Grace & Peace: Proverbs 20:14

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

It is an honour for a man to cease from strife: But every fool will be meddling.

Proverbs 20:3

A lot of wisdom is crammed into this short proverb. First we are told that walking away from a fight can be honorable. The reason many men quarrel or fight or contend is that they believe that it is necessarily dishonorable not to. They think that a masculine response has to confront every insult or slight, and yet we are told here that it can be honorable to just walk away.

We are taught this elsewhere in Proverbs.

“The vexation of a fool is known at once, but the prudent ignores an insult.” (Proverbs 12:16, ESV).

The AV has “covereth shame” here, meaning that the prudent man is carrying the shame of the man who insults. The insulting one is the shamed one. He disgraces himself by his behavior, and the prudent man overlooks it.

At the same time, there are times when a man’s office and responsibility are all tied up in the insult, and when that happens, a prudent man draws a firm line. “These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee” (Titus 2:15).

There is a stark difference between running away from a conflict like a coward, and stepping away from a conflict like a judicious Christian man. It is our responsibility to know and practice the different. There is a difference between getting beat up and turning the other cheek, in other words.

The second half of the proverb is also instructive. While it is honorable for a man to step away from strife, there is another kind of man who meddles. He is a fool. He doesn’t have strife on his hands yet, but he is going to in a minute. 

The wise man knows what makes strife go away, and the fool does not know what makes it come.

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

Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: And he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.

Proverbs 17:28

We have a proverb in English that points in the same general direction as this one. “It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt.”

The principle is that silence can be constructive and helpful. Notice that this proverb says that the silent fool can be “spotted” some wisdom. Not every fool looks like a fool. We can be credited with wisdom and understanding that we don’t actually have if we only have sense enough to keep quiet.

Moreover it is hard to learn while you are talking. It is difficult to observe what other people are doing, or how they are reacting, when you are trying to think of what you were going to say next. 

Even a fool, when he is quiet, can be credited with wisdom, and he might even learn something in the meantime. 

Because folly is bound up in the heart of a child (Prov. 22:15), this is one of the reasons why children need to be taught the discipline of silence in company. Sometimes the parents of a verbally precocious child take more pleasure from that fact than they ought to. Where words are many, sin is not absent (Prov. 10:19), and consequently it is not wise to allow someone who is not yet wise simply to chatter on.

Even a child might be thought wise if he knows enough to keep quiet. And unlike the thoroughbred fool, his folly is not a permanent condition, which means that as he keeps his silence, he can learn to observe what is going on. And by means of that observation, he is in a position to learn wisdom.

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

Withhold not correction from the child: For if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die

Proverbs 23:13

When it comes to spanking our little ones, conscientious parents should of course look to Scripture for their guidance and protection. Not only is it guidance and protection for them as parents, but it is also protection for the child.

It should go without saying that godly discipline should be judicious and calm, and not the result of mom or dad flying off the handle. We are told to correct fellow Christians (which would include our children) in a spirit of gentleness, considering ourselves, lest we also are tempted (Gal. 6:1). The one who corrects a fellow believer must be “spiritual,” Paul says. That means when a parent is irritated and annoyed, they are not qualified to discipline their child, although they are (through the irritation) motivated to do so. And when they are qualified to do so (not being annoyed), they are not motivated. It is quite true that the discipline of children should not be the result of parental exasperation.

But with that said, parents are required by Scripture to maintain their qualifications for correction. They are told to “withhold not correction,” and the correction being spoken of is a beating with a rod. This is plainly a pretty serious situation because the child spoken of here (na’ar) is not a toddler, but rather rather “a lad.” He is of an age where it might be thought by his mother that a beating might kill him, although Solomon assures us that it will not. It might sound like he going to die, but he is not going to die.

And so when it comes to parental discipline, we have the foundation for an a fortiori argument, a “how much more” argument. If it is legitimate to beat your 16-year-old son with a rod (because he was joy-riding in the neighbor’s car without permission), then how much more would it be legitimate to switch that same boy 14 years earlier in order to head off that incident entirely?

There is a movement out there called Gentle Parenting, which wants to draw attention to the fact that many of the passages in Proverbs are not talking about discipling preschoolers. This is quite true, but if Proverbs commends bending the trunk of the tree when it fifty feet high, then wouldn’t the Lord also commend bending the sapling? And besides, does anybody honestly think that Gentle Parent advocates are really urging us to withhold corporal punishment until the teen years? Not likely.  

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

Excellent speech becometh not a fool: Much less do lying lips a prince.

Proverbs 17:7

It is difficult to read this proverb about high flown speech in the mouth of a fool without thinking of Shakespeare’s Dogberry. “Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly; they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.”

The thing that strikes us as so funny about this kind of speech is the incongruity. The tone is so elevated, the words whistle clean past their targets, the sense of the thing taken as a whole teeters on the lip of nonsense. 

And Solomon tells us that a much greater incongruity is found when princes lie. Thrones are established by righteousness (Prov. 16:12; 25:5; 29:14), and righteousness obviously must include a loyalty to truth. 

If we remove the obvious exceptions (remembering that deception is a legitimate tool in a ruler’s war chest, as we see with Joshua at the second battle of Ai), then we realize that a ruler must speak the truth to his friends—to his counselors, to his cabinet, to his family, to his people. A prince must keep his word. A prince must not lie in order to keep himself out of trouble. 

In our modern secular world, however, we find our rulers and princes are lying to us all the time. They call it “spin,” and they say they are doing it “for the kids,” and they plant stories in the media, and they accuse people falsely. They say that the Constitution means things that it manifestly does not mean. 

The next time you see one of our important solons on the television being interviewed, and you know he is lying—his lips are moving—you need to remember that, according to Scripture, you are living in a unique form of government, one that we might call dogberry democracy.  

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