Grace & Peace: Proverbs 21:16

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

“A wise king sifts out the wicked, and brings the threshing wheel over them”

Proverbs 20:26

The civil magistrate is not supposed to be a neutral umpire. The “teams” that assemble under his oversight will not two baseball teams, or two football teams, with the magistrate needing to not care who prevails. 

No. Because the magistrate wields power, and does so in a fallen world, there are two different kinds of people who are interested in how he wields that power. Those two kinds of people are the righteous and the wicked. It is the assigned task of the magistrate, and particularly of the chief magistrate, to take sides. Moreover it is his task to take the right side.

Because of the growth of libertarian assumptions, we have drifted into the idea that the magistrate is just supposed to call balls and strikes, not caring which team wins the game. So if the drag queens want story hour at the library, then they should be treated in exactly the same way as the ladies from the Wholesome Readings for Kids Hour. But this is absurd, and the only way we might wind up not thinking it absurd would be if we were in the grip of a really bad idea. 

A good king attacks the wicked. If he refuses to do so, for whatever reason, then the effect this will have is that it will attract the wicked. His court, his circles, his advisors, will soon be populated by wicked men, and by no one else. If the magistrate is not attacking wicked men, then his circles will be safe for wicked men. And as soon as it is determined to be safe, they will start to congregate there. 

So there is no neutrality. There can be no neutrality. If a magistrate is not at war with the wicked, then his only other option is to be at war with the saints.  

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

“A man’s gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him before great men”

Proverbs 18:16

A question that arises from time to time, particularly among Christians who have to travel in dysfunctional countries, or function in corrupt institutions, concerns the question of bribery. What is the Scripture’s teaching on bribery?

The bottom line is that it is wicked and lawless to take a bribe. 
“Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates, which the Lord thy God giveth thee, throughout thy tribes: and they shall judge the people with just judgment. Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift: for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise, and pervert the words of the righteous. That which is altogether just shalt thou follow, that thou mayest live, and inherit the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee” (Deuteronomy 16:18–20).

This is the sin committed by Samuel’s sons, and which helped prepare the way for Israel’s defection (1 Sam. 8:3). So we can see that taking bribes is a great sin.

Reasoning by analogy, if a culture of not taking bribes is in place, it would be really sinful to try to introduce the practice. What you are trying to do is the equivalent of seducing a virgin.

But if the system is already corrupt, and all you are trying to do is get through customs, or otherwise persuade an official to do his job, it is not necessarily sinful to give him what he is angling for. This is radically different than giving a gift to keep someone from doing his job. At the same time, you might want to refrain if you have larger issues in view, but this is a tactical decision. For example, the apostle Paul could have gone free if only he had bribed Felix (Acts 24:26), but Paul wanted his case to be heard by Caesar. 

This corruption can occur on a grand scale, or it can be a petty nuisance. For example, when I was in the Navy in the submarine service, and we were due to go to sea, there were various shops on the sub tender that had to service equipment we needed before we could leave. There was this practice called kumshaw, whereby someone would go get a case of steaks from the supply officer in order to expedite the work that was being done on the periscope, for example. As a way to get to the head of the line, it would work, but that didn’t keep it from being disgraceful.

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

“A scorner seeketh wisdom, and findeth it not: But knowledge is easy unto him that understandeth” 

Proverbs 14:6

Not that we should routinely look to him for wisdom, but Oscar Wilde once said that a cynic is someone who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

It says here that a scorner seeks wisdom. He is hunting for wisdom, looking for it. His search is in vain, however, because he continues to use a metric fashioned by his spirit of scorn and mockery. He assumes that there must always be “a catch,” there will always be a “fatal flaw.” If he doesn’t identify the fault right away, he is fully capable of identifying the potential fault, the potential flaw, right away. What could go wrong?

The one who understands is the one who does not over-engineer things. He understands already, and so it is that knowledge comes to him easily. The task may be hard, but the wise man does not throw any extra complications from the heart into the mix.

So we have to hold this in tension with other truths that we find in the book of Proverbs. Hard work is the way of wisdom, and hard work is, well, hard. But the need for hard work is not hard to understand, just hard to do. Running a marathon is conceptually easy. Just run around the block and you have it down—one foot ahead of the other. It nevertheless takes discipline and training. 

The scorner is capable of mocking the whole enterprise—the race, the training, the discipline, the idea, the running shoes, and so forth. And then later, when he wants to go home with a medal, he “findeth it not.” It turns out that the more a man hustles, the luckier he gets.

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

“A gracious woman retaineth honour: And strong men retain riches” 

Proverbs 11:16

This proverb has a woman on one side of it, and men on the other. The verb for retain or hold is the same verb in both cases.

A certain kind of woman retains honor, and the implication is that strong men, in the same way, retain riches. This tells us several things of significance. 

The first is that what strength is to men, graciousness is to women. Put another way, graciousness is a woman’s strength. It is what enables her to hold or retain something that is essential for her to retain. By it, she retains honor. This enables us to make another equation, which is that honor is a woman’s wealth. 

Men retain their riches by means of their strength, and women retain honor by means of their graciousness.

This means that women are supposed to be charming. As Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 11, the woman is the glory of the man. He says just before this that man is the image and glory of God, which is certainly good. But when it says simply that woman is the glory of man, is this meant to be a slam? Is she representing some kind of second class glory? Is this a downgrade? Not a bit of it. He is the glory of God, and she is the glory of that glory. This is why women are much easier to look at than men are . . . much less of an eyesore, to be frank.

Elsewhere in Proverbs, King Lemuel is exhorted by his mother not to give his strength to women (Prov. 31:3). This is related to the point that a man’s strength is the source of his wealth. If a man is a fool, he gives his strength to women the way the prodigal son did (Luke 15:30). 

But flip this around. In the same way, women ought not give up their strength to men. The graciousness of a godly woman is how she continues to receive honor, and from men particularly. But if she allows herself to start acting low class, like a slattern, she is throwing all her wealth away.

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