At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“The glory of young men is their strength: And the beauty of old men is the gray head”
Proverbs 20:29
One way of looking at this proverb is to acknowledge that there is a time and a season for everything. There is a time to be young and limber, and a time to be old and creaky.
But the proverb doesn’t put it that way. It does not compare this advantage to that disadvantage. Rather it compares a young man’s glory to an old man’s beauty.
This proverb was probably in the mind of the apostle John when he wrote about children, fathers, and young men. First, the children were blessed because they were forgiven (1 John 2:12), and because they had known the Father (1 John 2:13).
But then John gets to the same general categories addressed by our proverb, and the things he emphasizes map onto the proverb fairly well.
The young men are honored as those who have overcome the wicked one (1 John 2:13), and because the Word of God lives in them, because they are strong, and because they have overcome the wicked one (1 John 2:14). Strength is mentioned both in Proverbs and in this passage, and the fact of overcoming, which requires strength, is mentioned twice.
John has written the fathers because they have known Him who was from the beginning (1 John 2:13, 14). The fathers were written because of their knowledge of God, because they were wise.
Of course it is possible for a young man to use his strength in the wrong way, and it is possible for an old man to be a fool. But when young men are being what they ought to be—strong, aggressive, and not risk-averse, the Bible calls it a glory. And when an old man remembers what it was like to be strong and aggressive, and still carries the scars of not being risk averse, the symbol of that is his gray head—which Scripture calls beautiful.
In the Lord, youth should not disparage old age, and in the Lord, old age must not disparage youth.
