Day #156

Sermon - Audio
Proverbs 4-6 - Audio
Proverbs 4-6- Reading

Daily Insights - Please Comment

Proverbs 4

1. 4.2: “learning” NIV is an interesting word because it means to grasp or lay hold of something. The idea is that the father it giving his sons something sound for them to grasp with their minds and then live in their lives. Since what he is giving them needs to be grasped it puts responsibility on the children to not only listen to what is said but to reflect, ruminate on it so that they truly grasp what wisdom is.
2. 4.3-4: Here we discover the responsibility of a parent to pass on what they have learned to the next generation. As he had been taught, this father will now teach his children. There is an unusual understanding from our 21st century perspective: the wisdom of the generation before is to be valued, understood and lived. The basic assumption is that the old know better than the young and the young should learn from the old.
3. 4.6: The promise of early parts of Proverbs is repeated, namely, when we honor Wisdom, wisdom honors us.
4. 4.7: The Hebrew literally is “Wisdom first” There is nothing more important than wisdom so we need to be willing to do whatever it takes to gain wisdom i.e. knowing how to do life in God’s good but fallen world. Again, we need to recognize from a New Testament perspective that wisdom and God’s kingdom are caught up with each other so that a person is willing to sell all he has in order to get the treasure of the kingdom. It is also important to know that according to 1 Corinthians 1 that Jesus is the Wisdom of God. So Jesus, Kingdom, and Wisdom become intertwined, to pursue kingdom and wisdom is to pursue Christ.
5. 4.11: One of the important things to see in Proverbs is that the parents have already acquired wisdom and so are able to pass it on to their children. There is an assumption in Proverbs that parents will pursue wisdom so they can pass it on to their children. For parents, being people of wisdom is an obligation.
6. 4.13: “Guard” is a word used of watching over military installations and vital resource areas so the enemy cannot take them. As one guards these vital areas so we need to guard the instruction/wisdom that is given us. When we guard instruction we live, when we fail to do so we die.
7. 4.22: The incentive for memorization is that knowing the words brings life and health to a person.

Proverbs 5

• Proverbs 5 celebrates right sexuality and points out the destructiveness of stepping outside the boundaries of God’s design for sexual relations.
• Proverbs 5 may be misunderstood as speaking only to men (and seeing “other” women as evil seducers). This, however, would miss the underlying truths. This passage uses the male/female relationship as a metaphor for proper sexual relationship. However, both the joy and the fall can be true of either gender. This male/female metaphor runs throughout the first nine chapters of Proverbs. Wisdom is a woman whom a young man pursues. As Ray Van Leeuwen writes in his commentary, “...the fundamental opposition in the biblical text is wisdom verses folly, which is not gender specific, though gender relations illustrate it.”
• 5.3: “adulteress” NIV is a misleading translation. The actual word here means “strange” or “forbidden” woman. The picture is of someone who is not in proper relationship to you i.e. someone who is not your spouse. In this light, the passage speaks not only to people after they are married, but at all times. The only person who you are in proper relationship to when it comes to enjoying sexual relations is your spouse.
• 5.18: To rejoice in the wife of your youth is a command. To rejoice means to celebrate who this person is, who he/ she is becoming by God’s grace, and to speak that rejoicing to your spouse and to others.
• 5.19: “Let her breasts satisfy you always” is another celebration of the physical part of love. The verb form here is an intensive (the only one in this part of the passage). The father is telling the son, and God is telling us, that he puts his approval on the sexual part of love and tells us to enjoy it with intensity.

Proverbs 6

• Proverbs 6.1-19 is the ninth lesson in the book of Proverbs. It addresses three specific types of people: the one who takes the debt of another (1-5), the sluggard (6-11), and the troublemaker (12-19)
• 6.1: Do not put up security for a neighbor The introduction to this section warns against agreeing to pay the debt of in one’s neighbor (in the Hebrew lit. “stranger”). This is a common warning in the book of Proverbs (11.15, 17.18, 20.16, 27.13, 22.26-27). It is a warning not against commerce but one which implores the son to use wisdom in financial affairs because fiscal matters matter to God.
• Note from Commentary: Proverbs constantly reminds us that the arena in which wisdom and folly contend is this world, with its goods and powers. According to Proverbs 1-9, the way we use our material resources, particularly our sexuality and our money, reveals either godly wisdom or its lack: “Money talks.” The matters in which our spirituality is most commonly manifested are the goods and activities of ordinary life...” Van Leewen
• 6.6: Ant In Hebrew, the word ant in this verse is grammatically singular and female which presents another feminine figure into the book of Proverbs. The sluggard is commanded to observe the ant because it understands its role in the fabric of God’s creation. It’s ways are wise and to be copied. The use of animals as examples is common in the prophetic books where animals are usually in better harmony with reality than humans. The same is true of the ant in Proverbs 6; the ant’s work within its community is singular and yet its work contributes to the entire socio-economic system of the ant hill.
• 6.12-19: The last section of Proverbs 6.1-19 is addressed to the troublemaker who displays evil inwardly and outwardly. 6.12-19 is split into two smaller poems with interconnected themes: 12-15 lists the evil behaviors of the foolish troublemakers and 16-19 address the seven things the Lord abhors about the evil man.