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

In the multitude of people is the king’s honour: But in the want of people is the destruction of the prince.

In a multitude of people is the glory of a king, but without people a prince is ruined (ESV).

Proverbs 14:28

This is one of those proverbs that positively collides with the received wisdom of the secular world, which regards people as consumers and as a drain on resources. The biblical worldview couldn’t be in greater opposition. People—provided they are living under the authority of God and His law—are a resource, not a drain. After all, we were born into this world with two hands, and only one mouth.

So let us take this proverb at face value. The Bible teaches that a large population is a king’s glory (or a president’s), while a population dearth is the ruination of a country. Having children is a political glory, and not just a familial one. This position is, of course, easy to mock—“have babies for Mother Russia,” or “lie back and think of England.”

What then is overpopulation? Is there such a thing? Yes, but we must be careful with our definitions. A region is overpopulated when a population is incapable of feeding itself. This might be temporary (as in a famine), or it might be the result of a thoughtless consumption of resources, such as overgrazing, and then the nomadic tribe has to move on. But in the modern world, such a condition is most usually the result of foolish and counterproductive economic policies. In a word, socialism is a driver of overpopulation.

In a well-ordered nation, where the markets are free, the citizens as a whole will produce far more than they will consume. And the more the merrier.

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

The simple believeth every word: But the prudent man looketh well to his going

Proverbs 14:15

Scripture describes those who believe everything they hear, or everything they read, as simpletons. Following the standard Hebraic method of communicating through parallels and contrasts, we see here the simpleton contrasted with the prudent. The simple man believes every word, but the prudent “looks well to his going.” But what is meant by this oblique expression? Well, he means that he looks well to his going by not believing every word—just as believing every word can be described as not looking well to your going. The ESV renders this as “gives thought to his steps.”

There are numerous voices out there, telling you to take this step, or to take that one. The prudent man does not just listen and do. He takes thought. He ponders it. He considers alternatives.

The digital revolution has done something remarkable in this respect. The prudent have many more resources when it comes to checking out a story, a rumor, a treatment, a financial plan, and so forth. It is easier than it has ever been to give thought to your steps. At the same time, there is a much greater clamor of voices telling us this, and also telling us that.

The simpleton believes every word he reads on the Internet, every word that he hears from a politician, every statistic that he reads in the polls, every claim that is made on every bottle of medicine, and the results are just about what you might expect.

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

The lip of truth shall be established for ever: But a lying tongue is but for a moment

Proverbs 12:19

In this proverb we learn that truth is reckoned among the permanent things, while falsehood is transitory, evanescent, ephemeral, fading more and more as the list goes on. Truthful lips endure. Lying mouths are just around for the moment.

This sentiment being true, we should conclude in the first instance that it applies to our circumstances as much as it did when it was written three thousand years ago. How many lies have come and gone during that time? And consider how God’s people are still able to reflect on this truth, and establish their lives in terms of it.

Christians worship and serve the one who identified Himself as the Truth. “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). And Pilate, lost as he was, wondered aloud what the truth even was, and he did this when the incarnation of truth was standing just in front of him (John 18:38). We know that the lake of fire is reserved for “all liars” (Rev. 21:8), and we who have put on the new nature found in Christ must be equally careful to cease lying to one another (Col. 3:9). Lying is the native language of the devil, and we are seeking hard to forget that we ever even knew that language (John 8:44). We are called as Christians to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15). We worship the Word who is the Truth, and so the words we speak should be words of truth.

We might want to distinguish truths that matter (Jesus rose from the dead) from truths that don’t seem to us to matter that much (whether we left home when we told our boss that we did). We wouldn’t lie about the big stuff, we say, but where is the harm in greasing the skids with what are euphemistically called “white lies”? But our proverb is not talking about the abstract truths lasting forever, such that the archives of Heaven will have a file cabinet somewhere that houses the truth that you left for work at 7:45. It is the lips that last forever. It is the mouth that is transitory.

All day long, as we speak, we are in the process of becoming someone. As we speak the truth, and the more diligent we are to speak the truth precisely, we are being established as those who will in fact live forever. We are growing up into Christ. The permanent things, like truth, belong to the permanent ones.

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

Whoso loveth instruction loveth knowledge: But he that hateth reproof is brutish.
Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid (ESV).

Proverbs 12:1

A characteristic feature of Hebrew wisdom literature is its parallelism. A theme is stated, and then it is stated over again, this time slightly differently. At other times, the second half of the parallel is a sharp contrast. But in both cases, the meaning of the second half amplifies or refines the meaning of the first half.

In this proverb, the framework is that of a contrast. The one who loves instruction is contrasted with the one who hates reproof, and the one who loves knowledge is contrasted with the one who is brutish. How does this help amplify the first part?

Well, clearly the love of instruction needs to include in it a love of reproof. Someone who wants to learn a ton without ever being corrected is someone who doesn’t really want to learn. Learning entails discipline, and discipline entails more than a few instances of “no, not that way.”

The acquisition of knowledge is not a frictionless enterprise. Not only so, but to overlook this truth is to betray yourself as being a brute and a blockhead. The word (baar) denotes someone who is senseless, one who is really thick. This means that the love of correction and discipline in the pursuit of knowledge is not a matter of nuance. This is not a dance of subtleties.

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

“As a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion”

Proverbs 11:22

We come here to a characteristic way of reasoning in the biblical wisdom literature. It is the technique of treating four variables by means of handling two of them. In this case the four variables are beauty and lack of it, and discretion and lack of it. There are two negatives traits and two positive traits, and we are taught wisdom by being instructed to choose one positive trait over the other negative one. It is better to be honest and poor than to be dishonest and rich, it is better to have good fellowship over lousy food than to have squabbling over gourmet food, and so on.

In this proverb, women are instructed to prefer discretion over beauty, and the point is made by noticing the radical nature of the juxtaposition when the choice has been made the wrong way. Suppose a woman chooses foolishly. Suppose she preferred her looks to discretion? The result is a total incongruity, like lipstick on a camel, or hoop earrings on a chimp, or a nose ring on a pig.

And we can see that we are being instructed by wisdom literature, and not by legalists or rule-mongers, in that the woman of sense is one who has “discretion.” Not a handbook of rules, not a list of ‘thou shalt nots,” but rather discretion. The word involved (taam) means taste, feeling or discernment. This does not mean that she gets to dub herself as being in that category, and therefore she must have the right to strut her stuff (via ostentatious make-up, leggings, bikinis, and so on). No, it means that she is a woman of good sense, and avoids all that kind of thing without having to be told. A woman who does have to have it explained to her, or worse, kicks at any such explanations, is a woman without discernment.

And so, the more successful she is in polishing that gold ring of “hotness,” the fatter and more bristly the pig.

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