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The Love and Faith of Father and Son

The Bible frequently discusses the relationship between God and his people in terms of human relationships: husband and wife, master and servant, father and son, etc. Take this well known verse from Hosea, for example:

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
Hosea 11:1

The primary meaning of these and surrounding words is that God loves Israel like a son, but they keep disobeying his instructions that are only meant for their good. They despised all the amazing things that God had done for them and worshiped pagan gods and dead idols instead.

However, Matthew cites a secondary meaning.

Joseph rose and took the child, Jesus, and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
Matthew 2:14-15

The context of Hosea 11 is very clearly concerning the nation of Israel, not the foretold Messiah, yet Matthew understood much of the pattern of Israel’s history to be prophetic of the Messiah. He wasn’t saying that Hosea was specifically talking about Yeshua, but that Israel’s exile to Egypt was a prophecy of Yeshua’s brief exile to that same land, and that God’s relationship with Israel is also a pattern of the heavenly Father’s relationship to the Son.

This pattern goes back long before the Exodus from Egypt. Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph were also real-life illustrations of the relationship between Father and Son and between God and Israel. This pattern goes all the way back to the sixth day of Creation and our nature as human beings. As Carlos pointed out in this discussion about the fear of YHWH in Proverbs, a child’s relationship with his father will have a profound influence on his later conception of God.

Solomon spoke at length about parent-child relationships in the Proverbs. Consider Proverbs 3:1-12. In v1, he said, “My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments.” The following verses appear to switch from a father’s instruction to God’s instruction, but a closer examination of the literary structure of this passage and its connections to the rest of Scripture show that these are meant to be one and the same.

God has painted pictures of himself all around us.

Parallelisms and a Chiasm in Proverbs 3:1-12

Proverbs 3:1-4

  • A – v1 – Son, don’t forget my torah
    • B – Meditate on my commandments
      • C – v2 – For long life and peace
  • A – v3 – Let not steadfast love (chesed) and faithfulness (emet) leave you
    • B – Meditate on them and make them part of you
      • C – v4 – To find favor and success before God and man

Proverbs 3:5-8

  • A – v5 – Trust YHWH with all your heart
    • B – Don’t trust your own understanding
      • C – v6 – Consider his wishes in everything you do
        • D – He will make your life less complicated
  • A – v7 – Don’t trust your wisdom
    • B – Fear YHWH
      • C – Repent from all sin
        • D – v8 – For healing and revitalization

Proverbs 3:9-12

  • A – v9 – Honor YHWH for all you have
    • B – And with a firstfruits offering
      • C – v10 – You’ll gain even more
  • A – v11 – My son, don’t despise YHWH’s discipline
    • B – Or weary of his rebuke
      • C – v12 – Like a father, YHWH rebukes whom he loves

These three parallelisms might even be intended to be a chiasm:

  • v1-4 – Listen to your father and honor him
    • v5-8 – Trust YHWH’s wisdom above your own
  • v9-12 – Listen to your heavenly Father and honor him

Thematic Connections of Proverbs 3:1-12

In addition to the literary structure, each element is thematically connected to other parts of Scripture as if to emphasize the point by appealing to familiar patterns and lessons.

Verses 1-2 echo the fifth commandment to honor father and mother in order to extend life and prosperity (Exodus 20:12). Verses 3-4 sound remarkably like Eliezer’s description of the relationship between Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 24:27 and 63). Verses 5-6 remind me of Abraham’s trust in YHWH’s promise (Genesis 17:15-16) and instructions (Genesis 22:2), even when they seemed contradictory. Verses 7-8 harken back to the plague of the bronze serpent in the wilderness, when repentance from disbelief brought healing to the Israelites (Numbers 21:8).

A Hierarchy of Fathers and Sons

Solomon’s instructions to his son connect obedience and honor of your earthly father to obedience and honor of your heavenly Father. To an extent, this connection is always true–God’s command to honor your father and mother doesn’t make exceptions for bad parents–but the parallels are much clearer if your parents feared God themselves.

Four hundred years before Solomon, Moses gave Israel the same basic instructions.

Hear, O Israel: YHWH our God, YHWH is one. You shall love YHWH your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Israel is healthiest and most prosperous when she trusts and obeys God, but this is impossible if each generation doesn’t teach the next to continue to walk according to God’s commandments. Every child–especially boys–must be taught the precepts, judgments, commands, and stories of God’s relationship with his people day in and day out. They must be so thoroughly indoctrinated with God’s Torah that it permeates every perception, thought, and action, so that they will pass on this blessing to their own children.

If parents refuse to trust in YHWH and refuse to teach their children according to his ways, that doesn’t mean that the children don’t still honor them, but it does mitigate a child’s responsibility to obey.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
Matthew 10:37

If your father is an atheist or a Buddhist or an antinomian “Christian”, then you must frequently disregard his instructions and obey Yeshua–who taught only the Torah of the Father–instead.

There is an assumed hierarchy of authority in God’s . If there is a conflict, we must always defer to the higher authority, and “higher” might be different in different contexts. For example, when you are in a lawful court, you must obey the judge rather than your parents or husband. But if you are a child in your parents’ house where the judge is a guest, you must obey your parents wherever there is a conflict. And so on, depending on the circumstances.

But in every single case, God’s commandments take precedence. If your father orders you to pray to the dead or bow to an idol, you must disobey. If you know that telling your child that his life choices are hateful and disgusting to God will cause deep emotional pain, you must tell him anyway.

God has commanded you to teach his laws to your children and to hear them from your parents. The heavenly Father taught his Son to keep his Torah, and the Son then taught us to do the same.

If anyone comes to me and does not hate [relatively speaking] his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
Luke 14:26

If you love your parents or your children or their sins more than you love God, then you are deserving of none of them and are likely to lose them all.


Here’s a related excerpt from the weekly Bible study at Common Sense Bible Study:

Pride Hunting: Identifying pride in your own life and ridding your life of it.

Proverbs 29:23  One's pride will bring him low, but he who is lowly in spirit will obtain honor.

by Danny Ehinger

What Is Pride?

Pride. I had a native German for a friend and mentor in the electrical field. We met when he was newly arrived. He spoke very little English and we worked together every day. He understood electrical very well and always carried around a translation dictionary so he could communicate with others on the jobsite. We got along very well and after a bit he made me a deal: if I helped him with English he would help me learn electrical better.

We talked during the day while we worked and at lunch. We were gossiping one day about the way others worked and how we cared about our work while most didn’t seem to. I remember saying, “It is like others do not take pride in their work.” He stopped me there and wanted to know what word I had used. He didn’t understand the word pride. I tried to explain it as he looked it up in his dictionary. When he found it, his reaction was memorable to say the least. “No! No! No! Danny this is no good.” He explained that this was not a good word in German. I tried to explain that there was a positive and negative use of the word in English, but he would not have it. No, he told me, it is no good.

I had never really thought about pride, and his reaction to the word stuck with me. Pride had always been mostly negative for me, I mean the sense of the word. I felt many people were prideful in my family and the phrase, ‘take pride in your work’ never really set well with me. I could not think of a reason why, except that pride seemed so negative. I never saw myself as prideful though. Others had called me arrogant and prideful before, but they just didn’t know the whole story, in my view. It was the way I understood pride that kept me from seeing it for so long.

The clearest way to describe what I understood pride to be is to watch Disney’s animated version of Beauty and the Beast, particularly the scene where Gaston sings his ballad. That has always been what I thought of as pride. Pride meant thinking highly of yourself and overestimating your abilities or knowledge. That was not me; I hated myself. How could I be prideful?

Recognizing My Own Pride

No, I had a different problem. I did not know what my problem was, but I would not even consider pride in my life for many years. I wanted to be free from my personal issues, so I sought the truth as much as I could. I would constantly have problems with other people and pride would come up, but I knew that was not the real issue. I had a hard time dealing with people around me and constantly found myself simply dropping issues because I had no solutions and there were none to be had.

I thought nonstop. Before doing anything I would spend countless hours looking at each experience from every imaginable angle and try and figure out every possible outcome beforehand so that, when I was in the situation, I would be able to do the right thing. I get that this may not be bad behavior for a person who is going to do some big thing, but I did it over everything. Everything I did was thought out.

This kind of worked two ways to make life harder for me and those around me. First, I was never with the people I was with at the time. I was thinking about what was coming up. Then when I got to the situation, I knew exactly what to do and why. Others around me had not spent hours thinking about things, so they didn’t know everything that may happen, and they were experiencing things for the first time. This made our experiences different. I knew what was going to happen and it did, while they had a fresh experience and would want to communicate about it. I had already thought about it making me ready to move on while they felt belittled.

As I said this behavior has its place. It is great if I am planning how to complete a job or a raid to capture Osama Bin Laden. However it is not the best behavior for eating dinner, watching a movie, having sex, going out to eat, playing at the park, or any of the things that make life enjoyable. I was living life before I got there and then, when I was there, I was planning how to get through what was coming. It was exhausting.

I was obviously not living with those around me. The real problem was that I could not see it as a bad thing. I was the one in the know; I was ready. I had already solved the mystery in the movie, and I was right most of the time. When you say something and you’re correct it is not being prideful. It is being accurate. Add self hatred to that and I had absolutely no way to ever see my problem was pride. As a Christian, I was all about seeing my issues and dealing with them, but I was not interested in people who didn’t have everything figured out. (You can imagine how many people I was interested in.) I wanted help and answers, and I couldn’t find them, so I was figuring out the answers myself. I learned a lot, but it didn’t really do anyone any good because I wouldn’t take the time to explain myself. You either got it or you didn’t, and I was moving on to the next thing. See ya!

Then I came to a point where I actually made a mistake. I said something obviously wrong, and this time the people in my life stood up. (I say “this time” because it is likely I had made blatant errors before and people in my life couldn’t or didn’t want to stand up to me.) In the discussion, pride was brought in as the cause of the issue.

At the very same time, I was in a controversy with some others, and in this controversy I was not the offender. It was another. These two events were happening isolated from each other but at the same time. In one I was the problem; in the other it was another person, but the issues were the same. In one I was defending myself; in the other accusing another. I was in earnest working to help the other person see his issues and thinking about them while defending myself. At one of the last meetings before I saw, I was looking at the person I was accusing and asking myself, “Am I looking into the mirror?”

I found myself offering correction and being corrected at the same time. Knowing what I have shared about how I analyze everything, imagine what kind of pickle I was in. I was analyzing how I was right and analyzing why I was wrong at the same time. I think about how amazing God is when I think about the situation that He ordained so that I could have my eyes opened. Talk about a stubborn person. I had to start taking my own advice and analyzing myself. I hated who I was. I know that because I hated it when I saw the things I was doing in others. I just never saw that I was doing the very things I hated.

OK, so I saw my error. Friends labored with me for months and a long week or so over it, and finally I saw it. It was obvious. The error, to me, was not the big news. The big news, as far as I was concerned, was that I could make such an obvious error and not see it or acknowledge it. They kept pointing the error out and I kept talking about everything else but the error. It is embarrassing to think about. It is like having a note put on your back and everyone sees it but you. The only difference is that I was the one who put the note on my own back.

Getting Outside of Myself

Shame aside, I was relieved. Even with all my contemplating of every conceivable angle, I still could not see every possibility, and that brought great relief, because that means that every outcome was NOT dependent upon me. Things could happen and, even when they didn’t go well, it was not because I had the capability to stop them and didn’t. I didn’t even have the capability to fully see every outcome. The world’s problems were not because of me. Whew!

I was relieved for another reason as well. Trusted brothers in Christ told me the issue was pride and gave me a little insight that I didn’t have before. I accepted the rebuke and believed that I had a problem. God opened my eyes and I experienced freedom again from the prison of having to know everything.

I am not sure if it was backsliding (trying to figure everything out again) or not but this led me to thinking over pride. I started to tell everyone in my life that I had an issue with pride and asked them, if they saw it , to point it out to me. I didn’t have the first clue as to what it was. Again, the definition I was working with meant to be puffed up, and that meant Gaston, and I was not that. I had low self esteem.

So I started to attack this thing from every angle. This time, however, I included my family. I felt like this was a big deal, I had never had pride explained to me, nor could I find a very good explanation, yet I knew it was a big problem.

A Working Definition of Pride

Months went by. I cannot recall all of my thoughts, and at the dinner table, while discussing it with my family, we formulated a working definition for pride. By working definition, I mean it was something we could use to start identifying pride in ourselves and each other but not totally settled. Pride was being confident about something that you had not proved so this is the definition we came up with:

“Pride is acting and/or depending on an assumption that could be easily verified.”

It is important to understand the full idea here. It is not prideful to assume. We have to assume many things. We assume that the sun will come up tomorrow. We assume we will be able to walk after a night of sleep. We assume when we post a writing, someone will read it. Life is full of assumptions and we have to assume almost everything to continue to live happily, because it is not in our capabilities to know everything.

It is not prideful to act on assumptions; we do that all the time too. We assume our wife will like flowers. We write letters to people, assuming they care about what we have to say. We stop to see if a person needs help when their car has broken down. We assume people who come to church will drink coffee. We can act on assumptions without being prideful.

The hardest part in the definition is the distinction in the words to “depend” or to “act” on the assumption. What I mean by “acting and/or depending” is that we use the assumption to build upon. I mean we set a foundation upon this assumption and build on that foundation.

Let me illustrate what I mean.

Let’s say I assume my wife will want flowers, so I stop at the store to pick some up. I don’t want to ask her because I want it to be a nice surprise. Not being prideful here. I buy some flowers, her favorite, assuming, again, that she didn’t change her mind since the last time we talked about it. I start to go home and on the way I envision her response, she is going to be so happy, she is going to think I am a good husband and she is going to want to have some alone time latter to thank me.

PRIDE ALERT!!!

See the husband has now built on the assumption, he is now depending upon his original assumption for the rest of his assumptions. The wife is now hopeless unless she can read his mind. He gets home, she just finished with the bills and they have little money. She thinks she is allergic to those flowers now and she just started her period. Needless to say, she is not thrilled about the flowers, and all of his plans have come crashing down. This may be a fight now from what was supposed to be a very kind act.

If the husband had not built on his original assumption he would have come home and gave the gift, listened to the new information from his wife, thrown the flowers out, and went on with the evening. She may have seen his caring heart and, though the situation was a bummer, they now know each other a bit better. I plan to give more examples, but I hope you can see what I mean by ‘acting and/or depending’ on an assumption.

Lastly, what I mean by “easily verified” is that we take an assumption and build upon it when we could, with very little proportionate effort, verify the assumption.

Our world is built upon assumptions and many cannot be verified even if we wanted to. Many things, especially in relationships with others, are easy to verify. For example, you leave for work and though your spouse normally makes your lunch, today there is no lunch for you. You wonder why and decide she is mad at you for something you did. You think that is unfair and you get mad at her for getting mad at you. By the time you get home you have built a case against her, and you let her have it. You fight.

In reality, she just forgot. You could have very easily put off building assumptions upon assumptions until you verified your first assumption. A simple question, “Why didn’t you make my lunch today?” would have allowed you not to worry and fret and fight. Not everything in life is easily verifiable but most relationship issues are. When we choose not to go to the person and simply ask to verify our thoughts and or feelings we are walking in pride.

Pride Hunting

In order for us as a family to help each other see pride we started a game. We called it, “Pride Hunting”. The game worked like this, if you hear someone acting on an assumption that they could easily verify, you shoot them with an imaginary bow and arrow and make the sound of hitting the target. “Swooptttt.” Then the shooter has to explain why he thinks the person is being prideful. He has to show an assumption that is being acted upon. If he cannot, of course, we all get to shoot him. This led to some amazing discoveries. (FYI, we did go through an initial phase of this being fun, then it got a little hurtful and now it is fun again and also more rare as we are all trying not to be prideful.) Here are some examples of what we discovered together.

We discovered pride is not only happening when we are puffed up like Gaston, but rather it was also happening when we got depressed. Mom or dad would offer some form of correction and the child would become sad and sulked. We would ask why they were doing that. The reply was along the lines of, “I feel like you don’t love me,” or something to that effect. We then would shoot them and say, “You’re in pride.” Then we would point out why we said that. They had heard our correction and assumed we gave our correction because, in this case, we didn’t ‘love them’. Then they acted on their assumption (they became sad and sulked) rather than verify it. We then had them ask us about their feelings. “Mom I feel like you don’t love me anymore because of your correction, is that true?”

Mom gets to dispel that idea and replace it with the truth. We see here that self loathing is a result of pride as well.

I struggle with self hatred and depression. Learning from our experiences with the children the next time I became depressed. After I had spent a day in bed and my wife and I were able to talk again, I shared the reasons I fell into depression with my wife, and we spread the situation out and had a long talk about what went on. I brought up all the assumptions I had felt before getting into the pit and found each one was false or just needed some more information. It feels silly as an adult to ask my wife questions about the way I feel. “Honey, when you said this, I think you meant this and this. Is that true?” Rather that verifying the truth I had assumed and allowed my whole world to collapse. What a waste of time and energy. My wife had her things too, and we went through them as well. When we were done, it was like we knew each other better. There was hope.

One of my children was upset with his siblings. He felt like the girls didn’t like him and he was mad at them. We had him ask them. It turned out he was right: they did not like him. His behavior was prideful, however, because he was blaming them for not liking him. They admitted they didn’t like him, and they said why. He was always hitting them or being bossy or changing their games. They had good reason not to like him, but instead of listening to them and working to change, he depended on his right assumption and was angry with them and did more of what they hated. In this case he should have verified his assumption by asking if his feelings were true and then worked to understand how to correct the behavior. This conversation revealed a bundle of pride on everyone’s part.

What we were seeing is that all of our thoughts and feelings need to be verified by asking questions of the people we have the thoughts and feelings about. If we do not verify them, then we certainly shouldn’t build anything upon them.

Let’s look at giving a gift. I talked earlier about when a husband may stop and buy his wife some flowers. The question is how can we give a gift without being prideful? I’m singling out gift-giving because most gifts are acting on an assumption that we do not want to verify because we want it to be a surprise. So how do we pull this off? I think we have to give the gift expecting…..nothing. Even expecting a thank you or a smile of gratitude is building on an assumption and, if that simple assumption of ours is not met, we will be disappointed. I think in order to give gifts freely, without pride, we even need to be ready to have the person we are giving to be disappointed. It is just not fair to assume a person’s response for them. I know I hate that pressure as well.

Another thing that had to go in our home due to the ‘pride hunting’ game was generalizations. We started to realize just how much we generalized, as in “you ALWAYS do that”. Arrows began to fly at the words: ALWAYS, EVERYTIME, EVERYONE, CONSTANTLY, NEVER because they were easy pickings. Those words need qualifiers and we soon learned we needed to stop using them and be more accurate when we exposed things others do that we don’t like. We are now more careful to say things like, “it SEEMS like you are doing that a lot” etc. It is funny, but that little bit of breathing room given, rather than the suffocating generalization, makes a huge difference.

Deconstruction

After a while of focusing on this, I realized that this problem in my life had been there for a long time. It is hard to explain but, when God opened my eyes again (as described above), I felt a release from a fear I didn’t know I had. I had a fear of learning. I am not exactly sure how it worked, because I know that I learned stuff, but I felt this release to learn anything I wanted. The fear was gone. I didn’t exactly understand this fear of learning until realizing how much of my life was built upon assumptions.

When you decide to build upon assumptions, the fear that comes with pride is anyone proving your assumptions are wrong. When that happens, you lose everything built on top of those assumptions as well. That means you have to start over again, and starting over can be a painfully embarrassing enterprise. I think that is where my fear of learning came from. Subconsciously I was protecting all of the assumptions that I had been too lazy or selfish to verify. What a crock!

I think this is the reason that, the older people get, the more they refuse to hear anything that might challenge what they “know”. I realized that in my life I needed to allow a process of deconstruction and reconstruction. Deconstruction is the process of digging through past thoughts and feelings and verifying them. It is looking through issues in life and tracing them back to a point of pride. For instance, the way I may feel and think about my father. “Why do I think this way about him?” may be the question I ask. If the answer is because “he did this”, what about him doing that made me feel like I do? This may lead to twenty incidences over 23 years until I get to the actual root. Then, when I get to that root cause for my feelings for him, I can deal with it by sharing my thoughts and repenting or forgiving him. From there go to the next thing that comes to mind.

This may be a long process and some things that come up may not be able to be dealt with directly. The person could be dead, for instance. It seems to me it is still important to go through them and deal with the issues. I believe this type of work is something that takes courage and must be led by the Holy Spirit. I believe this type of work will be systemic and lead to us being healed and to the healing of many who live in the same prison. I also feel this type of thing is what we do when we actually believe “that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Another aspect of depending upon an assumption that could easily be verified is not correcting past wrongs. “Yeah we did that thing way back in high school, but I am sure they are over it by now.” Really? How can we be sure? Are you over the way you were treated? One example of this in my life was when I believe the Holy Spirit brought to mind a cruel thing I did in high school and was able to, through the power of Facebook, apologize.

Programmed Assumptions.

Programmed assumptions are things society teaches us that we accept and never verify. It is amazing how many things we are taught to believe and most never question. One example is how we are taught that the Civil War was fought because of slavery. That is the popular story, and I remember the first time hearing the war was about states’ rights and that slavery was a peripheral issue. These types of programmed assumptions go on and on. We need to learn to verify facts and not build our beliefs upon things we are told.

Floating Assumptions.

This is the last and maybe the most frustrating assumption of all. A floating assumption is putting on assumptions like eyeglasses and viewing the world through them. This is the type of assumption that makes us think about others, “There is no hope for them.” The Word says this, “Do you see a person wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.” Proverbs 26:12

Floating assumptions are likely assumptions we have received from our parents as children or we put them on as a self-defense mechanism. I think racism is an assumption like this. Many church doctrines or other family or social beliefs get put on from a young age, and it literally takes an act of God to remove them. These floating assumptions that we wear like glasses taint all we see and, not only do they go unnoticed, but because there is no contrast to identify them, they are the wearer’s reality.

The truth is I may have one even now, or you might. The only way I know of identifying them and removing them is through relationship with others and a willingness to bear with one another even through ferocious fights. If you are constantly having issues with people and you cannot see the problem, you may have a floating assumption. Removing a floating assumption can be like a drug addict coming down and detoxing. It takes a tough love, a much tougher love than most are willing to endure. I am thankful for those in my life for going through tough issues and I believe there are more to come as Jesus continues to reveal truth and set us free so we can be healed.

Becoming a New Man

My hope in writing this is to simply share a hope that God has given me. I want to expose the evil of pride, share the NEW life that comes from not assuming things and from living in the real world and I want to give you the tools that have helped me overcome this sneaky serpent. As men and fathers we lead by example, if we are prideful we are not at all like our Messiah. I believe overcoming any issue in our lives is an act of God, it is His work and He does His work in the light(in honesty and vulnerability).

You may not think you are prideful, if that is true then you should have no issues investigating to be sure you are not. Ask a friend to be honest with you, ask your father and mother, ask your wife. If they are not afraid of you, they will tell you. If they are afraid of you, you can be sure you walk in pride.

Pride is ALWAYS short lived and has nothing to do with following Jesus. Please turn from pride today.

That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”
James 4:6

A man’s pride will be the cause of his fall, but he who has a gentle spirit will get honour.
Proverbs 29:23

The OTHER Proverbs 9 Woman

Four characteristics of Folly from Proverbs 9:13-18

A few weeks ago I dissected Proverbs 9:1-6 and Solomon’s personification of wisdom as a woman who plans ahead, diligently and efficiently carries out her plans, and then shares her bounty with all who are willing to follow her example.

The last part of Proverbs 9 describes her opposite, the woman Folly.

13  The woman Folly is loud; she is deluded and knows nothing.
14  She sits at the door of her house; she takes a seat on the highest places of the town,
15  calling to those who pass by, who are going straight on their way,
16  “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” And to him who lacks sense she says,
17  “Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”
18  But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.
Proverbs 9:13-18 ESV

As with the case of Wisdom, the description of Folly reveals a lot about her character that isn’t explicitly laid out in the text.

Folly Opens Her Mouth

Whoever restrains his words has knowledge, and
He who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding.
Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise;
When he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.
Proverbs 17:27-28

Folly is incapable of verbal restraint. She loves to tell about her adventures and conquests, the record-breaking fish that got away, and the sure-fire system she has for beating the stock market. Nevermind that she has nothing to show for all her accomplishments and schemes. She could if she wanted to…

What’s more, she believes her own nonsense. She has told her lies so many times that she has lost the line between fact and fiction. Her entire life has become “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Where the prudent keep silent, Folly speaks. Where the wise ask questions, Folly declares. Where the knowledgeable admit their ignorance, Folly unwittingly advertises hers.

Folly Takes the Easy Way

In contrast to Wisdom, who planned and built her own house, then busied herself in preparing a feast, Folly merely sits in the door of her house. We have no indication that she built it or contributed to it in any way, only that she occupies it.

And not only the door of her house, but the high places of the city. Unlike Wisdom who sends her servants (or goes herself) to the highest places (al gaphi maromi), Folly takes a seat in the high places (al kise maromi), possibly referring to places of honor in pagan temples and shrines. But wherever she goes, whether at home or the high places, Folly takes a seat.

Folly Is Disruptive

Where Wisdom called to the simple and then waited for a response, Folly seeks out people who are already on a mission, who are “going straight on their way”, in order to distract them. She yells at them, confuses them, makes them forget their purpose.

To what end?

Envy and resentment. She can’t stand that other people are accomplishing things, working hard, providing for their families and futures. She can’t see beyond her own failings, so she thinks that anyone with wealth must have stolen it. She would be wealthy too if it weren’t for all those rich people taking everything for themselves. The Haves are her enemy. So she throws a verbal stumbling block into the path of those who might otherwise be productive and pleasant neighbors, dragging them down to the floor with her. Folly loves to watch you fall.

Folly Corrupts

Once she has the attention of gullible people, she isn’t content to see them wasting time and floundering in life. Misery loves to see herself in everyone around her, and Folly is her sister. She wants to corrupt them and watch them rot.

Folly’s primary tools are jealousy and easy gain. She believes that the rich didn’t work for their luxuries, so why should she? A house without building, bread without plowing and sowing, and water without digging. Why work hard yourself when you can live off the hard work of some other sucker? She seduces the weary, the simple, and oppressed, who might otherwise be gainfully employed, to join in her sloth and theft, because they are vulnerable and easy targets. She knows that her bread and water doesn’t compare to the feast set out by Wisdom, but she also knows that, to a man with sore feet and a bent back, that morsel of bread on a doorstep now seems more appealing than a sirloin in a palace later.

Folly Is Death

What Folly has never learned and what she often prevents her victims from discovering until it is too late, is that nothing truly worth having is easy. Real wealth that enhances life rather than destroying it takes time. Houses and families and legacies aren’t built by decree. Riches gained without effort, whether through theft, gambling, or sudden inheritance, are corrupting and tend to evaporate as quickly as they came, as often as not leaving their possessors in a worse position than before.

Once you begin to eat the bread and drink the water of Folly, no matter how good it tastes today, you become mired in the quagmire that surrounds her house. The longer you remain, the more difficult it will be to escape, and eventually even the bread and water runs out.

“Who is simple? Let him turn in here.” And as for him who lacks heart, she says to him, “Stolen waters are sweet, And bread eaten in secret is pleasant.” But he does not know that the dead are there, Her guests are in the depths of She’ol.
Proverbs 9:16-18 TS2009

The Proverbs 9 Woman

Four characteristics of Wisdom from Proverbs 9:1-6

In Proverbs 9:1-6, Wisdom is personified as a woman and contrasted with Folly, which is personified as another woman in vs 13-18. (Check out this post on the literary structure of Proverbs 9!) Solomon described Wisdom as building a house, preparing a meal, and inviting guests to join her. We can learn something about wisdom from that alone–She is a builder, a provider, and a generous host–but Solomon gave us important details that add significant depth to this picture.

1  Wisdom has built her house; she has hewn her seven pillars.
2  She has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine; she has also set her table.
3  She has sent out her young women to call from the highest places in the town,
4  “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” To him who lacks sense she says,
5  “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.
6  Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”
Proverbs 9:1-6

Wisdom built a large and elaborate house and prepared a feast from her own livestock and probably also from her own vineyard. She had servants and sent them out to invite strangers to come and share in her great bounty and to learn from her example.

Wisdom Built Her House

Nobody builds a house in a day. They don’t come pre-assembled by mail order…at least they didn’t in 900 BC. Houses take time, resources, and a lot of hard work. Most people when the Proverbs were written built their own houses from straw, mud, or stone, and usually only large enough to protect their immediate family and a few animals from the elements at night. A corner for cooking and eating, an alcove for sleeping, and a little floor space for the ten children. Only the wealthy could afford the time and money to build anything larger and more elaborate than a few walls and a thatch roof.

The house of Wisdom is different. Her house is more than a dirt floor out of the rain. From this passage we can deduce some interesting details:

Her house is large enough to accommodate seven pillars, numerous servants, and a crowd of guests. Wisdom didn’t buy or inherit her house. She built it herself. She selected the site, drew a floorplan, purchased or collected the materials, and managed or executed the construction from start to finish personally. She had a furnished dining area and sufficient storage to hold dishes and platters for a large feast. The rest of her house was also artfully finished in detail. It wasn’t just a utilitarian space for sleeping and eating. The number seven indicates completeness, perfection. She didn’t stop building when her house was a cover for her family and a number of guests, but kept working until every detail was complete.

Wisdom Prepared a Feast

Living in modern America, there is a great distance between us and the source of our food. Most of us have no idea how our food is made or even what it is made from. Corn starch, unsulphured molasses, baking soda, salt… Oh, there’s one I can identify. I know what salt is, but what part of corn does corn starch come from? Unsulphured molasses…does that mean most molasses is sulphured!? And what exactly is molasses anyway?

Michael Pollan wrote a great book called The Omnivore’s Dilemma (affiliate link), in which he traced several meals, including one from McDonald’s, from their original sources in fields, pastures, and quarries, through factories, distributors, and kitchens, and finally to the American dining table. Our food today takes a surprisingly complicated and disturbing journey before it reaches our plates, but it wasn’t always that way. Most people throughout history ate whatever they or a neighbor grew or hunted, and that was that. Ultimately, the American pantry reveals as much about us as it does about what we eat.

Solomon’s sparse description of Wisdom’s table also reveals more than what she served.

Wisdom owned livestock, and rather than buying meat at the market, she killed and butchered her own animals for the feast. Not just one animal, but animals, plural. Whether these were small as birds or large as oxen, we can’t tell, but in either case she was expecting a significant number of diners. She purchased or grew spices and developed sufficient skill as a vintner to prepare her own mixed wine. Finally, Wisdom’s feast was prepared and ready before it was needed.

Wisdom Sent Her Servants

Even in cultures with a slave-based economy, most people aren’t slave owners. Most of the people who have lived in this world did not have servants of any kind. In Proverbs 9, Wisdom had at least two servant girls and probably many more. She had livestock, a garden, a vineyard, and a large house, so she probably also has a number of men in her employ.

The servants of Wisdom weren’t harshly used, but honored and trusted helpers. She sent them out to the city to invite guests, which required that they be courteous and pleasant. She trusted them to execute their mission with gladness, not resentment, which means that they also loved and trusted their mistress.

Wisdom sent her servant girls to the highest points in the city (or she went herself, depending on your translation) because she didn’t waste time and effort. She had no need to confront every stranger on the way because she knew that those who were ready to heed her call would hear it and respond.

Wisdom Shared Her Table

When I was a kid, my parents often invited people to join us for Sunday dinner. These weren’t just people from church, but also the elderly, the lonely, and people who were too often ignored by the world. Sometimes they even invited people to live with us while they sorted out life’s inevitable troubles. Wisdom went far beyond that, inviting a crowd of total strangers to come to her feast.

However, Wisdom’s feast wasn’t intended to fill the belly, or at least that’s not all it did. Wisdom’s food and drink was personal transformation. She invited the simple to grow wise, the foolish to learn how to live, and the lazy to learn industry. Wisdom’s table was reserved for those who wanted to become something more than they were. To eat with her was to experience the full gamut of joy and pain, because it is only through overcoming pain that we become wise and find true joy.

Four Characteristics of Wisdom

Like many great teachers, Solomon didn’t spell out every lesson. A close look at his brief description of Wisdom in Proverbs 9:1-6 reveals four distinct characteristics.

  1. Wisdom is strategic. Her plans are long term and exhaustive, clearly envisioning the detailed end results of her labors before she even begins.
  2. Wisdom is diligent. She doesn’t cease from her labors until her job is done. Her house isn’t complete until the walls are painted and the pillars and cornices are carved and fixed. She is not afraid of hard physical labor and doesn’t cut corners that might negatively impact the end result.
  3. Wisdom is efficient. She multiplies her efforts by delegating tasks to trusted servants and applies the most effort on those tasks that are likely to have the most impact.
  4. Wisdom is generous. God doesn’t grant wisdom for our personal benefit, but to enrich his kingdom on earth. Wisdom freely shares what she has received, desiring the same richness of life for everyone whose heart is ready to receive it and who is willing to devote the necessary effort.

Solomon heard Wisdom’s call and joined in her feast. He spent many hard years, making both bad and good decisions, transforming himself from a young man with a good heart into the wise king we remember from the Bible. He set a table for us in his writings–the Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes–and he continually invites us to join him. Since he prepared such a rich feast, we don’t have to make all the same mistakes he did. We have only to heed his call, sit down at his table, and set ourselves to the hard work of applying his words.

That’s not to say that studying the Scriptures will keep us from making mistakes. We have our own lives to live, our own mistakes to make, and there is no real growth without adversity. But remember that Wisdom is efficient. She learns all she can from the mistakes of those who went before. There’s no sense in replowing ground in which seeds have already been sown.

Solomon began Proverbs 9 with a description of Wisdom, but ended it with a description of Folly. Next time, I’ll take a look at vs 13-18 and some big mistakes to avoid.