At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“The lips of the righteous feed many: But fools die for want of wisdom” (Proverbs 10:21).
One joke making the rounds is that Jesus could not possibly have been a socialism. We know this for a fact because He was actually able to feed people.
There are two halves to this proverb. The first is that the lips of the righteous, meaning the teaching or instruction of the righteous, is able to feed many people. The second half is that fools die because of their want of wisdom. Given the parallel structure of proverbs, the likely implication is that they starve through a lack of agricultural or economic wisdom.
A fool believes that he can feed the people with good intentions, or some convoluted Marxist thing. As a consequence, as a direct consequence, bread lines form.
We are sometimes tempted to over-spiritualize these things. By that I mean we would say that fools die spiritually through want of spiritual wisdom. While this is true, and it does happen, we must remember the book of Proverbs is an intensely practical book. You wouldn’t be surprised to have a proverb telling you to rotate your tires, or to change the oil in your car every three thousand miles.
So of course, there is spiritual death because of spiritual folly, but there is also physical death through spiritual folly. Over the course of the last century or so, tens of millions of people have starved to death because variant forms of economic collectivism. You would think that we knew what this looked like by now, but because it is a spiritual blindness it can affect those who have a high IQ. Folly in Scripture is a moral category.
And this is why a scriptural approach to life will proclaim free grace > free men > free markets. And the result of free markets will be abundant bread, which, as this proverb teaches, will feed many.
