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

Divers weights are an abomination unto the Lord; And a false balance is not good.

Proverbs 20:23

The first thing to note about this proverb is that is has an obvious and immediate application. This is talking about a butcher with his thumb on the scale, with the result that he can sell a pound and a half of hamburger as though it were two pounds. This is simply cheating and fraud in business. A rigged scale is no good (false balance). A different set of weights in the bag allows a merchant to cheat with one set and do honest business with another, which means that the whole bag is rejected by God. 

The second thing to notice is how much God hates this kind of thing. It is described here as an abomination. That means that such a cheating approach is loathsome to God. God hates every form of dishonesty, particularly those forms of dishonesty which harm or rob the victim of it. It is no trifle, and cannot be dismissed as “shrewd business practices,” or “cutting corners.” God does not praise it as business savvy, but rather sees it as detestable, execrable, revolting, odious, hideous, disgusting, and abhorrent. He despises it. That is what abomination means.

And third, divers weights should be taken by us in our application as a metaphor for every kind of rigged system. Parents who treat one child as a favorite. School administrators who allow a board member’s kid to get away with things that somebody else’s child cannot. Courts that favor the rich over the poor. Courts that favor the poor over the rich. Referees in a basketball game who show favoritism. Teachers who grade papers with an eye on who needs to qualify to start in the football game this weekend. In short, all of us are called, every day we are called, to use equal weights and measures in all our dealings with everyone else.

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

An inheritance may be gotten hastily at the beginning; But the end thereof shall not be blessed.

Proverbs 20:21

Envy and discontent love to whisper various lies to us, and one of those lies is the one about how we would handle riches better than those who currently possess them. The chances are actually pretty good that we would not. 

This can certainly creep up on us, but the truth of the principle can best be seen when people come into wealth suddenly. We may call this the “redneck winning the lottery” problem. Coming into a sudden possession of wealth, without the gradual acquisition of those habits that are necessary to manage it, results in someone going up like a model rocket and coming down like a stick. The arc may be described as Doublewide > McMansion > Doublewide.

But the heart of man loves the idea of getting rich quickly. In other words, we love the idea of gaining wealth in precisely the way that God’s Word says is not good for us. It turns out that God’s “secret” for gaining wealth that does not corrupt is a secret that can be hidden in plain sight, out there on the table. It can be hidden there because nobody wants to look straight at it. His secret is that we should work hard, say for forty years or so, we should be generous to others, we should honor God with the first fruits by tithing, and so on. But this is not the way we prefer. We would rather learn how to make millions in three weeks in real estate, which is to say, that we would like to live in a world that is very different than the one we actually live in.

The proverb does acknowledge that some do come into a sudden inheritance. That part does happen. But when it happens, it is not the blessing that we all assumed it would be. 

As we run spiritual diagnostic tests on ourselves, we should present the question to ourselves this way. Do we want this additional wealth because we want the weight of our responsibilities to go away? Or do we want them because we want the weight of our responsibilities to increase? If it is the former, then we are simply wanting to indulge our sloth. If the latter, then there is hope for us yet.

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

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine:
But a broken spirit drieth the bones.

Proverbs 17:22

This is a proverb with many points of application. It can apply to someone’s personal life, to relationship challenges, and to the broader subject of our culture wars. The applications generally work in the same way, so let’s consider the latter.

One of the besetting sins of conservatives is the sin of shrillness. We love what is being threatened by the various forms of unbelief, and so we react poorly. Our responses are too often the responses of panic, and so we start yelling. We write our comments online with a fisted crayon. If asked about it, we justify our response by pointing out how terrible it would be if the threatened object of our love (e.g. marriage, the Constitution, America) were to be harmed or destroyed. We justify reacting this way because what they are promising to do would be terrible.

When someone goes into battle as a merry warrior, the people who have responded this way are often disconcerted by it. It seems that such a person isn’t taking the situation seriously enough. If he were, then he would be panicked also, right? As Jean Kerr once put it, “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it’s just possible you haven’t grasped the situation.”

But it is also possible that such a one is the only person who is in a position to do something about it. A merry heart does good like medicine. It strengthens. And a broken spirit dries up the bones, which is not what you want in your fighters. There have been times when fighting men have given up all hope, and have fought on in a savage and dull despair. But more often than not, they just go down, or scatter to the four winds in a rout. So say what you will about it, merry warriors are far more formidable. And if the situation really is dire, you want someone who will actually help you out of it, rather than someone who has internalized the need for help, crumpled up his own spirit, dried up his own bones, and who has then curled up in the fetal position. 

A merry warrior is someone who takes the situation seriously without taking himself seriously. Daniel Daly was a Marine sergeant in the First World War, and is one of the small handfuls of men who have received the Medal of Honor twice. In the Battle of Belleau Wood, he once yelled at his men before going over the top, “Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?” He died in 1937, many years after the war.

As Chesterton once put it, memorably as usual, “The one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God’s paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle—and not lose it.”

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

The beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water:
Therefore leave off contention, before it be meddled with.

Proverbs 17:4

Arguments and quarrels have an internal logic of their own. Whatever the point of the person who started the affair, the affair itself has its own ideas. And those ideas are usually much grander than the modest ambitions of the instigator.

Chesterton says somewhere that one ought not to be allowed to take down a fence unless they can explain the reason why the fence was put up in the first place. In a similar spirit we can say that no one should be allowed to set any explosive devices on a dam unless they are able to tell us exactly how much water is stored behind the dam.

This proverb teaches us that the consequences of a dispute will often go far, far beyond what any of the initial disputants intended. Consequently, the advice given to someone who is prepared to “contend” is that he “leave off.” What you think you are doing is not necessarily what you are doing.

This same point is made with a different metaphor in the book of James. How great a forest fire can start from a little spark (Jas. 3:5). Conflagrations can start with a small word. Or, following the logic of this proverb, with a word that the one speaking it thought was a small word.

Before you blow up the dam, think about more than your plan to free the salmon. Think about all the people who live downstream. Think about all the consequences you did not think about. And this is the difficulty, right? We find it very hard to think about the things we didn’t think about.

And this is why the Word of God is given to us. This proverb is there to tell us that you ought to stop and think even if you have no presenting issue in your consciousness. When you are crossing the street, you should look both ways.

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

He that covereth a transgression seeketh love;
But he that repeateth a matter separateth very friends.

Proverbs 17:9

One time, in the course of a church controversy, I was accused of “covering something up.” But as we have learned in other contexts, you cannot determine virtue or vice by looking at the verb only. What is being covered up? Why is it being covered up? Is the murderer trying cover up the telltale indicators of his crime (Prov. 28:13)? Or is it love, trying, yet again, to cover a multitude of sins (1 Pet. 4:8; cf. Prov. 10:12)? In that particular church controversy, I remember saying to someone that I was a pastor, and that I cover up sins for a living.

But it should go without saying that some things that are covered up need to be brought out into the open. “Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops” (Luke 12:3). The devil picks this up by the wrong end, which is how he became the accuser of all the brethren (Rev. 12:10), accusing them day and night. This censorious spirit may operate in the name of “transparency” or “accountability,” but what it is really after is the opportunity to point a finger and demand an answer now. The reason sinners like to do this is because, outside of Christ, the best defense is a good offense.

So in this proverb, the one who covers a transgression is the one who is seeking the path of love. This is how Joseph responded when he found out that Mary was pregnant. He knew that he was not the father, and so it followed that Mary had been unfaithful. “And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly” (Matt. 1:19, ESV).

But in the world of hectoring accusers, the thing that made Matthew say that Joseph was a just man is the very same thing that makes accusers say that he was manifestly unjust. Was he not being indulgent? Was he not covering up? They would have told someone about it. They would have repeated the matter. And the proverb tells us that they are the kind of people who wreck friendships.

This proverb is part of wisdom literature, which is why it takes wisdom to be able to distinguish a righteous and an unrighteous revealing, a righteous and unrighteous “covering.” Every wise parent knows this. There are times when you would discipline your children for “tattling,” and other times you would discipline them for not saying something. For example, if your three-year-old is on the roof of the garage, you really want the older kids to say something.

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