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

“Righteousness exalteth a nation: But sin is a reproach to any people” (KJV).

Proverbs 14:34

One of the more common mistakes that Christians make about the Old Testament is the mistake of thinking that the law of God was a standard that only applied to Israel. The fact that most Gentiles nations were wicked and idolatrous is taken as somehow tacit permission for them to be that way. Nothing other than that was expected.

But notice what this proverb states. It says that righteousness exalts a nation. And it goes on to point out that sin is a reproach to any people. Not just Israel.

For example, the prophet Amos denounced the transgressions of Damascus, and said that they would be punished for them (Amos 1:3-5). He declares that judgment is coming down on the Philistine cities of Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Ekron (Amos 1:6-8). He does the same thing with Tyre (Amos 1:9-10), and Edom (Amos 1:11-12). Then comes Ammon (Amos 1:13-15), and Moab (Amos 2:1-3). After all that, he then gets to Judah. The holy standards of God are the very definition of righteousness, and righteousness exalts a nation. 

The Queen of Sheba was consequently a blessing to her people when she sought out the wisdom of Solomon.

And so all this brings us to America. This verse was one that was frequently quoted by our founding fathers. They knew and understood that God is the governor of nations, and that His standards of righteousness were the standard by which He would either exalt a nation, or the terrible bar of justice that He would bring them to. And we are no exception to this pattern. Why would we be?  

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

“Wherefore is there a price in the hand of a fool to get wisdom, seeing he hath no heart to it?” (KJV).

“Why is there in the hand of a fool the purchase price of wisdom, since he has no heart for it?” (NKJV).

Proverbs 17:16

Translated into modern terms, this proverb would run like this: why does that fool have a tuition check in his hand when he has no intention of studying at all?

Coming at it from another direction, the question would be why would a person be willing to pay the price for an education in one way, when he is not willing to pay that price in another way—the most important and fundamental way?

And perhaps the question answers itself. The first way of paying the price for an education—the tuition check—has the appearance of seriousness, especially if the college is a high end college with sky high tuition. But real seriousness is measured in another way, and this is through the day-to-day commitment to discipline.

It is the difference between paying a one-time fee for a piece of exercise equipment, where the pain is fleeting and temporary. After that, the money is gone, and can be forgotten. But the discipline of getting up at 5:30 every morning in order to work out on the exercise machine is not an over-and-done exercise of discipline. It is a daily thing, and perseverance is required. 

So the heart for wisdom is something that has to be registered every day. You cannot decide to go out and buy some wisdom one day and then forget about it for six years. If you don’t pursue it daily, you don’t have a little bit of wisdom—rather, you have no wisdom, and exercise equipment taking up space in the garage.

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

“The heart knoweth his own bitterness; And a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy” (KJV).

“The heart knows its own bitterness, and a stranger does not share its joy” (NKJV).

Proverbs 14:10

Whenever we encounter difficulties, one of our perennial temptations is to complain that others simply “do not know what it is like.” This is very true, as this proverb attests, but it is also beside the point. It is self-evident from the very fact of our individuality. If we knew what it was like to be somebody else, we would be that person. 

We can learn sympathy, of course, but when we sympathize we are reasoning by analogy, and what we grasp of the other person’s affliction is usually just a rough approximation.

The proverb tells us that our troubles are our own, and that our joys are our own. Inside each individual is a black box, and other people don’t have any access to it. We know, of course, that this does not include God, who knows and searches all hearts exhaustively. In fact, God knows our hearts better than we do. But the same thing cannot be said of others.

One of the reasons that our “rough approximations” of how others are suffering can be way off is that pain thresholds vary. Internal emotional resources vary. Think of it as a cash flow problem. A poor man who only has five dollars is going to be distressed by a ten dollar invoice. A rich man wouldn’t care about that at all—pocket change. He can be tempted to look on the poor man’s distress with contempt because “ten dollars is nothing to get worked up about.” Well, yes, for you. And the poor man can look with contempt at the rich man, assuming that it is not possible for him to have any troubles at all because he has a million dollars. But it never occurs to him that a man with a million dollars might be required to pay someone 1.2 million dollars. Big planes can also crash. No one outside knows the bitterness of a man’s heart.

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

“Smite a scorner, and the simple will beware: And reprove one that hath understanding, and he will understand knowledge.”

Proverbs 19:25

There are two different paths to knowledge outlined here—one for the person who does not know, and the other for the person who already has some level of understanding.

The first is the simple person who learns through second-hand consequences. The scorner has a brass forehead, and rushes headlong into trouble. That kind of person has to be corrected with a blow. This does not necessarily teach him anything, but it can be successful in stopping him. But the fact that it does not teach him does not make it a worthless exercise. His circumstances can still serve as a cautionary tale. The simple person does not have a brass forehead, and doesn’t understand much. But he does understand that he does not want to go through what is happening to the scorner. So you strike the scoffer, and the simple learn wisdom. So (for example) parents should realize that when they spank one child, they are actually teaching all of them. 

The other kind of learning comes through reproof. If you reprove someone who already has understanding, his understanding grows and increases—he will understand knowledge. This is a knowledge that comes less violently than in the first circumstance. There is sometimes a temptation to not reprove some who obviously has some level of knowledge. It is easy to assume that they will “boo doubt figure it out themselves.” But the Scriptures encourage us to reprove the knowledgable. We are not to do this randomly “just because,” but when it is called for, a reproof of such a person is truly valuable. 

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

“A slothful man hideth his hand in his bosom, and will not so much as bring it to his mouth again” (KJV).
“A lazy man buries his hand in the bowl, and will not so much as bring it to his mouth again” (ESV).

Proverbs 19:24

The book of Proverbs famously takes a dim view of laziness. Just as good luck often attends the person who hustles while he waits, so in a similar fashion bad luck follows a lazy person around. The ball often bounces in exactly the wrong direction. But these are the external misfortunes that afflict the lazy person.

This proverb is addressing something distinctly different. This is where the lazy person has the thing he needs right there with him, but his laziness trips him up. He wants to eat, and the food is right there in the bowl in front of him, but he is too overcome with weariness to lift it to his mouth. We have a similar proverb in English, where it is said of a lazy fellow that it could be raining porridge and he would have forgotten his bowl. Even when a little effort would yield disproportionate results, the lazy man is unwilling to rise to that minimal effort. It hurts his feelings to think about it.

The proverb is obviously using overstatement, as with the other English proverb that someone was lazier than Ludlum’s dog, who would lean his head against the wall to bark. We have probably never met someone who is so lazy that he literally found his fork intolerably heavy. But there are people who come close. 

Why do people like this exist? The proverb is likely not directed at the lazy people themselves, who would be too lazy to read the book of Proverbs. The proverb is best aimed at those industrious people who feel sorry for lazy people, and who subsidize and enable the problem.  

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