Reflections on Proverbs 9

 

Proverbs 09 (Contemporary English Version)


1. Wisdom has built her house with its seven columns.
   
2. She has prepared the meat and set out the wine. Her feast is ready.
   
3. She has sent her servant women to announce her invitation from the highest hills:
   
4. "Everyone who is ignorant or foolish is invited!
   
5. All of you are welcome to my meat and wine.
   
6. If you want to live, give up your foolishness and let understanding guide your steps."
   
7. Correct a worthless bragger, and all you will get are insults and injuries.
   
8. Any bragger you correct will only hate you. But if you correct someone who has common sense, you will be loved.
   
9. If you have good sense, instruction will help you to have even better sense. And if you live right, education will help you to know even more.
   
10. Respect and obey the LORD! This is the beginning of wisdom. To have understanding, you must know the Holy God.
    
11. I am Wisdom. If you follow me, you will live a long time.
    
12. Good sense is good for you, but if you brag, you hurt yourself.
    
13. Stupidity is reckless, senseless, and foolish.
    
14. She sits in front of her house and on the highest hills in the town.
    
15. She shouts to everyone who passes by,
    
16. "If you are stupid, come on inside!" And to every fool she says,
    
17. "Stolen water tastes best, and the food you eat in secret tastes best of all."
    
18. None who listen to Stupidity understand that her guests are as good as dead.
    

---

Wisdom and Folly are personified in this 9th chapter of Proverbs - both as women. The comparison of the two is similar to the comparison of a queen to a prostitute.

Wisdom builds a spacious house and then prepares a banquet for those who will come. She sends out her servants to extend the invitation throughout the city. This invitation is given to those who are inexperienced and who lack sense. They are invited to eat the bread and drink the wine of wisdom, thereby leaving behind inexperience and pursuing the way of understanding. In so doing, they will live.

Verses 7-12 seem to be a side note for those who would offer instruction. They are advised to be discerning with their counsel. Those who have counsel to offer may be prone to give instruction when it seems needed, but when dealing with a "mocker" or a "wicked" man, it is not wise to give counsel. From these verses we understand that a person's character can be perceived by how that person receives rebuke or admonishment. We are told that the mocker will defame the one who gives him rebuke, and the wicked man will assault him. In contrast, the one who is wise will learn from admonishment and become wiser. We live in an age in which popular thought believes the answer to many of our ills is education. "If people just know differently they will do differently," is the thought. Unfortunately this thinking is naive, assuming that people are basically good and will do good if they are better informed. But scripture tells us otherwise. It tells us that we are all born with a sin-nature. That is, our basic nature is to do wrong rather than right. It is not a matter of being better informed but of being transformed, and only God can transform us. That is why Solomon keeps reminding us, as he does in verse 10, that the beginning of wisdom is fear, or respect, of the Lord. We have no hope of becoming wise if we leave God out of the equation. Does all of this seem silly? Solomon would say that is a reflection of your own character.

Now we see what Folly has to offer, and right away it is obvious she has no spacious house or banquet to offer. She also extends an invitation to those who are inexperienced, but the invitation is not to dine at her table but to participate with her in illicit pleasures. She offers the lie of the foolish which says that to do what is forbidden offers more pleasure than to do what is not forbidden. For such people adrenaline is addictive. "The greater the risk, the greater the fun," is their philosophy. But it is a philosophy that leads to their own demise, as suggested in verse 18. This verse tells us that those who accept Folly's invitation don't know that there are departed spirits present.  That Folly's former guests are in the depths of the grave.

What do the two have to offer? Wisdom offers life. Folly offers death. Is this a hard choice to make?