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

“Fools make a mock at sin: But among the righteous there is favour.”

Proverbs 14:9

The basic breakdown of this proverb is this. Fools are those who mock at sin, and by this is not meant that they are mocking sin as sin. Rather, they are mocking the idea that sin is sin, or that sin is serious, or that sin leads to disaster. In other words, they mock at the idea that sin will have any dire consequences.

The righteous are privileged to dwell where there is “favor.” The word here is rason, and it is rendered in quite a number of different ways. A small representative list will help to give some idea—delight, pleasure, good will, or desire.

What this means is that the pleasure that the fool takes in mocking at sin is an acrid sort of pleasure. It is sharp, unsettled, biting.

In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis discusses a point related to this when he dissects the sin of flippancy. He says that it takes real talent to make a joke, but the flippant man never has to do this. What he does is cut to the head of the line, assuming that the joke was already made by someone else, and so he just starts laughing.

It takes no special talent to mock. All that is necessary is a crowd of people who are willing to do the same thing. If someone is sitting in the seat of mockers, this can usually be arranged pretty easily. The spirit that drives this is a sort of demonic laugh track, a comedic cattle prod, letting everyone know when to jeer. The jeering is the point. Everything about such mockery is hollow.

With the easy laughter that attends the conversation of the righteous, sitting around the table with good friends, things are different. The joke is the beer, and the laughter the foam.

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

“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, But the end thereof are the ways of death”

Proverbs 14:12

While they are doing it, everybody thinks they are doing the right thing. If they know they are doing a wrong thing, they put quotation marks around the “wrong” because they have some excuse or rationale for why the wrong thing is actually the right thing in this instance.

This is why men take the road to death. It seemed like the right thing to do. They took that road, thinking it was a road that went somewhere else. Or they took the wrong road, knowing it to be the wrong road, but they only intended to go down that road a little ways, not all the way. As William Gurnall once put it, men will often yield to go with Satan one mile who did not intend to go with him two.

But the end thereof is death. At some point the ground opens up beneath their feet, and they arrive at the destination they did not intend, and thought they were successfully avoiding.

Our problem is that we make decisions on the basis of what we see around us, and we choose this way at the crossroads rather than that way, doing so according to our own lights. But our “own lights” are ignorant. We are in a foreign land, and we don’t know the terrain. What we need is a map from an expert map maker.

This is what we have in the Scriptures. God knows the world. He knows the terrain. He knows which path leads to the Abyss, and which road leads to the Celestial City. We need to follow the instructions, instead of consulting our own hearts, and winging it from there.

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

“When pride cometh, then cometh shame: But with the lowly is wisdom.”

Proverbs 11:2

We know from Scripture that pride is sinful and that humility is good. That is pretty straightforward. But this proverb tells us something in addition to that. This proverb tells us that pride cannot see what is coming, and humility understands what is going on.

In earthly affairs, we seek out the high ground in order to be able to see further. Houses on a ridge are most expensive because of the view. In military matters, the general wants to stand on the mountain to survey the terrain. Zacchaeus climbed up in a tree in order to be able to see Jesus better. But, as William Gurnall pointed out, if he had climbed up there in order to be seen better, the whole thing would have been quite different.

The haughty man takes his place at the head table in order to be able to survey the room. He positions himself to be able to get there, and perhaps throws an elbow or two. But Jesus, presumably in the back of the room, saw the whole thing. The carnal proud man climbs up in order to be able to see, but what he does not see is the approaching shame. And the person who is willing to take the lowest place discovers that this enables him to see quite well.

So pride is conceited and foolish, and humility is wise. This of course excludes the faux-humility which is nothing more than pride in a fetal position. There is the unctuous person, who is constantly going on about how worthless he is, but he is doing this in order to be the center of attention. He may consider himself the least talented person in the room, but at the same time his hang dog approach declares that he wants everyone else to drop everything and treat him as the most important person in the room. This is not true humility. There is not that much difference between a man who climbs a tree to be seen and a man who crawls under the table to be seen. Wisdom has fled from both.

But for the lowly, the lowly and humble man in truth, there is true wisdom.

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

“For three things the earth is disquieted, and for four which it cannot bear: For a servant when he reigneth; And a fool when he is filled with meat; For an odious woman when she is married; And an handmaid that is heir to her mistress.”

Proverbs 30:21-23

This proverb displays Hebraic rhetorical technique that is fairly common in the book of Proverbs. “I have three things to say, and no, wait, make that four.“ It has the effect of making you feel like that list has now been topped off or completed.

The four intolerable things mentioned all have one thing in common, and before getting to that, we should note just how intolerable it is. According to Solomon, these four things are completely disruptive. The earth is disquieted. The earth trembles (ESV). The earth quakes (NASB). The earth is perturbed (NKJV). In short, whatever this is, it is kind of a big deal. These are all things which the earth just simply cannot bear. 

The thing they all have in common is the fact of an unwarranted promotion or windfall. The first is a slave who rules. The second is a fool with a full belly. The third is an odious woman who managed to land a husband. And the fourth is a handmaid who has become her mistress’s heir. The idea is that we have four people from a lowly position who get an unexpected advancement, and who all let it go to their head. Like giving a glass of whiskey to a three-year-old.

In short, Solomon believes that while everyone should know their place, these sorts of people should particularly know their place. But alas, he says, when they receive the unlooked for promotion, they forget their lowly origins, and become the worst versions of what their new status. And as Richard Feynman once put it, “When you are dead, you don’t know that you are dead. It’s pain only for others. It’s the same thing when you are stupid.”

This proverb contains wisdom which we, in our egalitarian age, would like to forget or minimize. But it remains true, and perhaps it is our age that is most in need of learning the truth of it.

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

“Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds.”

Proverbs 27:23

To obey the wisdom found in this proverb, it is necessary to take a step back prior to the hard work. Or, to be more precise, it is necessary to include the gathering of information as a needed part of the hard work.

I have had the experience of telling many people over the years that “information is gold.” Knowing where you are is often the first step in knowing what to do. But there are too many Christians who assume that the solution to their challenges is always to “work harder.” But if you go into the work with the wrong assumptions, working harder can often make a bad situation worse. It is the same as the distinction that Peter Drucker made between efficiency and effectiveness. Efficiency is getting a lot of things done, while effectiveness is better understood as getting the right things done.

Notice what the proverb is urging us to do—“to know the state of the flock,” and to “look well to the herds.” Analyze before acting. Think before doing. Count before assuming. 

Now of course, there are people who have the opposite problem. They know how to analyze a problem to death, but they never can motivate themselves to get out of their chair to go do something about it. Those sorts of people do exist, but it appears that Solomon is not talking to them here.

He is talking to the student who is working late into the night, reading the wrong assignment. He is addressing the shepherd who miscounted the sheep and spent half the night looking for a sheep that wasn’t missing. He is urging the grocer to know that whenever he sells a pound of apples, he is losing money.

In short, information is the gold that many small businesses could use.

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