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

“Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith” (Proverbs 15:17).

With this proverb, I would like to do two things with it. One is to touch on the point that the proverb is intending to make, and then the other thing is to develop a point on the basis of something the proverb mentioned in passing.

The main point is one that is made repeatedly in Proverbs. It is better to sit around a table with thin commons, but with rich and thick fellowship, than to sit around an elegantly set table, with plenty of food on it, but where everybody despises everybody else. If you had to choose between meals of baby carrots, but with a wife who was both loving and lovely, on the one hand, or rich meals prepared by your personal Michelin-trained chef, serving both you and your harridan wife, then by all means go with the former.

And also remember there are two other options. Some are greatly blessed with wonderful family and great cooking. That’s one of them. But the other, increasingly common in these sad times, is a scenario when a harridan wife makes her husband eat his carrots. So that is one point. Keep your table priorities in proper order. You should care much more about how it is with those sitting around the table with you than how it is with the platters on the table.

So what about the comment in passing? This comes in the realm of application, and I need to explain something first. When Paul told Timothy to take a little wine for his stomach and frequent ailments, it was no part of his intention to help us refute tea-totalers. I am pretty confident that this thought never crossed his mind. Nevertheless it is appropriate to use the verse that way. It does help to refute tea-totalers. Not only so, but it also gives you something to try if your stomach is giving you a bit of trouble.

This proverb mentions as a delicacy the meat that came from a “stalled ox.” This is the same concept that can be seen with the “fatted calf” in the prodigal son story (Luke 15:23). Meat from a calf is veal, and it used to be the practice to keep calves in crates or stalls for their entire lives in order to keep the meat really tender. In Western countries that practice is now largely illegal, but this provides us with a good example of how not to let our modern sensibilities be the sole arbiter of what constitutes animal abuse. A righteous man has regard for the life of his beast (Prov. 12:10), but we should also remember that the father in the prodigal son parable was a righteous man.

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

“Correction is grievous unto him that forsaketh the way: And he that hateth reproof shall die” (Proverbs 15:10).

When both halves of this proverb are placed together, the result is a rudimentary argument. The first premise is that correction is a grief to the one who forsakes the way. The second premise is that a person who hates reproof—which is synonymous with correction being a grief—is a person who is going to die.

We can then produce the conclusion on our own. When correction is grievous, that man shall die.

The person who forsakes the way did so for a reason, and that reason, boiled down, amounted to that’s what he wanted. It might have been gold, or glory, or girls, but there was something that was off the straight and narrow path, and it was something that he wanted. Because he wanted it, he departed from the way. When someone corrects a man in such a moment, what he is doing is crossing that man’s desires. And who likes being crossed?

The same is true with reproof. It is easy to hate the feeling that happens when someone else thinks he is better than you, and comes to you with a reproof. But the end thereof is death.

There are different ways to be inhospitable to correction or reproof. One is to erupt at the person who dared confront you. This is the method of making a scene. Another technique is to go cold on them . . . cut them off, having nothing to do with them. It is the opposite of making a scene. The temperature of the relationship approaches what you might find in a produce cooler. But a real mastery in this sin is to exude an attitude of unapproachability on any topic that is likely to be touchy. Such a person gives off the vibe of a granite wall, but can also honestly say that “no, nobody ever talked to me about that.”

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

“Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; And the end of that mirth is heaviness” (Prov. 14:13).

Not all laughter is a reliable indicator of what is going on. When someone is burdened with a particular sorrow, or if they are carrying some kind of weight or heaviness, they have a tendency to turn to makeshift means of dealing with the problem. Two of the more common makeshifts would be anodynes and distractions.

Anodynes would be alcohol or painkillers. The sorrow is still there, but the person carrying the sorrow has figured out a way to club the sorrow over the head with a chemical. Sleep aids could be another one. At best, these devices can make the sorrow recede for a bit, but they are not in any way a cure or a solution. You wake up in the morning with a hangover, and yet, mysteriously, the best girl you ever had is still gone.

The other device is what this proverb is pointing to. The person who is sorrowful wants to be diverted. He wants distractions. He might throw himself into a frenzy of activity—hang gliding, rock climbing, bungee jumping. He might seek out entertainments, such as plays, concerts, movies. Or he might go in for comedy.

He might do this by following stand-up comedians, or he might go one better and become a stand-up comedian. The reason we have cliches like “the tears of a clown” is because of the truth that this proverb points to. Some of the funniest people in the world can be pretty cynical or mordant on a personal level.

The heart is weighed down with sorrow, and the joke is really funny, and you laugh. But that laughter is like your breath on a cold day. It is there, really there, but only for a moment. And when it is gone, the sorrow is not gone. The second half of the proverb hints at the possibility that the temporary excursion into mirth just made a hard situation worse.

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

“Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: But when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12).

When we are looking forward to something that is highly desired, the anticipation is part of the pleasure. It is not just the banquet, but also the time spent looking forward to the banquet. It is not just the wedding, but also the engagement. The hope fulfilled is the anticipation in fruition.

And of course, there is no disappointment like the disappointment of an expected blessing not materializing. This proverb is not speaking of utter disaster—hopes dashed—but rather of hopes deferred. It is not the condition of a military wife who receives news that her husband was killed in battle—that would be hopes dashed. Rather, this is talking about her looking forward to her husband returning from deployment, counting the days, and then she discovers that his deployment has been extended for a month. That is hope deferred, and the result of this is that it makes the heart sick. The disappointment saps the heart’s resilience. Vitality starts to evaporate, and the result is a cascade of unclear and muddy thinking. The sickness here is not the kind caused by a virus, but it can feel that way. Hope deferred leaves the person tired, exhausted, enervated and weak.

But it goes the other way also, and the proverb speaks of it in superlative terms. When the long-desired blessing arrives, it is a “tree of life” (Gen. 2:9) This is a striking metaphor. The tree of life was one of the two great trees in the Garden of Eden. At the other end of the Bible it is a way of describing the gospel itself (Rev. 22:14). That is what it is like when the good news finally lands.

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