Grace & Peace: Proverbs 20:5

At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

“Through desire a man, having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom” (Proverbs 18:1).

“A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire; He rages against all wise judgment” (Proverbs 18:1, NKJV).

It is not that the KJV translation, cited first above, is wrong . . . but it is unclear and ambiguous. Read a certain way, it can sound like a man wisely interferes with some issue or other. He did this after separating himself (holiness?), and his desire is somehow to help. But this is not the intention of the passage.

The NKJV provides the needed clarity, and this rendering lines up with other translations as well (ESV, NASB, LEB). The proverb is speaking about a stubborn and headstrong man who insists upon seeing everything his own way. As a result of that, he isolates himself from others, refusing to consider the possibility that they have a valuable perspective. Not only does he reject this wise counsel from outside, he reveals the nature of the game he is playing by getting angry over it. He rages against all wise judgment.

The ethical value of our nouns and verbs is often revealed in the nature of the adjectives and adverbs. What I mean is this.

Suppose the man in question has decided that he wants to buy a particular car. Let us suppose that there are all kinds of considerations that weigh against that choice—price, practicality, reliability of the seller, whatever. Let us also say that three people come to him with concerns about his choice—his father, his wife, and his son. Let us now say that he loses his temper with all three. What does that tell us? It tells us that we are almost certainly in Prov. 18:1 territory.

Suppose instead that the man thoughtfully heard everyone out, repeated their concerns back to them to make sure he got it right, promised to reflect on what they had said, as well as to pray about it. And let us say that he did pray about it, but went ahead and bought the car anyway. It might not have been a great decision, but he would not be relegated into the Prov. 18:1 category. He could be vindicated from that charge by the adjectives and adverbs. He did not rage against wisdom.

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At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

“Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: And he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him” (Proverbs 26:27).

We have a saying in American English that says, “What goes around comes around.” Things have a way of evening out over time.

God is not mocked, and a man reaps what he sows (Gal. 6:7). If he is full of devices and stratagems, and he sets up a minefield with mines everywhere, he has greatly increased his chances of stepping on one of his own mines.

In this proverb, this truth is expressed in two ways. The first is that when a man digs a pit, he is preparing a trap that will at some point ensnare him. And when he is rolling a stone, with the intention of hurting another, the stone is going to kick back in some way, and roll back over him.

Or as Jesus put it, the person who lives by the sword will die by the sword (Matt. 26:52). The biter is sometimes bit.

The same principle is contained in the Lord’s warning about judging others. “For the judgment with which you judge, you shall be judged” (Matt. 7: 1-2).

The world is not governed by chance, but rather by a sovereign Father, whose very name is Justice. So the point is not that statistically good luck and bad luck will generally even out. It is not a matter of luck at all. God sees. He watches. He knows where you set your traps, and He is the one who makes you back into them.

God is the one who writes the story, and one of His favorite plot devices is called comeuppance. It is deeply satisfying for a reason.

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At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

“Where no wood is, there the fire goeth out: So where there is no talebearer, the strife ceaseth” (Prov. 26:20).

In this place, Solomon compares strife between people to a fire. And like a fire, there must be some sort of material that is combustible. The three things that are necessary for a fire to occur are fuel, oxygen, and heat. In this proverb, the essential ingredient that is named is that of the fuel.

And who is it that gathers up the fuel, and brings it to the place where the fire can continue to burn hot? In this place, that would be the talebearer. As was once said, it takes two people to seriously wound you—one would be the enemy who says a terrible thing about you, and the second one would be your friend, who brings the word to you, and tells you what was said.

It is not talebearing to tell someone the news. The talebearer is someone who knows how to take the news, and put a bit of English on it so that bounces in a particular way. How does the talebearer do this? Well, first, he reveals secrets (Prov. 11:13). Second, he delivers news that he believes is likely to wound . . . because wounding is the point (Prov. 18:8; 26:22). Third, in order to obtain access to the secrets he wants to reveal, he cultivates the sin of flattery (Prov. 20:19).

It is an iron law that you get more of what you subsidize, and less of what you penalize. If you pay any attention whatever to talebearers, you will get more talebearing. And when you do that, you will find yourself with more strife, with more fire. Do you want the fire to go out? Take the wood away.

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At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

“The slothful man saith, there is a lion in the way; A lion is in the streets” (Prov. 26:13).

When it comes to lame excuses, we Americans have a proverbial phrase of our own—“that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”

What this proverb points to is the fact that a sluggard just needs something to say, no matter how absurd it might be. Any excuse will do. Any port in a storm.

There is a peculiar form of laziness that would much rather say outlandish things than to simply say nothing. A sluggard is late, and so he says, “Aliens kidnapped me. What year is it?”

The story doesn’t have to fit with any external realities or facts—it just has to be a thing that can be repeated. Under pressure the person can stop claiming there was “a lion in the way,” and retreat to “well, I thought there was a lion in the way.” Under even more pressure they might admit that they could have been wrong, but it was a belief that they sincerely held at the time.

The thing to remember is that Scripture says that you are dealing with a slothful man. His entire point was to avoid work, and so it might be a good idea to test his excuses with more than verbal comebacks. It might work better to say something like, “Well, I’m sorry the lion gave you a scare. But it’s gone now . . . let’s hit it.”

This is the point where you discover than when he was running from what he thought was the lion, he twisted his ankle.

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