The Pleasure of Wisdom and Friendship with God - Proverbs 2:9-11

It has been somewhat challenging for me to decide how divide up the proverbs into short passages for study. The other challenge is working through the context of wisdom styled literature. My interpretive tendencies push me to accept the words of scripture as literal. However, I know that the proverbs are written in a style that should not always be interpreted in a literal fashion. This may trouble some readers, but the nature of wisdom literature requires the reader to accept that the truths in the proverbs are not necessarily literal promises, but truisms or generalized truth statements.

Understanding this can greatly help the reader understand the wisdom of the proverbs and keep them from becoming unnecessarily frustrated. This is especially when we look around at our circumstances and wonder why a certain proverb doesn't seem to be accurate or truthful. For example, the proverb that immediately comes to mind is Prov. 22:6, which states, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."

How many parents of wayward children have held on to this proverb as a promise, that if they took their child to church and personally trained them in Godliness to the best of their ability, that they would turn out to be wonderful God-fearing people when they grew up. If this is a literal promise from God, then it would be understandable that the parents would feel like they must have dropped the ball or that God is a liar. Since few Christians would entertain the latter for very long, most will feel that they messed up as parents. While it is certainly true that all parents will make mistakes, it is unfortunate that many parents will carry unnecessary guilt because of poor interpretation skills. If you understand that this was a general truth, then when circumstances SEEM to contradict scripture, then we can know that God's word is true and it is simply our understanding that needs adjustment. I'm tempted to digress further on this subject, but I'll get back to the proverbs.

A reminder that the last section told us that we can trust that God will be looking out for us in a special way, so long as we are pursuing integrity, justice, & faithfulness in our day to day lives. This section summarizes this for us and continues with more proverbial wisdom...

Proverbs 2:9-11

9 Then you will discern righteousness and justice and equity and every good course.10 For wisdom will enter your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul; 11 Discretion will guard you, understanding will watch over you,

There is nothing like the soul-satisfying pleasure of knowing that you are on the same side as God. If, however, you are not, then your soul will be in conflict. You will never be at rest unless your are certain that you are a friend of God. God has graciously made a way for that to happen through Jesus Christ.


Continue to the next post in my Proverbs study...