eccl 10:19 A feast is made for laughter, and wine makes merry; but money answers everything.

   Riches do profit, just not in any ultimate sense.
   Our verse today suggests that riches are an especially lame offering in the 'day of wrath'.

   So what is this 'day of wrath'?  The first day of wrath a Christian might think of would be Judgment Day, a day in which God's just anger is finally brought to its sentencing point on all unbelievers.  This is, indeed, the ultimate Day of Wrath Solomon is referencing.  
   But this proverb also refers to any other day of reckoning, whether by God, such as in the destruction of Jerusalem, or by man, such as a king who is angry,

Pro 19:12  The king's wrath is like the roaring of a lion ...

   or by anyone whose anger will accept no ransom:

Pro 6:34, 35   For jealousy is the rage of a man; therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance.  He will not take any ransom; nor will he be willing if you multiply the gifts.

   Solomon is trying to create the greatest possible tension in our minds between righteousness and any of its competitors.  Men see money do marvelous things here on earth; they implicitly put their trust in it.  Solomon seeks to break that spell by simple logic:  will money turn back the anger of an offended king or a jealous husband?  Then why would you think it has any real power?
   But righteousness, though not exchangeable on Wall Street, is a far more dependable commodity.  It is Christ's righteousness that has delivered us from death:

Rom. 5:17  ... those who are receiving the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness shall rule in life by the One, Jesus Christ.

   It is righteousness in our lives that indicates Christ's righteousness is actually ours:

John 3:7  Little children, let no one lead you astray; the one practicing righteousness is righteous, even as that One is righteous.
   We praise God for the gift of righteousness (justification), and we pray God grants ample evidence of our justification by our sanctification (righteousness in our lives).

   Those who do not have this foundational righteousness and its supporting evidence will find the most powerful human tools of deliverance useless:

Ezek 7:19  They shall throw their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be an impure thing.  Their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of Jehovah.  They shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels; because their iniquity has become a stumbling-block for them.

Zeph 1:14, 15  The great day of Jehovah is near; it is near and rushing greatly, the voice of the day of Jehovah.  The mighty man shall cry bitterly there.  That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of waste and ruin, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, ...
Zeph 1:18  Their silver nor their gold will not be able to deliver them in the day of Jehovah's wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of His jealousy.  For He shall make even a full, yea, a speedy end of all the dwellers in the land.


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Proverbs 11:5
 The righteousness of the complete keeps his way straight,
but the wicked falls by his own wickedness.


Words of the Verse:

   We had completeness listed as a characteristic in 11:3; now we have it listed as a person- the complete; sometimes translated the perfect or the blameless.
   The Hebrew word for "wicked" carries the idea of violating or disturbing.

Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The complete / mature man's righteousness
The violator's violation

Their Activities:

Straightens his path
Causes him to fall

Teaching of the Verse:

   This is the second of three proverbs in a row about righteousness.  It actually ties the other two together.  They both speak of righteousness delivering; this one tells how righteousness delivers- by straightening the road taken:  no side roads into dangerous territory.
   Notice that a complete man cannot be complete without righteousness.  It is righteousness that has made him complete and which continues to straighten the path before him.
   Most men really don't want righteousness.  They wouldn't mind having the benefits that come with it, like deliverance from death, but the righteousness itself is not their cup of tea.  This is why their path is not straight; there is no righteousness there to straighten it.

   The alternative to a straight path, is, of course, a crooked one, or else one that angles off of the straight path.  This is the path the disobedient takes.  The disobedient man may be very focused on a goal, and he may feel he is heading straight towards it; but without righteousness to guide, his own desires make the direction of his soul quite inconsistent.  
   Our proverb today tells us where this skewed path leads, and it is not to any destination the man chose.  All goals in unrighteousness lead to the same place, or actually the same condition- and that is the traveler fallen.  He falls by the increasing obstacles in his path or the increasingly treacherous bends in the road; he falls because the road runs too near a cliff or simply because he has wearied himself to make sense and satisfaction out of that which can never help or heal.

   This takes the 'internal guidance system' of the good and bad man (from 11:3) one step further.  Now we see that it is more than a compass but is also a road paver, an asphalt layer.  It not only charts the course, it actually lays out the course.  If righteousness were a machine, it would be a huge one!  
   Righteousness is no schoolboy quality to Solomon.  He sees a world-shaping power that completely and profoundly impacts its owners.  When we see it that way, we will desire it as we ought.  Until we desire it greatly and desire it for what it truly is, we shall not have it, but we shall have collapse.  We may glory in collapse as the wicked do and call it a great thing, but it is eventually utter breakdown in the presence of God.  Faith sees the breakdown now and calls to the Savior, "Heal my lameness!'


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Proverbs 11:6
 The righteousness of the upright shall deliver them,
But the cunning will be trapped by evil desires.


Words of the Verse:

   The upright is the morally "straight" man we first met back in 11:3.
   That's where we also met Mr. Cunning, meaning covered one, doing things under cover.
   The Hebrew for "evil desires" is alternately translated by both desires and evil, so evil desires (World English Bible), perhaps overly diplomatic, may capture the right sense.

Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The upright man's righteousness
The cunning man's evil desires

Their Activities:

Delivers him
Traps him

Teaching of the Verse:

   Now number three in this three-verse discourse (11:4 - 6) on righteousness.  This verse is something of an amplification of the delivering power of righteousness from 11:4.  There the deliverance was simply compared with the impotence of riches to rescue.  Now the activity of  deliverance itself is being compared to an opposite activity- entrapping.  Upright men are set free, crafty fellows are snared.
   Once again Solomon is showing us how natural two ways of life are to men.  Two 'internal guidance systems', again, are each as normal to their possessors as are their facial features.  "The righteousness of the upright" means righteousness is the upright man's natural possession.  The evil desires of the cunning man are equally native to him.  
   The only difference is that the upright man is contending with another nature inside him, continually suppressing it, overcoming it, and being humbled by it:

Rom 7:15  For what I work out, I do not know. For what I do not will, this I do. But what I hate, this I do.

   The sin in our members always has an unsettling effect, but the new heart of the born-again man is programmed towards righteousness:

Rom 6:18  And having been set free from sin, you were enslaved to righteousness.

   The cunning man, the fool, and wicked man of Proverbs has only one nature.  Still, we will find proverbs that show that he is fighting against both himself and the order of the universe in his rebellion against God.  For the present, we see that he is ensnared by his own schemes- schemes that he intended to procure him maximum freedom and leverage!
   Solomon has already said basically the same thing about the wicked in the introductory chapters:

Pro 5:22 The evil deeds of the wicked ensnare him. The cords of his sin hold him firmly.

   Again, the righteous man still has the experience of this within himself.  He still knows the binding power of sin whenever and to whatever degree he gives in to it.
   Remember, Paul was a blameless man and he confessed this inner conflict.  It was the fact that the battle was fought in the soul's domains that no sins could actually ensnare Paul (become action or habit); and so with any blameless man.  Blamelessness, the natural end of righteousness 'seeded' in the life, is what God equips each believer for:

1 Thess 5:23  May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely.  May your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

   The blameless man will rise above every machination of the devil, the world, and his own old nature; he will not be trapped by them.  The righteous man can still fall, but having fallen, has the power to rise and engage the battle again, wiser and humbler, to be sure:

Pro 24:16  For a righteous man falls seven times, and rises up again; But the wicked are overthrown by calamity.


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Proverbs 11:7
 When a man who is wicked dies, his expectation will perish,
And the hope of the schemer perishes.


Words of the Verse:

   The word "unjust" ["schemer"] in this verse was translated "iniquity" or "mischief" in 10:29.  
   About half the translators and commentators favor translating it according to a virtually synonymous Hebrew word meaning "strength".  So the verse would be:

Prov 11:7  At the death of a wicked person, his  hope vanishes.  Moreover, his confidence in strength vanishes.
Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The wicked man's expectation
The mischievous man's hope

Their Activities:

Vanishes at death
Vanishes

Teaching of the Verse:

   After three proverbs about the powers of righteousness, we have this contrasting proverb about the impotence of unrighteousness.
   It may seem a too-obvious reality that an unrighteous man's hopes disappear at his death, but the unspoken contrast is to the foregoing verses- that the righteous man's hopes are still quite alive, in fact, never quite so alive as when he dies.  11:7 is a 'double negative' (both halves of the verse are about the bad guy), because we need the force of this repetition to convince us that the expectations of unbelievers actually do vanish when they do.
   Ask yourself, what are the hopes of most men?  Just that they will accomplish something while they live, or that they will be remembered for it when they die?  Although many men will say that they know they will be forgotten when they die, their actual hope is the opposite.  They actually live for the opposite- being remembered, having something of themselves continuing into the future.    
    Men build their lives towards what they hope to leave after them; or else what they attach themselves to that will last beyond their own lifetimes.  They may simply live as Americans, in hopes of the good America will continue to do; or as citizens of the world, in hopes of world peace and harmony someday.  The fact that they dreamed it along with everyone else makes them a part of it.  
   Isn't this, in fact, how men live?  Isn't this why a proposed hope of heaven is rather hollow to them?  Their hopes are here on earth.
   So Solomon seeks to train our eye of faith to see this reality.  We live in a world which spins a very convincing illusion, whether by the force of numbers, our ease of deception, or, more to the point, by our fallen insistence that there IS another way besides God's.

   Therefore, our main need in coming away from this verse is to realize how easily duped we are about the staying power of the world's dreams and how utterly duped they themselves are.  
   It is our wisdom to awaken and stay awake from this dream, and to kindly, or roughly if necessary, awaken as many other sleepers (we should say unbelieving sleepers, but there are many believing ones too) as God will graciously allow.


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Proverbs 11:8
The righteous is delivered from distress,
and the wicked goes in instead of him.


Words of the Verse:

   The word for "distress" could be literally translated "a tight spot"
Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The righteous
The wicked

Their Identifiers:

Delivered from a tight spot
Walks into the tight spot

Teaching of the Verse:   

   The first point worthy of note is that tight spots do not catch God by surprise.  He plans them.  
   If the tight spot is not one of our own making (by disobedience), God wants to use it to teach us to  trust in His delivering power in the distress plus how little delivering power we or anyone or anything else has.  Even if the tight spot is by our disobedience (because of our natural affection for idols), He wants to teach us this dependence along with repentance.

   The real teaching of the verse is a truly remarkable one.  The righteous man is in a difficulty, God rescues him, then the wicked man bumbles along and falls into the difficulty from which the righteous man was just delivered.  
   Narrow pits can be quite dangerous in the Middle East.  Imagine a good man fallen into a pit.  God sees to it that he has a way out; this much is not surprising.  Next, though, a bad man's course has somehow been designed to find that newly vacated pit- and in he falls!
   Now first, does God actually 'micro-manage' to this point, actually mapping out everyone's path so as to bring an unbeliever to a pit a believer has just gotten out of?  In answer, just fast-forward to another proverb:

Pro 20:24   Man's steps are of Jehovah; how can a man then understand his own way?

   According to this, God does 'micro-manage' our paths.  The question is, does He 'make our choices for us', or does He simply use the choices, or kinds of choices, we ourselves freely make to accomplish His ends?  To answer whether God can 'flip a switch' in the soul to create a selfish desire in us:

Jam 1:13  Let no one being tempted say, I am tempted from God. For God is not tempted by evils, and He tempts no one.

   God made us so that we are the only source of our evil choices.
   Can God arrange circumstances such that He knows / directs exactly which evil choice we will make?

Exod 14:17  And behold! I am about to harden the hearts of the Egyptians, and they shall follow them.  And I will get honor for Me upon Pharaoh, and upon all his army, upon his chariots and upon his horsemen.

   No doubt about it.  The point remains, it is still an evil choice we freely make, a plan we ourselves desire, not one implanted or contrary to our wishes.  Since we know this 'hardening' is not God causing a sin in us, it has to be a process that allows our own nature to take its usual course.   
   That is like the same sun that causes grass to grow in one place, but mud to harden, crack, and break in another.  Grass has one nature, mud another.  The influence of the sun simply furthers each nature.  In the verse above, the Egyptians were completely following their own desires to harm the Israelites.  God had simply orchestrated matters so that that particular freely-made choice was the one they would certainly choose.

   So back to our verse.  The tight spot a righteous man escapes, a wicked man enters.  God's blueprint could certainly hold that much detail.  In a general way, it simply means that there is enough temptation in the world that good men will be constantly avoiding it and bad men will be constantly stepping into it.  
   Solomon wishes to be a bit more particular.  For instance, a good-looking man propositions his Christian neighbor.  She refuses.  He continues on the hunt, and her non-Christian neighbor accepts.  There, our verse today has come true (sadly in part).  The righteous was delivered; the unrighteous stepped in.  It happens all the time.

   Solomon is still furthering his lessons from 11:4 - 6 on the delivering power of righteousness.  This makes us wonder how 11:7 might contribute to the discussion, since 11:8 now appears to be a continuation.  Prov. 11:7 is simply showing us the complete lack of delivering power in unrighteousness.  Solomon has now tightly wrapped the package of his teaching with this bow:  not only are the righteous delivered from trouble, the unrighteous actually receive the trouble instead.
   Hopefully, this degree of providence does not make us feel claustrophobic.  The only one with a reason to feel closed in is the wicked.  It would do him well to see the imprisoning effects of sin.  We are to take from this verse the liberating and spacious feeling righteousness gives.


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Proverbs 11:9
 The ungodly is corrupting his neighbor with his mouth,
but the just is delivered by knowledge.


Words of the Verse:

   The "ungodly" are literally the "soiled", the "polluted".   
   The word for "corrupting" means to ruin.

Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The soiled
The just / righteous

Their Identifiers:

Ruining his neighbor by what his mouth says
Being delivered by knowledge

Teaching of the Verse:   

   Here, then, is the last in this series of proverbs (11:4 - 9) on the delivering power of righteousness and its companions- here, its companion knowledge.
   Here we have a very insidious power of evil indeed, the tongue with its gossip or flattery.  This tongue has the power of a 'simple' fever that turns into pneumonia; though a beggarly invader when compared in raw strength to the other forces from which righteousness delivers, it is very wasting and therefore fitly held until the end of the series.  It is the evil that can well pull a man down when others cannot.
   And here we have a hero worthy of the rescue:  knowledge.  Knowledge- so despised in our day.  Where did knowledge get such a bad reputation?  Does anything in Scripture pit knowledge against sincerity, love, or zeal?  One would think it must from the unkind comparisons almost universally drawn.  One would think Christians would appreciate a capacity so integral to their salvation:

Isa 53:11 ... By His knowledge the righteous One, My Servant, shall justify for many, and He shall bear their iniquities.

   A quality for lack of which the Jews are not saved:

Rom 10:2   For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.

   The resource which Paul said made him superior to the false apostles in Corinth:

2 Cor 11:6  But though I am unskilled in speech, yet I am not unskilled in knowledge.

   A Christian grace near the very foundation of Peter's list of nine:

Pet 1:5, 6   But also in this very thing, bringing in all diligence, filling out your faith with virtue, and with virtue, knowledge;  and with knowledge self-control, and with self-control, patience, and with patience, godliness ...

   The only time knowledge gets a bad rap is when it is partial:

1Cor 8:1  But concerning the sacrifices to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.

   This was only a partial knowledge, one that acknowledged that idols were fake but which failed to acknowledge that weak brothers' needs were real.  Full knowledge always acts in accord with love.

   So how does knowledge rescue us from the schemes of our neighbor of soiled soul?
   First, knowledge informs us about man in general, just as Jesus' knowledge did for Him:

John 2:24, 25   But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all and did not need that anyone should testify of man. For He knew what was in man.

   We will know that our neighbor is a human, capable of inflicting damage by the tongue.
   Secondly, knowledge will guard us against others' nice appearances and flattery:

Prov 26:24  He who hates pretends with his lips and stores up deceit within him.

   Thirdly, knowledge will give us indicators that something bad is working behind the scenes, such as when our friends begin mysteriously picking fights with us:

Prov 16:28  A perverse man causes strife, and a whisperer separates close friends.

   And the list could be greatly lengthened; for without knowledge, how could we hope to know whether to avoid such a neighbor, how to pray to God concerning him, how to guard our own tongues in response, etc., etc., etc. ?  All these needed answers come to us by Scriptural knowledge alone.

   True knowledge is merely an adjunct of righteousness (see Peter's list above).  The destructive tongue can work much damage.  God's power to deliver is greater still, and He delivers through what He teaches us, through knowledge.


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Proverbs 11:10  
When it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices.
When the wicked perish, there is shouting.


Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

the righteous
  /     
The condition of the city with regard to
 \
the wicked

The Two Outcomes Respectively:

The city rejoices at their good
There is shouting when they are undone

Teaching of the Verse:   

   Now we have entered into one of several sections on human citizenry and government, as signaled by the phrase "the city."  We have moved further than individual considerations now.
   A necessary preliminary comment is the fact that Scripture writers under Divine influence do weigh into political matters, and they do so with the same terminology, concepts, and authority as in other areas of life.  We see that God does not march up and down around the earth, commenting and commanding on every other area under the sun, only to pull up short at the doors of City Hall to do an about face and march away, back to His proper business.
   In fact, one could make a very good case that political matters are, in one sense, the most important to God:

 1Tim 2:1, 2 I exhort therefore, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and givings of thanks, be made for all men:  for kings and all who are in high places; that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and reverence.

   The first matter Paul is concerned to lay down for pastor Timothy in the proper ordering of a church is praying for the world, especially its leaders.  Why?  Because their decisions affect the well-being of the church, and we are to pray that their decisions lead to our tranquil and quiet pursuit of reverence and piety.  

   In our proverb today, the government is only one aspect of the overall well-being of a city.  Solomon divides his observation by what happens to the righteous as a group and the wicked as leading individuals.  In the well-being of the righteous he implies wise governing officials making it so.  The wicked man is obviously a very influential person, as implied by his undoing becoming public knowledge.
   The usual breakdown of influential men in a city is two-fold: the political leaders and the rich:

Eccl 10:20   Don't revile the king, no, not in your thoughts; And don't revile the rich in your bedchamber: For a bird of the sky may carry your voice, and that which has wings may tell the matter.

   Our proverb today speaks of the downfall of a notorious criminal as well, but the main point is about the overall, ongoing disposition of the hearts of citizens by the day by day, city-wide treatment of the righteous or by the wicked.
   When decisions that favor the righteous are made, everyone is blessed.  The righteous are the salt by which the world is preserved, flavored, and healed ("You are the salt of the earth", Matt. 5:13).  If their fortunes are good, the land as a whole shares in the bounty.  The common man may not attribute it to this, but Solomon is telling us that this is the actual predictor of citizens' morale.  
   Solomon is also telling us that men have enough sense to realize that wicked men have burdened them.  Men will heave a sigh of relief when an immoral man is taken from power or influence, even if they had to give a show of support for that man because of political pressures, etc.

   How are things going in our land?  Do governmental decisions favor the righteous?  Or do the righteous more and more have to take cover?  The answer to this should heat up the earnestness of our prayers for leaders which Paul enjoined above.


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Proverbs 11:11  
By the blessing of the upright is a city exalted,
And by the mouth of the wicked thrown down.


Words of the Verse:

   The "blessing" of the upright is their prayer of blessing for the city.

Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The blessing (coming from the mouth / prayer) of the upright
The mouth (words) of the unrighteous

Their Two Outcomes:

The city is lifted
The city is pulled down

Teaching of the Verse:  

   We just quoted it for the previous proverb:

 1 Tim 2:1, 2 I exhort therefore, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and givings of thanks, be made for all men:  for kings and all who are in high places; that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and reverence.

   We are to pray for our government/ land.  By these prayers, God intends to bring His blessing within the boundaries of what we name as homeland.  The amazing effectiveness of these prayers may be illustrated in country/ city - directed prayers by upright Abraham (for Sodom), Moses (for Israel), Elijah (against Israel), and Jeremiah (forbidden to pray for Israel).
   The awful effectiveness of wicked mouths to destroy cities/ countries is seen in wicked king Sihon (whose counsel to forbid Israel's passage led to his country's destruction), Absalom (who stole Israel's heart and kingdom by flattery, leading to much destruction), the false prophets who declared peace so the Israelites would not listen to Jeremiah's warnings (leading to the destruction of Jerusalem), the Pharisees and Sadducees (whose counsel against Christ led to Jerusalem's destruction again).
   The example of Jeremiah above, forbidden to pray, is a pointed example of how effective a Christian's prayers are.  God has designed prayer such that we are supposed to receive what we request, with an important proviso:

1 John 5:14  And this is the confidence we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.

   Our prayers must line up with Scriptures, which they cannot do if we don't know Scripture both in its particulars (individual verses) and in general (how verses tie together throughout the Bible).  A Scriptural prayer is so 'automatic' that John goes on to warn us of the one prayer request we should not ask:

1 John 5:16  If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask; and He shall give life to him, to the ones not sinning unto death. There is a sin unto death. I do not say that he should ask about that.

   In Jeremiah's day, Israel had sinned such a sin (the continuous refusal to repent, specifically).  Therefore Jeremiah was told three different times:

Jer 7:16 "Therefore do not pray for this people, nor lift up a cry or prayer for them, nor make intercession to Me; for I will not hear you.

   God might have let Jeremiah vent his petitions in prayer and simply have answered No except that He had bound Himself to hearing such prayers made Scripturally, and He did not want Jeremiah making unScriptural prayers.

   Who knows if we have passed that same point in America?  If we do not repent, there would presumably come a time when we also would be ill-advised to pray for America.  For now, assuming that God is still receiving such requests, our blessing of America would certainly be fairly restricted in form; that is, we would not be praying, "God, bless this land that has honored You."  Rather, our prayers and actions would need to follow the formula:

2 Chron 7:14 if My people, who are called by My name, shall humble themselves and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from Heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.


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Proverbs 11:12  
One disrespecting his associate lacks heart,
but a discerning man remains silent.


Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The heartless (senseless) man
The discerning man

Their Characteristics:

Disrespects his associate
Remains silent

Teaching of the Verse:  

   This may be another proverb on city affairs, since the two previous ones are and another one two verses further is.  Prov. 11:12 would stand as well without any governmental connection, but it is surely an appropriate comment towards a nation or community.  Those who refuse to get along with others are simply being stupid.  Why make trouble in the group, since it's just going to be trouble for yourself?  Someone like this surely lacks heart, letting his arrogance or anger rule him to his own hurt.
   The discerning man keeps himself silent, meaning he might have justification to speak, but he purposely holds it back.  From this vantage point of silence, not under compulsion to vent his feelings, he can judiciously consider whether and how to approach the problem.  What could he say that would not enflame the situation?  What advice could he kindly offer that might actually help the poor fellow?  Yes, he might imagine what kind of difficulty his associate has experienced that has made him irritating.  Most often, when we learn of a trial in another's life, we become much more understanding, even about otherwise quite unacceptable behavior.
   When we find ourselves saying bad things about others, we need to pull up short.  Especially if we have a confidant- a spouse, sibling, or friend with whom we speak freely- it is very easy to 'trash' an irritating person as personal therapy.  In reality, though, this would be like amputating someone else's head to cure my heartburn.  I still have my heartburn afterwards, and now, instead of being rid of the problem, it stares at me as a display fixed in my trophy room.  Like our proverb says, this is really senseless.


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Proverbs 11:13  
One going with slander is a revealer of secrets,
but the faithful of spirit keeps a matter hidden.


Words of the Verse:

   The word "secrets" means intimate counsels, things spoken in confidence.  
   The word for "going" is the common word for "walking"; so, "Someone going about with slander."  The word "slander" itself comes from a word connoting travel.  The Gossip is someone whose influence extends into the community.
   To "keep hidden" in Hebrew means to "cover".
   "Matter" is also "word'.

Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

Someone who proceeds with slander
A faithful spirit

Their Identifying Marks:

Uncovers private matters
Covers a matter / word

Teaching of the Verse:  

   The contrast is very large.  The Gossip is not only a revealer of things, but a revealer of private things, things not intended or appropriate for public discussion.  The man of faithful spirit makes information a matter of property, and wouldn't give information about others away; that would be stealing.  It is not his to give, but the other's, as he wishes.
   [Theological note:  Therefore, in a day in which we see others' property generally disrespected, we will probably also see a rise in slander.  That connection certainly seems to be holding true in our day.]
   The Gossip senses the natural power of information.  This power is quite real.  In a very true sense, to know is to control; and the more control a Gossip desires, the more dangerous he is.  Most Gossips are content with the limited control of shaping you in others' opinions.  The Mega-gossip wants to dance all the rest of us as puppets.
   The power of gossip is as powerful as human language and the human spirit unfortunately.  God gave us magnificent gifts, but we can use them to hurt magnificently.  Oh, the power of innuendo!  The effectiveness of saying something nice about someone, but so couched as to lower our audience's opinion of them!
   Solomon would have us wise as to the subtleties of the Gossip.  Much gossip is not subtle, but marketed as properly public information.  We must be unsupportive (to our own embarrassment if necessary) of this type of gossip as well.  Gossip is a form of false witness (Remember the ninth commandment?).

   In our own communications, we start with a basic respect of others.  We respect their lives, so we would not murder them with hateful words; we respect their reputations, so we would carefully weigh our words any time we talk about them.  If it is something to which they might object if present, don't say it.  If we wouldn't wish such information divulged about us, don't say it.  It does not matter whether what we are saying is 'true' or not.
   What are we if we cannot hold to this standard?  An unfaithful spirit.
   Are there any faithful spirits in our day?  Those who innately sense the rights of others to privacy and fair play?  Who is offended when they hear gossip?  Who goes further and stands up against gossip?  
   Gossip is a national way of life.  Even the way news is reported continually crosses the boundaries of gossip.

Psa 12:1 - 3  Help, Jehovah, for the godly man ceases; for the faithful fail from among the sons of men.  They speak vanity each one with his neighbor; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.  Jehovah shall cut off all flattering lips, the tongue that speaks proud things


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 Proverbs 11:14
In the absence of counsels the people fall,
but safety is  in an abundance of advisers.


Words of the Verse:

   This Hebrew word for "counsels" is always plural.  It means steerage (from a root connoting the winding of ropes).

Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

No (words of) guidance
Plenty of advisors

Their Outcomes:

The people fall
Safety / deliverance

Teaching of the Verse:  

   A fitting finish to our brief paragraph  on government (11:10 - 14).  Here a word about the people, for what is a nation except the people in it?  It is true that the character and destiny of a nation is determined very largely by its leadership, but what the leader himself has at the end of the day is a people.  This proverb tells us that if the people don't get good guidance, they become disconnected and cannot act as a body.  They fall apart or fall together into bad counsel and habits.
   The most fundamental idea of this proverb is that leaders must communicate to their peoples.  Leaders can become unrelated to their people.  If there is a communication gap between them, the people become like a body without a head.  
   It is further suggested that the top leader(s) should have a variety of viewpoints to help decide national policy.  Further still it would seem that there should be wise leading figures from among the populace to discuss from the common man's perspective how government should wisely implement its policies.
   These same principles are exactly transferable where there is any body of people.  A church operates by the same law.  A plurality of elders is essential; if not, then an elder with very spiritual deacons.  In a church, a variety of perspectives among the leaders is for the purpose of determining what the word of the Lord is and how it shapes the direction of the church.
   Frankly, any wise nation will also put God's counsel first.  How can they do better for standards of right and wrong than God's own laws?

   Even in very small groups, even those without any official affiliation except perhaps friendship, a limitation of viewpoints is eventually very stagnating.  Any body exists by the life flowing between its members, and communication is the life spoken of here.  Even if there is a definite leading person, his quality is marked by his ability to sound others' opinions, at least the opinions that are most likely to be helpful in a given situation.

   Has America become a counsel-free nation?  The news media is a natural outgrowth of the need for peoples to communicate and debate.  As our news media has become dominated by one ideology, we have slipped very far from a healthier body politic.

   Perhaps the key element in all this is that a people must be guided, not catered to.  People need to be reminded, for instance, of their natural selfishness and shaken out of their laziness.  Guidance implies that we don't naturally head in the right direction.  Our leaders for many years have rather catered to the people, trading favors for votes.  They will not risk offending the people.  This is not guidance.  This is a leader as a phantom projection of the group itself, pleasing itself.  This is a people fallen or falling.


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 Proverbs 11:15
It fares ill, nothing but ill, with him who is collateral for a stranger;
But he who hates striking hands in pledge remains in tranquility.


Words of the verse:

   The first two words in Hebrew are both forms of the word for "evil".
   "Striking hands in pledge" is our 'signing on the dotted line', agreeing to make monthly payments for something we're not paying cash for.

Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The one who becomes collateral for a stranger
The one who is averse to unsecured loans

Their Outcomes:

Pernicious evil
Confidence

Teaching of the Verse:

   Here is a proverb on money matters, borrowing in particular.
   Solomon has already weighed in on the subject of debt back in chapter six:
 Prov 6:1 - 5    My son, if you are surety for your friend, if you struck your hands with an alien, you are snared with the words of your mouth; you are captured with the words of your own mouth.  My son, do this then, and deliver yourself when you come into the hand of your friend: go lower yourself and be bold to your friend.  Do not give sleep to your eyes, or slumber to your eyelids.  Deliver yourself like a gazelle from a hand of a hunter, and as a bird from the fowler's hand.

   If you have borrowed money with a promise to pay it back by a certain date, or pay it back little by little, get yourself out of such a situation at all costs, Solomon pleads.  As he warns later in Proverbs:

 Prov 20:16   Take the garment of the one who is surety for a stranger, and take a pledge from one who guarantees for strangers.

   Go ahead and take the shirt off his back; it's as good as gone.  There simply is no way for this kind of financial philosophy to work.  It's not that you might not be able to pay it back this time or the next.  It's that the nature of life is so unpredictable that you'll eventually gamble away (because all you're doing is gambling when you simply trust that circumstances will continue on their present course, that you will have the money to repay, that nothing unexpected will come up) everything you have, or at least things you really can't do without.
   This is basically an admonition for a cash-only financial philosophy.  If you want to buy something that costs more than you have, save until you have enough; don't buy on credit.
   It has been suggested that there is a possible exception to this prohibition:  that would be when the item purchased on credit increases in value, so that if you cannot make the payments on it, you at least should be able to sell it for no less than you paid for it.  Of course, about the only type of purchase that nearly always appreciates in value is land.  Even then, there is no ironclad guarantee.

   Perhaps the best system is for parents to save towards the purchase of land for their children.  Begin saving at their birth or before in order to buy them a place to move into at their marriage debt-free.  Or let each child begin saving towards his own land purchase as soon as he is old enough to work.  A first purchase would probably be modest, but as the ethic of saving continued, upgrades would be affordable as the years progressed.

   We live in a time when business and personal bankruptcies are at an alarmingly high level.  This is because we have ignored Solomon's injunction.  We have not hated unsecured loans; they have rather become a normal way of life.  Debt loads higher and higher, and it eventually breaks our backs.  It is a 'bad evil'.  
   May God's people, and all men, find our way back to a financial philosophy that doesn't enslave us to debt following our enslavement to undisciplined spending impulses.  God's way leads to our confidence, safety, security, and tranquility.


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 Proverbs 11:16
 A gracious woman maintains honor,
and tyrannical men maintain riches.


Words of the verse:

   "Honor" is from a Hebrew word essentially connoting weightiness.  It is used of God's "glory".  It is used frequently in Proverbs of the glory the godly attain.

Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The woman of grace
The tyrannical

The Comparison Between Them:

She retains honor
They retain riches

Teaching of the Verse:

   This is the first comparison of its kind.  It is using an understood to explain a non-understood.  Solomon gives us the retaining power of oppressive men as something commonly known in order to teach us the similar retaining power of a gracious woman.  
   So we also have our first proverb on women.*
   The word for "grace" is used 69 times in the Old Testament, mostly in terms of someone finding 'favor' in the eyes of another.  It is even used of the gracious effects of Messiah's lips in Ps. 45:2.  It is similar to any individual trait in that when it is separated from a comprehensive godliness of life it can lead astray (so Prov. 31:30, "Favor [our word for 'grace'] is deceitful"; but which is also true of isolated knowledge, 1 Cor. 8:1; and isolated love, 1 Thess. 4:9 with the previous paragraph, 4:3-8).

   Our proverb focuses on grace as a positive trait of a godly woman.  The gracious woman, the woman who understands how God made her and why God made her as woman, not just as human, will retain honor.
   How did God make her?

 1 Pet 3:7    You husbands, in like manner, live with your wives according to knowledge, giving honor to the woman, as to the weaker vessel

   The woman is the fine china, the man the wooden bowl (hopefully, a nice wooden bowl with no splinters).  
   Notice, it doesn't say the man is a strong vessel.  We should rather infer that he is also a weak vessel, and she merely weaker, especially with such testimony as Ps. 103:14, "He remembers that we are dust."  We are all marked 'Fragile', but she is additionally marked 'Handle with Tender Care.'  This is how God made her, if she will but embrace it.

   Why did God make her?

1 Cor 11:9   And the man was not made for the woman, but the woman for the man.

   If how God made her is a hard pill to swallow (in our age of feminism), why must be nearly poison.  But the gracious woman will actually enjoy and flow with her natural qualities of womanhood.  She was not meant to be the leader but the support.  
   So some men are not meant to be the head coach, but the offensive coordinator, and as such they have their greatest effect on the team.  They may actually be a more direct benefit to the team than the head coach, but they don't mind the head coach being in the spotlight, because he has to shoulder the overall responsibility.  Plus, the offensive coordinator wouldn't be able to 'do his thing' with the X's and O's if he was head coach, because he wouldn't have the time with all his other responsibilities.
   So woman should see her limited role as an advantage.  She gets to do what she's good at, what she receives most fulfillment from, and she doesn't have to worry about the larger concerns which occupy her husband.  Her domain is the home:

1 Tim 2:14,15   ... and Adam was not deceived; but the woman, having been deceived, was in transgression.  But she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and love and holiness with discretion.

   The Christian woman is seen as correcting the deficiency of Eve and the fallen feminine nature in general by making her children her 'church'.  Notice, "she" shall be saved if "they" continue.  Her sanctification is bound up in her children's sanctification.
   She really is the offensive coordinator:

Psa 127:4, 5  As arrows in the hand of a mighty man, so are the children of the young.  Blessed is the man who has filled his quiver with them; they shall not be ashamed, for they shall speak with their enemies in the gate.

   Paul essentially told Timothy that the woman was the arrow preparer.  She makes the children spiritually battle-ready.  
   Will God fail to honor her for this just because there is a husband over her 'getting the glory'?  No, even her family will recognize the woman thus comfortable in her God-given role:

Pro 31:28   Her children rise up and call her blessed, her husband also, for he praises her

   She retains honor, just as our proverb says.  There are many temptations to abandon her proper feminine grace, but she maintains it.  She makes herself fully vulnerable, recognizing that she will never be the head; but she thus locks glory to herself tighter than any tyrant who ever greedily guarded his gold.

   Oh, for women who would once again recognize this great benefit!  How it would benefit us all!  ... Oh, how we have hurt without it!

v

*  If it were not for the Holy Spirit's ultimate authority in the writing of Scriptures, we would probably be suspicious of any advice Solomon gave on women, since he married too many of them (Deut. 17:17), and they eventually turned his heart from God (1 Kings 11:4).  But Solomon is no more qualified to write about kingship or wisdom, as areas of his personal expertise, than he is about women.  What Scripture writers knew truly, they knew because of knowledge transferred by God.  Furthermore, Solomon's mistakes with women didn't preclude his accurate knowledge of them; it simply meant he acted contrary to what he knew to be true, as is, unfortunately, very common with human knowledge vs. human actions.


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 Proverbs 11:17
A merciful man does good to his own soul,
but the cruel troubles his own flesh.


Words of the Verse:

   "Merciful" comes from a Hebrew word meaning "kind".
   "Cruel" comes from a root meaning to act harshly.

Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The kind man
The harsh

Their Traits:

Benefits his soul
Disturbs his flesh

Teaching of the Verse:

   The man who extends kindness brings good back upon himself all the way down to his soul.  The man whose soul is shaped by harshness sends forth trouble that affects his own body.
   The kind man, of course, does good to his body as well:

 Prov 17:22  A cheerful heart makes good healing, but a stricken spirit dries the bone.

   The harsh fellow already has a distorted soul.  This proverb is telling us that his inner deformity will affect him through and through.  His body, his flesh, will even feel the affects of his meanness.

   The contrast highlighted is between the two ways men treat themselves based on their attitudes towards and treatment of others.  One whose philosophy is to treat others well, is, in effect, treating himself well.  He doesn't set out to benefit himself directly, but his kindness extended comes back to him in many ways.  The unkind man certainly doesn't intend to hurt himself by his vitriol, especially not his own body, but his mangled soul simply can't sustain a healthy body.

 Prov 14:30  The life of the body is a heart at peace, But envy rots the bones.

   Prov. 14:30 tells us that the cruel man of Prov. 11:17 needs a 'healed heart' before he can begin healing his body.  Whatever drives him to inflict pain, and sometimes it is the very pleasure of it, must be recognized and stopped.  Even if his meanness is a reaction to some deep pain inflicted upon himself, this excuses his harshness even less.  He knows what the pain feels like; therefore, he ought to be the first to withhold it.

   A whole society can become cruel.  Some call it becoming 'dehumanized'.  In a heartless society, the pain inflicted by making fun of others, etc., is not even taken into account.  Then, strangely, we are horrified at young people committing murder.  What should we expect when they've been brought up in a culture where the point of even comedy is to hurt others?  Notice, we're only talking about the lighter side of life, poking fun, etc.  We're not even talking about the hard core meanies.

 Lam 4:3  Even the jackals draw out the breast; they suckle their young. But the daughter of my people is cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.

   A kind man is swimming against the current in our day.  Most 'kind' people aren't really kind, they've just withdrawn.  A truly kind person has tasted, and is therefore extending, the kindness of God:

 Eph 4:31, 32   Let all bitter, sharp and angry feeling, and noise, and evil words, be put away from you, with all unkind acts;  And be kind to one another, full of pity, having forgiveness for one another, even as God in Christ had forgiveness for you.


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Proverbs 11:18
  The wicked is getting a lying wage,
But whoever is sowing righteousness- a true reward.


Analysis of the Verse:

Being Compared:

The wicked
The one who sows righteousness

What They Receive:

A lying wage
A true reward

Teaching of the Verse:

   Our proverb is comparing the two different 'earnings' that come to believing and unbelieving men.  It speaks of 'wage' and 'reward' in a general sense, meaning whatever is received in return for a certain input.  The ungodly do what they do in life expecting a return of one kind; in reality, they receive quite a different 'payday'.  The Christian worries more about inputting the right kind of activity- righteousness to be exact- but in so doing, he makes his reward sure, and one that is pleasantly in accordance with the good he has done.  The real contrast in the proverb is between what the ungodly vainly expects and what the faithful man harmoniously brings about.  The one is a disconnect, the other, a satisfying connection.
   The unbeliever is putting in all his time on earth anticipating a certain payoff: happiness, rest, pleasure, achievement, possessions, recognition, some combination of these.  Our proverb says these are lying wages because they don't pay off.  Not only are they empty because they are limited to this life, whose light grows dim quickly and is out suddenly, but they do not pay the expected dividends even when achieved.  Whatever momentary satisfaction they give wears off.  When we hear an older person boasting about what they once had or experienced in life, we realize the unsatisfying nature of earthly paydays.  It will be no different for us.  The joys don't sustain us.  The accolades aren't remembered.  Admirers are always crowded out by envious irritants.  This is the special outcome for those who prized earthly joys first.
   The follower of Christ, on the other hand, has already had a reckoning with the nature of this life.  His God has told him of the vanity of this world because of sin, of the punishment after this life because of the same.  He has learned of the redemption that is in Christ; he has been remade in His image.  Now he seeks to do as Christ did- make the will of God his food and satisfaction.  The good things of this life are gratefully received, but they are enjoyed with a knowledge of their almost symbolic nature.  They are only shadows of what once was before sin, and shadows of what will be when righteousness is all that remains.  Until then, righteousness itself is the only genuine investment- the one that pays as it promises.  Everything else clings to the dust from which it arose.  It must be used with care not to abuse it:

1 Cor 7:29 - 31   But this I say, brothers, The time is short. It remains that both those who have wives should be as not having one.  And they who weep are as though they did not weep. And they who rejoice are as though they did not rejoice. And they who buy are as though they did not possess.  And they who use this world are as not abusing it, for the fashion of this world is passing away.

   What Paul is saying is that it is very easy indeed to place value in this life itself.  This, though, is deception.  It is easy to think we are using the world in thankfulness to God when we are really only satisfying ourselves.

Mat 6:19 - 21  Do not lay up treasures on earth for yourselves, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.   But lay up treasures in Heaven for yourselves, where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.  For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

   These are two entirely different perspectives.  Of course, there are plenty of pseudo-heavenly philosophies which are merely varieties of unBiblical asceticism (rough treatment of the body to better the soul); but true 'heaven-heartedness' does include fasting, for instance, as Jesus had said just prior to His quote above.  Fasting, as one for instance, shows whether 'our money is where our mouth is'.  There is a certain regimen I impose on myself, knowing how easily I am lulled into earth-satisfaction:

1 Cor 9:27   but I chastise my body, and bring it into servitude, lest by any means, having preached to others- I myself may become disapproved.

   And then there are the spiritual disciplines I impose on myself in order to be heavenly-minded:  chiefly, Scripture internalization and prayer.  Most professing Christians show that their true hope is in earthly satisfaction by their neglect of these.

    Of course, there is even another kind of wage the religious wicked work for, as Jesus said:

Mat 7:22, 23   Many will say to Me in that day, Lord! Lord!  Did we not prophesy in Your name, and through Your name throw out demons, and through Your name do many wonderful works?  And then I will say to them I never knew you!  Depart from Me, those working lawlessness!    

   And there we have, just as plainly as the desired wage itself, the deceptiveness of it exposed by the payday Jesus actually hands out.

   So what wage will you receive?  If your plan is anything besides sowing righteousness, your harvest / payday will be bad.

Pro 22:8   He who sows iniquity shall reap vanity; and the rod of his anger shall fail.

Hos 10:12   Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground.  For it is time to seek Jehovah, until He comes and rains righteousness on you.

Psa 97:11  Light is sown for the righteous, and for the upright of heart- joy.


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