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

He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord; And that which he hath given will he pay him again.

Proverbs 19:17

We must always remember that we are dealing with proverbs, and not with axioms in geometry. To be precise, we want to make sure we understand what we are dealing with when we are talking about “the poor.” But before we rush off to say what this verse cannot mean, let us take care to understand what it does mean.

In the sense of this proverb, when someone is poor and in a pitiable condition, it is appropriate for a godly man to have pity on him. If someone takes pity on the poor man, and gives him sustenance, this is tantamount to having the Lord borrow money from you. If you give twenty dollars to a poor man, this is as though the Lord borrowed twenty from you. And what the Lord borrows, the Lord will always repay. This means that when you give to the poor in such circumstances, it is not good money after bad. It is not money down a rat hole. The Lord is a meticulous bookkeeper when it comes to matters of generosity. 

Scripture is clear that the giving of alms is a proper and righteous thing. The prayers of Cornelius were heard, in part, because he gave alms (Acts 10:4, 31). Jesus assumes that His followers were going to give alms (Matt. 6:3). The disciples of Christ are instructed to sell what they have in order to give alms (Luke 12:33).

But to ask who are “the poor” is not necessarily the same kind of thing as asking who your neighbor is, in an attempt to get off the hook (Luke 10:29). There are plenty of poor people, including in the book of Proverbs, that we are not supposed to subsidize. A little sleep, a little slumber, and the deacons’ fund will pick up the tab. But if a man is not willing to work, he shouldn’t eat (2 Thess. 3:10).

That said, our default settings should be on the side of generosity. 

“But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:17–18).

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

A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: And their contentions are like the bars of a castle.

Proverbs 18:19

If you cross someone, or let them down, and they were a comparative stranger to you, there might be some level of disappointment—but it is not likely to crush you. This is the case even if the offense were maybe above average. But when someone close to you does it, the event is felt as more of a betrayal than anything else. And a betrayal cuts deeper than anything.

In this proverb we are not told if the offended brother is in the right with regard to the offense. If he was, and decides that he cannot trust you, he is simply being prudent if he moves out of range. You are not trustworthy, and so he will retreat behind strong city walls. And in such a case, it is likely that all the siege engines that you bring to bear are only going to make things worse.

But it is also possible that he is offended, and there are no grounds for the offense. You had a strong relationship, and all of a sudden (it seems) something went south. He took offense when there was no offense given. When this happens, you still have the problem described in the proverb—he has still retreated into his fortress. But now he is not in there defending himself, but rather is in there attacking and wronging you. Taking offense where none was given is a kind of passive/aggressive slander. The person does not accuse you of anything, but is acting as though he could if he wanted to. 

When inexplicable estrangements like this happen, the best place in Scripture to go in order to understand it would be James 4. Where do quarrels among you come from? If a chapter begins that way, then perhaps the answer is found within that chapter. 

And the answer is that in such cases, envy and jealous ambition is the culprit. And in the first scenario, it is likely the culprit as well, only this time it is outside the castle.

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

A sound heart is the life of the flesh: But envy the rottenness of the bones.

Proverbs 14:30

Sin is objectively wrong, of course, and puts the sinner at odds with the way God made the world. But Scripture also points to the ways in which sin creates a good deal of mayhem within the soul. That is the case here, with this proverb. 

Envy looks out at the blessings that have been granted to another, and feels personally wronged by it. That wrong gets registered within. This proverb says that it eats away at the bones of the one who is envious. The opposite of this, in this place, is called “a sound heart.” The sound heart looks out at the blessings that have been given to others, and rejoices in those blessings. Someone else is smarter, stronger, richer, better looking, and isn’t life grand?

A person who lives this way is nourishing himself. The blessings of others, rejoiced in, becomes a blessing to the one who rejoices. The blessings of others, when snarled at, are turned into a corruption for the person who snarls. 

In our day, we need to be particularly wary of this sin. Envy is obviously a perennial sin, and has always been with us. But in our generation, we have fallen under the woe pronounced by Isaiah. “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; That put darkness for light, and light for darkness; That put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20). Every generation has contained envious people, but we are a people who have tried to sanctify that envy, proclaiming it a virtue. We call it a “passion for justice,” or “social justice,” or the “crusade against inequality.”

But that is just it. Inequality is not injustice. It only seems that way to the envious.

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The Way Up (And Down)

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

There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing: There is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches

Proverbs 13:7

It is better to be a wise steward of hardly anything at all, than to be a lousy steward of a great amount. Poor people can become wealthy and rich people can become poor, and it all depends on what they do with what they have.

In this proverb, the poor man and the rich man both share a commodity and, as it turns out, they both have the same amount of that. That commodity (better called a grace, or a gift) is seen in the shared phrase “maketh himself.” Maketh is a verb, and verbs occur in time. 

Each of them has 24 hours, and each of them has 7 days. When it comes to time, no man is wealthier than another. Time is God’s currency, and He never permits any inflation at all. So as it turns out, if a man husbands his nothing carefully, he will grow wealthy. And if another man fritters away his riches, this will bring him down to nothing over time.

There are three characteristics (and their opposite) which display this wisdom (or folly) over time. The first is the honoring of God financially, the second is hard work, and the third is generosity. In short, tithing, working, and giving. This is God’s way to a wealth that is blessed by Him, as opposed to the kind of riches that are kept in a bucket with a hole in it. The counterpart to God’s path to financial blessing is refusing to tithe, neglecting work, and prodigal spending. And of course, people being the way they are, there are some who are in transition between the two types.

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

There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword: But the tongue of the wise is health (KJV).

There is one who speaks like the piercings of a sword, But the tongue of the wise promotes health (NKJV).

Proverbs 12:8

There are those who do enormous damage in how they speak—they hack, and thrust, and hew. If someone calls them on it, they will often appeal to another proverb, saying that faithful are the wounds of a friend (Prov. 27:6).

And yes, a surgeon cuts someone open, and does so with the well-being of the patient in mind. That is quite true. But it does not follow that anyone who successfully draws blood can consider himself a surgeon. There is more to medical training than that. 

You tell the difference between these two kinds of tongues—the piercing tongue and the healing tongue—from the manifest results. After the slashing of the one, there is blood everywhere. And after the wise man speaks, there is health and flourishing. 

When the fool causes mayhem by his speaking, he often doesn’t know the damage he has done because he doesn’t stick around to find out. He says his piece, and is gone. He is frequently able to do this because he is in a position of authority, and the place where the damage is done is a place occupied by people under his authority. If they say something, it seems to them that they might be inviting more of the same. This is why people can live together for years without having any idea of how many wounds their words have caused.

Such a person could say that “he didn’t know,” and it might be true enough that he didn’t see with his eyes, and that his victims never spoke up. He can say, with faux innocence, that “nobody ever said anything.” That might be true, but if you bite your kid’s head off for messing with his food, what might you do if your kid confronted you for being a vile human being? Think about it for a couple minutes. Don’t wait for your kid or your wife or your husband to tell you. Let Proverbs 12:18 tell you.  

One of the apostle Paul’s complaints against the Corinthians was that they suffered fools gladly (2 Cor. 11:19). But of course, tolerating fools is simply one more way of demonstrating that you have yourself become a fool.

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