Pleaseant to Your Soul ...

Friday, July 10, 2015. The Proverbs are connecting wisdom with several virtues. There is righteousness and justice and equity. Knowledge plays a key role here, the consequences of knowledge and its proper use are described. What is going on?

How understanding works …

The writer talks about the consequences of an open ear. He talks about someone who listens and treats wisdom as a hidden treasure. He talks about someone, who puts all his or her efforts into the search for wisdom. Then … this is where the following lines start:

9 Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path; 10 for wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul; 11 discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you, 12 delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech,

13 who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, 14 who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil, 15 men whose paths are crooked, and who are devious in their ways. 16 So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words, 17 who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God; 18 for her house sinks down to death, and her paths to the departed; 19 none who go to her come back, nor do they regain the paths of life.

20 So you will walk in the way of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous. 21 For the upright will inhabit the land, and those with integrity will remain in it, 22 but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be rooted out of it. (Proverbs 2, 9-22)

Path of the righteous …

The path of the righteous is described here. It is a good path - the path of the good. There is a strong promise here: the upright will inhabit the land, but the wicked will be cut off from the land. We find a very clear worldly component of faith and ethics in the Old Testament. It does not talk about something beyond our life here, but about something which happens in our daily environment!

We know that the New Testament slightly resets the focus and balance. Jesus talks much more about the kingdom of heaven with its eternal dimension. The blessings which come to the believer are not necessarily within this world, there is death and suffering for the sake of Jesus, and reward will be beyond our worldly life dimension.

But it is also exciting how practical the ethics is interpreted here. The good path is a path which keeps you away from other women. Adultery is not on the good path, and you will be saved from it, when you walk in wisdom. The biblical ethics is very near to your everyday life, and very practical indeed! (RWEP) ... more texts