Proverbs 17-18
Now that we are well into this Book of Proverbs, I think it’s worthwhile to make some general remarks. You might have noticed that many of the proverbs we’ve read tend to paint a picture of life in which wisdom, honesty, righteousness, and hard work produce wealth and prosperity, while folly, dishonesty, wickedness, and sloth lead to poverty, ruin, and death. As we have already seen, there is plenty of truth and wisdom in that picture. But with a little observation of life and a broader reading of the Bible, we can also readily see that that picture is incomplete, as it seems not to account for wealthy wicked people (e.g., a drug cartel kingpin) and honest, hard-working people living in poverty.
Should we, then, just toss aside Proverbs as overly simplistic, perhaps even naïve? Hardly. Instead, we should see that this book as a whole paints a much more complete picture, especially when seen within the broader scope of Scripture. We should also understand that these proverbs stand against our natural tendency to think that lying, cheating, and stealing can pay off handsomely, or that get-rich-quick schemes are smart, a tendency that is, frankly, reinforced by plain observation. (Hey, a few people do, in fact, win the lottery, after all…) No, this book does not present a nice neat “formula for success” but recognizes that the world is not so simplistic at all.
Take, for instance, our first verse today:
Better is a dry morsel with quiet
than a house full of feasting with strife.Proverbs 17:1
I think we can all readily understand what this proverb is saying. What we might not notice, though, is the implication (and acknowledgement) that an upstanding citizen living in quietness and peace might just be poor, and that a negative atmosphere of strife might just be found among the wealthy, all of which upends the supposed simplistic “formula for success”. So as we continue to read through Proverbs, let’s be sure not to oversimplify or otherwise isolate any particular verse. Let’s see the big picture and remember the full breadth of Scripture, of which this book is just a part. Let’s also remember that these are proverbs, not promises.
See also: