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

“As snow in summer, and as rain in harvest, so honour is not seemly for a fool”

Proverbs 26:1

We live in a time when honor for fools is seemingly the order of the day. We have adopted the fundamental axiom that what every last person on the planet needs is to be flattered and feted and cozened until they finally bloom into a full version of their radiant selves. People suffer, we are told, from “low self esteem” and our cure all for this affliction is to honor their work, however bad, and to praise their performances, however lame.

A generation or more of this delusion has shown us what a powerful mirror society is—far more potent than an actual physical mirror. If a woman has five roommates who all assure her that her outfit is “cute,” and the mirror in the hallway tells her that it is dismal and godforsaken, she will likely go with the roommates.   

The end result of this kind of flattering honor is the most impudent brazenness, with people going out in public in the most outrageous ways—from their outfits, to their piercings, to their Halloween hair, to their secondary sexual characteristics. And when this happens, our society has determined that such people must be honored. 

Now it used to be that when someone in the grip of such high folly went out in public that they could be treated pretty savagely. But this is one of those inescapable concepts. We still treat people savagely, only now it happens when someone treats the folly as folly. They get the treatment if they use the wrong pronouns. 

But this proverb tells us that to render honor to fools is not fitting. It doesn’t sit right with how God made the world. It its like snow in summer, or like rain during harvest. What is happening is incongruent with what ought to be happening. This proverb provides us with a strong argument against going along with any of this woke nonsense.

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

“Say not, I will do so to him as he hath done to me: I will render to the man according to his work”

Proverbs 24:29

What we have here is a negative form of the Golden Rule. Jesus teaches us that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us (Matt. 7:12; Luke 6:31). That is the positive form. A straightforward negative form of this would be “do not do unto others what you would not want done unto you.”

This proverb steps into an application of the principle in media res, after the other person has (unaccountably) already started it. Someone else has already done you wrong, and you are trying to figure out how to respond. This proverb instructs on what not to say. 

Do not say things like “we’ll see if he can finish what he started.” Do not say “sow the wind, reap the whirlwind, pal.” Do not say “God is not mocked, and a man will reap what he sows.” Do not say “doesn’t the good book say to do unto others what they did unto you?” Well, no, it doesn’t. As we can see here, it says precisely the opposite.

There are certainly times when there needs to be a judicious response to a particular form of wrongdoing. But when this happens, whether coming from the pastor, or the elders, or a father, or a magistrate, there must be absolutely no ego-crackle in it. A desire for justice is one thing. A cutting desire to hit back is quite another. 

And so this is the place where the Lord’s instruction to turn the other cheek needs to come into play. In short, the ethos of the Golden Rule has nothing about it which is retaliatory.

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

“Cast out the scorner, and contention shall go out; Yea, strife and reproach shall cease”

Proverbs 22:10

We have all heard the phrase “level playing field.” Not only have we heard the phrase, but we like the idea. It makes us think of fair play, equal weights and measures, and so on. But there are striking situations where it does not apply at all, this proverb gives us a good example.

In the book of Titus, the apostle Paul says this: “Reject a divisive man after the first and second admonition” (Titus 3:10, NKJV). What are we supposed to do with a divisive man? Well, to be blunt, Paul tells us to divide from him, reject him. We are to divide from the divisive. Isn’t that a contradiction? Well, no.

In this proverb, we are told that to move a scorner out of your company is going to greatly reduce the amount of disputing within that company. Contention will go out. Strife and reproach shall cease. This is no contradiction because obedient and disobedient actions never occur on a level playing field.

With the level playing field paradigm, offsides for one team should be offsides for the other. Clipping for one is clipping for the other.  Unsportsmanlike conduct should be evaluated justly, regardless of the color of the uniform. That is what we mean by the phrase, and it is a just standard.

But Jesus gets to call the Pharisees whited sepulchers, and they do not get to call Him a drunkard, glutton, or demon-possessed. And the reason is that what Jesus said about them was true, and what they said about Jesus was false. 

So when Diotrephes excludes friends of the apostle John, he is doing it because he is sinning, and is in love with his own preeminence. When the scorner is fired from your workplace, and the morale of everybody goes up, this is not an inconsistency. It is a verification of the truth of the Word.

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

“He that hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed; For he giveth of his bread to the poor”

Proverbs 22:9

One of the consistent themes of Scripture is that generosity is profitable. We hesitate to put it that way because some people want to reduce profit to a cold calculating thing, and the image of a miser sitting on a pile of coins comes to mind. 

But Scripture teaches us that we should give in order to get, in order that we might be in a better position to give yet again. 

The generous man is said here to be blessed, and we should be able to see that he is blessed in at least two ways. It says that he is blessed for he gives bread to the poor. There is a blessing in the giving itself. The apostle Paul refers to the Lord’s teaching in order to make this point. “I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). There is a blessing in receiving, but in this place the giving and receiving are set in contrast, and the giving part is to be preferred.

But to receive is very good also, particularly if the person receiving has learned this secret. When God bestows on us, He is doing it to see what sort of stewards we shall be. If we take what He has given, and use it in the service of generosity and hospitality, He sees that we can be trusted with that kind of thing. Because we have shown that we can be trusted, He entrusts us with more. We give to get, in order to give again. 

And so the generous man is blessed in and through the giving. But he is also blessed the second way—when he is enabled to give some more.

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

“A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold”

Proverbs 22:1

The style of reasoning displayed in this proverb is common throughout the book of Proverbs, and we should not be surprised at its presence here.

The structure is this. It is better to have X and not have Y than to have Y and not have X. It is sometimes assumed that this gives us a binary choices between X and Y, but the reasoning is more subtle than that. What we actually have are four options.

1. We could have X and not Y.
2. We could have Y and not X.
3. We could not have X or Y.
4. We could have both X and Y. 

The following statement is copying the structure of our proverb. It is better to be good at golf than to a grand master champion at chess, and praise in the clubhouse is better than awards from all the chess geeks. 

So someone could be good at golf and bad at chess. Or they could be good at chess and bad at golf. And in the world most of us live in, we could be bad at both. And last, there is the rare fellow who is good at both golf and chess. Obviously, if given a choice, we would all go for #4.

With our proverb, that would mean having a good name and great riches. It would mean having and loving favor more than you value silver and gold. So great. If you get the option of both, go with both. 

But the writer of Proverbs knows that we often have to choose, and because we often have to choose, we should have our metric ready beforehand. To the extent that it depends on me, what do I pursue? A good name or great wealth? The biblical answer is that you must pursue the one most favored by the Word, and that would be a good name.  

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