At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“Labour not to be rich: Cease from thine own wisdom. Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? For riches certainly make themselves wings; They fly away as an eagle toward heaven” (Proverbs 23:4–5).
We have a short pithy proverb in English that says “money talks.” To which a wit might reply, “Yes, my money talks. But it always says good bye.”
Solomon here gives a qualified instruction, an exhortation with regard to getting rich. He says bluntly, do not labor in order to get rich. Doing so would be to rely on your own wisdom, which in this case is clearly faulty. In this case, you would be working hard in order to shoot the moon. You would be setting your eyes on something that was extremely unlikely. Why? Because riches are a winged creature. Riches have the wings of eagles, and when they fly away all you can see are the tail feathers, and they are getting smaller and smaller.
But note that all through the book of Proverbs, young men are urged, again and again, to work hard, to be industrious, to be skilled in their craft, to stay out of poverty, and so on. Urging men to labor hard is actually one of the main themes of the book. That said, here he says, “Do not labor to get rich.” What is going on?
It is a matter of setting realistic goals. Your business plan ought not to be built on the foundation of mounded up cotton candy, mixed together speculative daydreams. The thing you have set your hope on will (almost always) fly away like an eagle. These are proverbs, meaning that they are generally true, overwhelmingly true. It is not like saying “all triangles have three sides,” a statement that is always and everywhere the case. It is more like saying “the early bird catches the worm,” which is occasionally false. A little sleep, and little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and sometimes a lazy man will win Powerball.
Occasionally a man will work hard, and will strike it rich. And while this happens more often in our day than it did in Solomon’s, it is still a rarity. In most cases, a man should work with realistic goals.
