Proverbs, I

I've hesitated to do this because I realize since the tape, since the course is being taped, that who knows how long it will be used, it may be used five, six years from now, and so I've hesitated making specific recommendations about books to read, but in a way because he's a friend and because this is a good book, I can hardly resist mentioning this one. And some of you are familiar with that this is The Crime of the Soul by Dan Allender and Trimper Longman, I know Trimper well, I don't know Dan, but this is a great book, particularly for you guys who are doing the counseling program. In as much as it really shows how, well the subtitle says how our emotions reveal our deepest questions about God, and so Dan Allender, prominent counselor and Trimper Longman, a prominent Old Testament scholar, combined forces, and write a very interesting book. So I think maybe Richard Winter may even use this in one of his courses, am I right? Some have read, some say no, some say yes. I think the answer probably is yes, and you haven't heard, I've been exposed to it yet, but I do mention that just as something you may want to read to help bring the Psalms to bear on your specific interest in counseling and even in our struggles with our own emotional lives. Now, we're going to move now to the book of Proverbs, and as I mentioned earlier, we'll go for about 45 minutes and then I'll stop and we'll take a little bit of time to debrief the tests that you just took. That will not be on tape, unfortunately for you guys out there, but your mentor will undoubtedly provide solace and debrief you and so forth. So book of Proverbs, first an introductory word, or an introductory question, as you are reading the book of Proverbs, and by the way, don't neglect this week's assignment, which is written over here, also don't neglect the fact, and again, I'm sorry for this in terms of the video audience, but we do not meet next week that spring break, and it's in the courier, but don't come next week expecting other people to be here. There may be a few like you, but they shouldn't be here. We meet again in two weeks. So that assignment you see there is for two weeks from tonight, and that is to complete reading the book of Proverbs, if you haven't already, complete the book of Proverbs, and also read Matthew's in Benjamin 179 to 198, I think it says over there, which is that background material in a rather paraphrastic translation. So you get a sense of what the literary context of the ancient Near East was, out of which the Bible came. Now obviously God is the one who inspired the Bible, and provided the Bible, but it didn't just, it was not lowered on golden plates rather he inspired it in human language and human literary forms that were present to some measure, at least, at that time. Okay, well now finally we come to the book of Proverbs. Let me say a word about introduction, of introduction. As you read the book of Proverbs, what impression do you get? You've read probably, most of you may have read some of it. Of course, you may have been worrying about the midterm, so you said sufficient to the day is the evil thereof, and I'll worry about Proverbs later. But what impression does it make on you as you're reading it? As you, you know, when I read something, I try to kind of mentally outline what I'm reading. Maybe I learned that from people who had taken Evelyn Woods reading dynamics, I never took it, but they told me about it, and this idea of kind of outlining in your head as you go along, seemed to make sense. How did you find the book of Proverbs? It's in the Bible, if you haven't found it yet. How did you find it? I looked in the table of contents. What is your impression? Does an outline kind of present itself as you're reading the book of Proverbs? Not particularly. At least I got a clear, a forceful answer with conviction. No, not really, particularly as you get into that central section, beginning in chapter 10, you ever wish that someone would organize this stuff? And you're aware, of course, that many books have done that, many modern books that you can purchase now, organize these Proverbs thematically. And so we sometimes ask ourselves a question, why is the Bible not like that? Well, we're going to have various answers that will happen upon as we discuss the book of Proverbs. We'll begin with a comment by Robert Alden, a good man, good Old Testament scholar, who died a couple of years, actually, but by the time people are watching this out there, it will be a while later, maybe. But he said this in his commentary on the book of Proverbs. He says, the book of Proverbs is like medicine, that's good tasting medicine, but he says you cannot live on medicine alone, but few of us would go through life without some medicine now and then. Well, maybe some of you stay off of medicine, and so that may not apply. But then he goes on to, I think, a better metaphor. At least we take a vitamin. Likewise, a spiritual diet of Proverbs alone would be most unbalanced, but how sick a person might be that didn't occasionally ingest some of these potions and antidotes for the sake of his mental spiritual and even financial well-being. The book of Proverbs is the kind of biblical fare you should indulge in often, but not in large doses. The stuff of Proverbs has already been distilled so that its advice comes to us in highly concentrated form. These sage tidbits have been boiled down, trimmed, honed, polished, and sharpened to where a little goes a long way. I like that image, that metaphor of vitamin, but how does that help us explain the apparent haphazard arrangement, topical arrangement of the Proverbs that we encounter in much of the book before us? Can that help us in any way? I'm just full of rhetorical questions tonight. Yes, Steve. Okay, I have to repeat this. Within any section, you get a broad smattering of topics covered, which is not a bad thing. Is it not? What is that like? What kind of vitamin is that like? A multi-vitamin? Oh, so good. I'm just, you know, I know your brains are dead, so I'm just trying to quicken them. It's like a multi-vitamin, and so if you're reading a chapter day, you don't know what challenges you'll face that day. So read a chapter in the book of Proverbs, and you get a little bit of this and a little bit of that, a little vitamin A and a little vitamin E and so forth, and that is helpful. Now I think there's more to it than that, and we'll come to more to it, but that's a start and to perhaps acknowledge that this was not a sloppily arranged book. It's, I think, we'll see that it's more ingeniously arranged than we ever realized, but at least for starters, we can say, yeah, there is a sense, a kind of a multi-vitamin sense, to the skipping from topic to topic to topic, and then another topic. And so while we have room for these books that group them together topically, that may not be the best way to read the book of Proverbs, because you may read all about your perspective on wealth one day, and not see any wealth for some good long time, whereas you may be having real trouble with your temper and not get around to reading that section until later, but you can't read too many chapters in Proverbs without both of those being addressed. Now let's move on to the question of authorship. Well, who's the author of the book of Proverbs? Solomon, okay, good. There are actually two other authors named, did you realize that? Well, Hezekiah, in chapter 25 at the beginning of Proverbs, chapter 25, we read not so much that Hezekiah was the author, but we read this in the NIV translation. These are more Proverbs of Solomon copied by the men of Hezekiah, King of Judah. So there we get the impression that there was Solomonic material that had not yet found its place in the book of Proverbs, and during the reign of Hezekiah two centuries after Solomon, approximately two centuries after Solomon, it was deemed appropriate to include that Solomonic material in this book. I think I mentioned that earlier when we were talking about the way some of these Old Testament books did not take shape in a day, or even in a month, or even in a year, but sometimes over a span of, as we see here, centuries, Solomonic material retained and then incorporated in the time of Hezekiah. But there are two other authors actually named, yeah, Agua, who in the world is that? Well, we're not sure, but he is the, he's mentioned at the beginning of chapter 30, and then Lemuel, King Lemuel, and where did he get his wisdom? From his mother, let that be a lesson to you, okay? Mothers have much wisdom to impart. So those three are named explicitly, and there may be others, nevertheless, if you have to choose one, surely Solomon is the creative genius, he is the prime author of this book. Yes, question in the back. Right. Well, the question is, when the men of Hezekiah incorporated Solomonic material into the book, was that Solomonic material available to them in written form, or as perhaps oral tradition, we have no way of knowing. There's absolutely no way to know that. It is true that the ancients and some moderns were far more capable of retaining things just as oral tradition than we are. I think I can hardly remember, you know, to put my left shoe on, having just put my right shoe on, unless I have a note, you know, it says, you've done one shoe, do the other, you know, it's part of the profession of being a professor, it goes along with the territory. But there are other people and places and cultures where it's incredible how much can be retained that they just take in orally. They don't take any notes on it, and yet they can retain it. We had this experience. My wife and I had this experience a couple of years ago during the summer when we were in Uganda, and we were speaking at a women's conference where many of the women, probably half the women were literate and could read and write about half of them couldn't. But even those who could read and write didn't have much by way of writing materials. There were some, but just not much of the very poor area. So I gave one talk one day, and then my wife got up the next day to give a talk, and she wanted to tie into something that I had said, and so she started to reiterate and to describe again what I had said. And they basically kind of nodded their head and said, yeah, he said that yesterday, we haven't forgotten that. You know, you don't need to tell us again, and I think, wow, of all the things, because they were having about probably four or five hours a day where they were just sitting there, and they were taking all that in and logging it away and remembering it, and it's a facility that we can learn and that we can train, but also one that we can lose. I shouldn't get into many anecdotes, but one other, I had a friend when I was doing some study in Heidelberg, happened to be a Mormon young man, but he didn't take notes in accadian class, in a Syrian class, and I thought, why are you not taking notes? And he said, because I'm trying to train my mind, and I've noticed that if I take notes, I think, okay, I can go back and learn that later, but if I don't take notes, I say, you know, it increases the intensity, and I say, I've got to remember that, because I'm not taking a note. I dare not forget that. I don't know if it worked. I laughed. I don't know if he flunked out. They may have. And if you're not taking notes ever, don't come up to me and say, I'm training my mind, you know, because I bought it from him. I won't buy it from you. At any rate. So, in a long answer to that question, we don't know, Matt, whether they had written tradition before them or not. I would, if I had to speculate, I would say that it's likely that there was some written record of this Solomonic material, but had not been included to that day. In other words, Solomon himself, in his own formation of his collection, had chosen from his, how many Proverbs did Solomon write? First Kings 4, anyone read that recently? First Kings 4, it says 3,432, first Kings 432, he spoke 3,000 Proverbs and his songs numbered 1,000 and 5, well, not a round number there in terms of the songs. So among the 3,000, we'll talk about how many he actually included. It's very interesting to count up how many he included in his own collection. Okay, so authorship, we can say, I would say, and by the way, not every scholar would agree with this, but I believe that Solomon is the fountain head of the book of Proverbs and the primary author there, although there are other authors mentioned and possibly others that are not mentioned. Atture and content, well, we want to spend a lot of time with the content of the book of Proverbs and really allow some of these sage tidbits to become part of the fabric of the way we think. But let me just give you a brief overview. If you look at your outline, just, both pages very quickly, you can kind of get a sense that there is, there are some, some natural titles that occur in the Solomon, that's why I formulated this outline. In fact, there are seven headings in the book that seem to be inherent divisions in the book, and they are, well, the first heading and the last heading can nicely be subdivided into two subsections. But other than that, in italics on your outline, you have those seven headings. The first heading is the Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, King of Israel. The second comes in chapter 10, verse 1, the Proverbs of Solomon. The third in 22, 17, pay attention and listen to the sayings of the wise, and then again 24, 23, these also are sayings of the wise. Now you ask why, I mean, if we're continuing sayings of the wise, why another heading? We'll see that there was a reason for that when we get there. Chapter 25, verse 1, that we've been discussing, these are more Proverbs of Solomon copied by the men of Hezekiah, King of Judah, and in Proverbs 30, verse 1, the sayings of Agua, son of Jacque, and Oracle, a lot of translation questions on that particular one. And Proverbs 31, verse 1, the sayings of King Lemuel and Oracle, his mother taught him, and then that subdivides into the words of King Lemuel, and then the acrostic of the ideal wife. Wife used in the Old English sense of a woman or a wife, a worthy woman, the same way that the word frow in German is used, I mean both wife and woman, either or, or both. Now let's go back and look at the first section, the Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, King of Israel. In the first seven verses, like many ancient Near Eastern wisdom books, we have first a title, and then a statement of the purpose of the book. So let's look back and read those first seven verses, and get a sense of what this book is all about. The Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, King of Israel, here comes the purpose for attaining wisdom and discipline, for understanding words of insight, for acquiring a disciplined and prudent life, doing what is right and just and fair, for giving prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the young. Let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance for understanding Proverbs and parables, the sayings and riddles of the wise, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline. So here we have a title, then a statement of purpose, including an exhortation, you notice that in verse five, let the wise listen. Notice verse four mentions the simple, this is for giving prudence to the simple, and yet this is a book, not just for the simple, this is a book that is pertinent to the wisest of people. Let the wise listen and add to their learning and let the discerning get guidance. So the book begins with the title, the Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, King of Israel. Now some have questioned whether this title applies to the whole book as kind of a generalized title for the whole book, or to the first nine chapters because we get another title in chapter 10, verse one. Does anyone recall what Derek Kiddner, what his view is on this? Now again, I know you realize you weren't being tested on those chapters in Kiddner, so you may have deferred that pleasure until spring break. Anyone remember? Derek Kiddner, yes, I see those hands. Derek Kiddner, it's just for the video audience, you know, to make you guys look good. Well, Derek Kiddner opts for the latter approach, and that is to say that this title applies to the whole book, and his argument is this, he says otherwise we would expect the first verse of chapter 10, which says the Proverbs of Solomon. We would expect it to read these also are Proverbs of Solomon. We later, you know, when we run into the sayings of the wise, remember one of those sections after the sayings of the wise in 22, 17, and following, then we have Proverbs 24, 23. These also are sayings of the wise. And Kiddner's point is, well, if the first nine chapters are written by Solomon, then we would expect chapter 10 to say these also are Proverbs of Solomon. Well, you know, that's not an absolutely iron clad argument, and it might be worth recognizing too, I have an immense regard for Derek Kiddner's opinion, so I'm just putting in my two bits here. It is also true that the first nine chapters have sort of a hortatory, or there's one of those weird words. There are exhortations. They're exhorting, as the father is saying, listen my son to your father's instructions, and do not neglect your mother's teaching, and he's exhorting his son, whereas when we get to chapter 10, then we get more what we expect when we think of a proverb, or a saying, a snappy little pithy wise saying, whereas the first nine chapters are not so much in the genre of Proverbs as they are more paragraph-length exhortations to choose wisdom over folly. So it may be that we don't really need to decide between, and we can say, yeah, the first verse of chapter 1 does apply to the whole book, but that would not necessarily mean that the first nine chapters could not have been written by Solomon. Many commentaries would assume that they weren't, but often for wrong reasons, such as that they're not short and brief, but they're longer and more elaborate. I talked about that earlier, but that's a poor criterion for dating documents. Because we now have ancient Near Eastern wisdom literature that antidates, it comes before Solomon by about 1500 years, that is very long and elaborate and discursive. So this shouldn't surprise us to find this here. Well, what is the purpose then? Well, the purpose is for taming wisdom, discipline for understanding words of insight, et cetera, et cetera. He brings the changes he uses about all the synonyms he can think of to suggest what a person can gain from reading this book. Norman Library in his commentary puts it this way, he said verses 2 to 6 suggests that, quote, those who attend to them will receive a comprehensive set of intellectual and moral qualities, comprehensive set of intellectual and moral qualities. This is what you need to get by in life and to get by well. But notice that the key verse, that which becomes the motto, not only for the book of Proverbs, but for the wisdom literature in general, comes in verse 7. Library acknowledges this as well. He says, the most important point, however, is made in verse 7. It's the first principle, it's the motto of wisdom literature. It's repeated in Proverbs 9, 10. How does Proverbs 9, 10 go? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge of the Holy One, is understanding. Fear of the Lord, and remember that knowledge can mean acknowledgement. Knowing him, and also acknowledging him, is understanding. That is the quintessential point. It was made also in Psalm 111, verse 10. We've seen that several times. I want to make sure that this gets ingrained because if you learn nothing else, if you can learn this fundamental principle, as it stated in Psalm 111, 10, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, all who follow his precepts have good understanding. The reason I like that verse in particular also is that it combines an attitude and a respectful awe toward God with action in Ivey says, all who follow his precepts have good understanding. The Hebrew says, why is understanding are those who do them? You know, don't be just a hearer of the word, be a doer also, that's Psalm 111, verse 10. So over and over in the wisdom books, particularly in the book of Proverbs, but even in Job 28, 28, we will have this motto repeated, and that should undergird everything we think about when we think about the practicalities of life. Norman Library goes on to say, the reader will see all the books teaching, after this introduction, the reader will then be in a position to see all the books teaching as direct towards the formation of the complete person, both wise and pious, pious in a good sense, wise because pious and pious because wise, it makes all kinds of sense if God is truly God, that we make in the focal point of our attention and that we recognize that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, it says, the whole book is pushing toward the formation of the complete person. Now, does that speak to us at all today? Are there any broken people around today, any incomplete people, any unsentored people? Do we get unsentored or desentored? I know we're always trying to get centered. Yeah, I mean, we live in a dysfunctional world, we have problems with dysfunctional families, we have dysfunctional personalities, we have all kinds of problems, and I'm not saying they're easy answers, but I say there is an answer that begins with fear of the Lord. The beginning of wisdom, the beginning of completion, the beginning of healing. Now, some of that healing takes a long time, takes a number of different kinds of treatments to be healed, but God is at the center of that, and He is the one who will make it complete. If not in this lifetime, then in the next. Ray Van Leuven, who's done a lot of work, good evangelical scholars, done a lot of work on the book of Proverbs, has a very interesting article, and I wish I'd brought the book so I could show it to you and recommend his essay to you. It's in Trimper, it's in Leland Reichen and Trimper Longman's complete literary guide to the Bible. It's in your syllabus, on your reading list, Ray Van Leuven is written the essay on Proverbs, and he has this to say about this introductory section. He says, and there's a lot packed into these words, so listen carefully to them. Here God and humans, wisdom and folly, knowledge and sweat, born of parental urging, are related in the tight space of eight Hebrew words. He's referring to verse seven. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise, wisdom and discipline, only eight words in Hebrew. Right into that is all these things. Life is caught between the pull of God and the good and the pull toward folly and pseudo good. Faith is not opposed to reason, but constitutes its possibility, its connection to reality, alluding to Van Rod's words. More the word beginning contains the hint to be elaborated throughout the first nine chapters that life is not static, but a journey whose end is found in its beginning, they're alluding to words of T.S. Eliot. Let me repeat two of those, because I think they're important. Faith is not opposed to reason, but constitutes its possibility, its connection to reality. Sometimes in our world, people look at those who embrace faith as dreamers. Come on, let's be honest, let's be realists. Let's not have this belief in pie in the sky, by and by that kind of faith that divorces you from reality. Well, the point that's being made here is faith is not opposed to reason, but constitutes its possibility, its connection to reality, if God is really there, then to act and think as if he is not, is the height of irrationality. That's the dream world that doesn't recognize that God is there and God is sovereign. So those who deny that, if we're right as theists, and I believe we are, and there's all kinds of evidence to suggest that we are, in addition to God's own claims, that we are, if God is there, then to act and live as if he is not, is to live in a dream world. So believers are not the dreamers, it's the unbelievers who are in for a rude awakening. They will be the ones who will awaken as out of sleep. So very important, faith in God, putting Him in the center is not to become less practical, it's to become real, that's the way the real world lives, real world exists. And then I love what he said there at the end, the word beginning contains the hint to be elaborated throughout the first nine chapters that life is not static, but a journey whose end is found in its beginning, the end of our lives is found in its beginning, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. How do we hope that we grow over time? I hope my love and my understanding and my fear and my knowledge and my acknowledgement of God grows from day to day and week to week and year to year. That's where it begins, until I begun there, I haven't taken the first step in real wisdom. Now I could be very clever, I could have lots of intelligence, and I could be very, very dangerous if I haven't taken the first step in real wisdom. And I could also be very miserable. Well after this introduction and the motto, we'll move now to the next set of chapters and we'll survey them more briefly. First a question, yes. The last person I was quoting was, yeah, that's a name I should probably write on the board today. It's Ray, I better make sure I spell his name right, it's one of those Dutch names and he would never forgive me. I think that's right, Ray van Leuven, Leuven, Leuven, Leuven, hey, good. We have a debate among the Afrikaans and a Dutch speaker here and let's see. What do you say? Leuven. Leuven. And what do you say? Leuven, that's pretty close. You can fight about it at the break, it's pretty good. All right. I don't know how he says and he probably has no say anyway, doesn't matter. All right, well let's move on and now look at, obviously we're going to move quickly over some of this and then pause and look at themes. What these first nine chapters do is they provide a necessary orientation where you do get these paragraph length discussions. They provide a little treatise on certain focal points, certain topics that then will be touched upon much more briefly in those little sentence sayings. So this gives us a very good orientation for understanding when we just have, here's a saying here or a saying there and without context it might be a little bit hard to understand what's being said. This provides that context. So we get an introduction here into these very important themes. And what I'd like to do and this will spill over into next time is just talk about certain ones of those themes. Have us think about them, have us look at them and trace them through a short passage to see what some of the major points the book will be making are. Well, the first thing we notice right off the bat in verse 8 of chapter 1 is that wisdom begins in the home. Listen my son to your father's instruction or turn over to chapter 6 verse 20. Just so it doesn't leave out mothers. My son, keep your father's commands and do not forsake your mother's teaching. That's chapter 6 verse 20. My son, keep your father's commands and do not forsake your mother's teaching. Now both parents are involved in the instruction of children. Who is addressed here, however, sons? Does that mean that daughters were not worthy of address? No. Good answer. Good answer. No. It does not mean that daughters were not worthy of address. Is it important, however, to recognize that the addresses of the book of Proverbs are the sons? It's kind of maybe it's like a boy's school. We don't know exactly what the setting was. Why would that be important? This is kind of a brain teaser. Think about some of the content of the book of Proverbs, and can you think of a reason why it's important for us to recognize that the outset that that sons are being addressed here? Now granted, a teacher can refer to his pupils as my sons. And sometimes, especially in the olden days, someone would stand up and address a group like this as brethren, and in the olden days women would not have felt so affronted as they might nowadays. I'm not a brother. But I do think it's important to recognize it that sons are being addressed. Implication of course, daughters, but why would I say that's important? I read recently an essay that's going to come out in a magazine sometime soon on the attempt of the NIV to gender neutralize the text, and by the time you're watching this on video out there in TV land, it will have been done, I imagine. Well, the responses, does it have something to do with the culture? Well yes, I think certainly this is some kind of context in which there was a group of sons or a son in a home, because it's singular, listen, my son, and the father's is training his son. Now again, I would assume that daughters were trained. Daughters were to be as godly as sons, but this happens to be addressing sons. Maybe I should put it this way, what trouble are we going to run into if we gender neutralize the language? Oh Todd, you just put his hand down. Yeah, go ahead and make your comment, and I'll come back to that question. Right, okay, we're the learner, so it's spoken as two sons, and we can consider ourselves, okay, we're children, we're here to learn. Good. Yeah, Terry? Right. Yeah, I mean, as we read the text to our children, I can't remember if I may have alluded to this even in this class at some point, but reading to them about this issue, I see Roy Smiles are probably going on at great length about this at some point. They ask, what about adulterous men, and if we gender neutralize the language, so it appears to be just addressing children in general, and then only go on about the wiles of the wayward woman, and the adulterous woman, it begins to sound like, wow, women were really bad, and as children needed to be warned of bad women, but don't mention any bad men, and that would be a mistake. Yeah, Sandra. Well, right. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot that is taught implicitly, if you, my sons, are to stay clear of the wayward woman and the adulterous woman, well, that would imply something about your own behavior as well, and that you should not be a trap, and you're, and Ms. behavior will lead to the same things in your regard as it does with the wayward woman. Well, let's look at another thing. Sometimes we hear about retributive justice, the thing I don't like about retributive justice is it sounds, retribution is a negative term in our mind. What I like to talk about is causal justice, or causative justice, that our actions do have repercussions. They do have consequences. Look at chapter two, beginning in verse 21, for the upright will live in the land, and the blameless will remain in it, but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the unfaithful will be torn from it. Action, consequence, righteous, the upright will live in the land, the wicked will be cut off from it. Or look at, look at chapter three, beginning in verse 33, 33 to 35. The Lord's curse is on the house of the wicked, but He blesses the home of the righteous. He mocks crowd-mockers, but gives grace to the humble, the wise inherit honor, but fools he holds up to shame. Lord again, the righteous, the wicked, the wise, the fools. Their actions have consequences. Our actions have consequences, a very fundamental principle of life. Not to be obscured by our rightful understanding of grace, that our behavior does not accrue merit with God. God has never beholden to us. We do not make ourselves His children by being good. Nevertheless, as His children, again as I've said in this class before, and as our father in relation to us, He gives us wise instruction, and in following them there is blessing. Again, He doesn't owe us blessing, but in the general sense in which we take the proverbs, it's good for us to heed a father's instruction. So causative justice, the sense, the intelligibility of the universe, let's talk about that later when we debrief the ultimate intelligibility of the universe, means that actions do have consequences. Another theme, and this is a very important theme, and that is the limitations of human understanding. Maybe that ties in well with the in-principle intelligibility of the universe, and yet we, as human beings, are limited in our understanding. One of the couple of verses we've memorized, proverbs three, five, and six, say, okay, no telling what they're going to dub in over your lips when they're thanking that there. Good, and I didn't need to say that for the video audience because they know it by now, and if they don't, they should, so they should have been saying it right along. Man is limited, and the book of proverbs which is intent on imparting wisdom, on giving instruction, on the simple gaining understanding, on the wise adding to their understanding, nevertheless says, you can push it this far, but you'll never know it all. It will never be sufficient, so don't lean on your own understanding. You'll think that you've got enough. Another verse that comes toward the end of the book, chapter 22, verse 19. I love this one, at the beginning of the sayings of the wise, that first set of sayings, one of the major sections that's introduced in verse 17, then in verse 19 it says, so that your trust may be in the Lord, I teach you today, even you. I want you to learn all you can so that you will come to the end of your own understanding and this is 22, verse 19. I want you to come to the end of your own understanding and realize there's more that you will not be able to fathom. God's thoughts are higher than your thoughts. Don't lean on your own understanding. Don't think you're wise enough to fail, to cease, to depend on him. Another section that deals with that are those famous words of Lemuel, chapter 30, beginning in verse 1, the sayings of august, son of jacke, and oracle. This man declared to Ithiel, to Ithiel, and to ucal, oh, brother. That again is a very contraverted translation problem there. But he goes on to say, I am the most ignorant of men, I do not have a man's understanding, I have not learned wisdom nor I have knowledge of the holy one, who has gone up to heaven and come down, who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands, who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak, who has established all the ends of the earth, what is his name and the name of his son? Tell me if you know, and then he says, or someone says, every word of God is flawless. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him, do not add to his words, or he will review you and prove you a liar. So contrasting ignorance, the self-avowed ignorance, will come then face to face with the flawless word of God. Now, speak of sometimes as psychosomatic illness. So you notice that in reading through, again, I am not a physician or a counselor, so I am not an expert in psychosomatic, I am pretty good at psychosis, but psychosomatic, psych of what is it? Yeah, okay. He has got to do it in two words. I was trying to think of one word that pulled it together and made it harder. Well anyway, look at an example, look at chapter 4, and you kind of have to take them cumulatively because chapter 4 beginning in verse 20, some of them you could say, well this is just metaphoric language. And certain sense, and in Hebrew the word lay, which means heart, means the very center of a person's being, including his mind, his cognitive faculties, it's not just the seat of the emotions, but it's the center of the entire being. So he's saying guard your center, guard your mind, guard your heart, for it is the well spring of life. What you allow in is what you become. Now there's a New Testament verse that says it's not what goes into a man that defiles a man, but you need to read on because it says, for it goes into his stomach, but then it goes on to talk about, but guard your heart so that very verse that's sometimes claimed to justify all kinds of intake. You know, I can walk here there in the world and take in all kinds of stuff, and it's not what goes into me that defiles me, or if it goes into your heart, that is your center, your mind, the way you think, the way you feel, that can hurt you. It's all foods are clean, but not everything else, and it's an important thing to recognize. What goes in and is in our heart, not only is the well spring of life, but it's health or lack of health to a whole man's body. Now I know that's metaphorical language, but let's move on and see some others. I think cumulatively we get the idea that there is a clear understanding or something of an understanding of the relationship between the mind, the spirit, the inner life of human beings, and their physical condition. I'm not saying, you know, go away and concentrate and meditate and heal yourself either, but let's see what the book of Proverbs says. Chapter 3, verse 8, and I'm going to just read several of these without comment and then summarize. Chapter 3, verse 8, this will bring health to your body, or maybe I better begin in verse 7. Do not be wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord, and shun evil. This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones. Now look at chapter 15, verse 30, a cheerful look brings joy to the heart, and good news gives health to the bones, 1624, can keep up, 1624. The words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and healing to the bones. That's a good, I said I wasn't going to comment, but that's a good one to remember. Sometimes I remember seeing a videotape series years ago in which I think it was Gary Smalley was talking about how we punch holes in one another and drain each other's energy. I think it was on that videotape series in which he said, you know, with your family, you should treat your family as strangers, because sometimes we usually treat strangers civilly at least, I'm not sure my teenage son always does, but I'm trying to train him to do that. But we normally treat strangers civilly, and sometimes we're not even civil to our family members. Maybe we should think about this when pleasant words or honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and healing to the bones. It's amazing how we can heal one another through a kind word, a kind act. Chapter 17, verse 22, a cheerful heart is good. Good medicine, but a bruised spirit dries up the bones, we've been talking about health to the bones. Now we're talking about how a cheerful heart is good medicine. I don't think those kinds of words would be used if they were only being used metaphorically. I think it's saying, you know, that we can, the way our emotional life can drain us physically, and on the other hand, a cheerful heart, a heart that is whole before God and it's trusting in God, can energize us. Again, I'm not talking about self-healing in any kind of new age sense or anything, but I do think that there is this holistic sense, that there is a relationship between our emotional lives and the condition of our bodies. One more, chapter 18, verse 14, a man's spirit sustains him in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear a man's spirit sustains him in sickness doesn't necessarily heal him immediately, but it does sustain him through that. These are just a few. We're going to go on and talk about next time many other themes such as teachability and sins, double-cross, and a number of things, and then move into these other sections of the book of Proverbs. We're not absolutely done because I do want to debrief you a little bit. If you're interested on the exam, if you're not, we can all go home early.