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Proverbs 16

16     The plans of the heart belong to man,

    but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.

 2     All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes,

    but the Lord weighs the spirit.1

 3     Commit your work to the Lord,

    and your plans will be established.

 4     The Lord has made everything for its purpose,

    even the wicked for the day of trouble.

 5     Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord;

    be assured, he will not go unpunished.

 6     By steadfast love and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for,

    and by the fear of the Lord one turns away from evil.

 7     When a man’s ways please the Lord,

    he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.

 8     Better is a little with righteousness

    than great revenues with injustice.

 9     The heart of man plans his way,

    but the Lord establishes his steps.

10     An oracle is on the lips of a king;

    his mouth does not sin in judgment.

11     A just balance and scales are the Lord’s;

    all the weights in the bag are his work.

12     It is an abomination to kings to do evil,

    for the throne is established by righteousness.

13     Righteous lips are the delight of a king,

    and he loves him who speaks what is right.

14     A king’s wrath is a messenger of death,

    and a wise man will appease it.

15     In the light of a king’s face there is life,

    and his favor is like the clouds that bring the spring rain.

16     How much better to get wisdom than gold!

    To get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver.

17     The highway of the upright turns aside from evil;

    whoever guards his way preserves his life.

18     Pride goes before destruction,

    and a haughty spirit before a fall.

19     It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor

    than to divide the spoil with the proud.

20     Whoever gives thought to the word2 will discover good,

    and blessed is he who trusts in the Lord.

21     The wise of heart is called discerning,

    and sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness.

22     Good sense is a fountain of life to him who has it,

    but the instruction of fools is folly.

23     The heart of the wise makes his speech judicious

    and adds persuasiveness to his lips.

24     Gracious words are like a honeycomb,

    sweetness to the soul and health to the body.

25     There is a way that seems right to a man,

    but its end is the way to death.3

26     A worker’s appetite works for him;

    his mouth urges him on.

27     A worthless man plots evil,

    and his speech4 is like a scorching fire.

28     A dishonest man spreads strife,

    and a whisperer separates close friends.

29     A man of violence entices his neighbor

    and leads him in a way that is not good.

30     Whoever winks his eyes plans5 dishonest things;

    he who purses his lips brings evil to pass.

31     Gray hair is a crown of glory;

    it is gained in a righteous life.

32     Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty,

    and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.

33     The lot is cast into the lap,

    but its every decision is from the Lord.

Section Overview

Proverbs 16 moves rapidly away from the vocabulary and style of the previous six chapters toward a body of sayings that is diverse in both its form and its content. What marks this shift most distinctly is the frequent repetition of the divine name, Yahweh. The divine name appears ten times in this chapter, including eight times in verses 1–9 alone. More than that, whereas chapters 10–15 were made up almost exclusively of antithetical sayings, “this but that,” among the opening eight sayings here only 16:1 and verse 8 are antithetical, whereas verses 2–7 put on display an impressive variety of sayings (cf. Introduction: Genre and Literary Features for more discussion about these types of sayings).

The content in the chapter also moves from sayings about Yahweh’s rule and authority in verses 1–9 to the rule and conduct of the king in verses 10–15 and the conduct of individuals in a community and nation in verses 16–19. The flow is not just one of relative power or responsibility but one in which we find Yahweh’s own ways and creative ordering of the world reflecting outward to every sphere of life—political and domestic: like God, like the king, like the citizen, every human working to uphold a common order (cf. Psalm 19; Proverbs 8).

Section Outline

  II.  The First Solomonic Collection (10:1–22:16) . . .

B.  Solomon’s Advanced Wisdom: Theology and Kinship (16:1–22:16)

1.  Yahweh: Divine Rule and Order (16:1–9)

2.  King: Political Rule and Order (16:10–15)

3.  Us: Individual Rule and Order (16:16–19)

4.  An Assortment of Virtues and Vices (16:20–32)

5.  Conclusion (16:33)

Response

Pedagogical Design in Proverbs

I have been river rafting only once in my life, despite growing up in the Rocky Mountains and walking along hundreds of its streams and rivers over several decades. I certainly knew some of the power of water, but I had never had to navigate it with any urgency until I took the front seat of a boat on one of those rivers.

By design these trips introduce rafters to the water slowly, teaching the paddling and maneuvering skills needed to stay upright and in the safely in the boat. Once skills have been taught, they are tested in increasingly difficult types of water. Hearing the command to “row hard” halfway down the river triggers waves of adrenaline as large rocks approach, along with a new fear of what may lie ahead. Skills get put to the test.

Something similar happens between chapters 1 and 16 of Proverbs—and from here through chapter 30 as well. While chapters 1–9 have long detailed sections, they are largely meant to teach skills and alert us to the thrills and dangers of life that demand our careful attention—much like a safety briefing to rafters on the shore before getting in the river.

Proverbs 10–15 is like practicing skills in fairly safe waters. Over 99 percent of these sayings are antithetical (“this but that”), focused closely on two antinomies: wisdom/folly and righteous/wicked. There are surprises, but they are few and hardly unsettling. The chapters contain 84 percent of all antithetical sayings in the book. By contrast, Proverbs 16:1–22:16 contain over 21 percent of the book’s antithetical sayings; all new teaching methods come into play.133

This chapter’s first eight verses are like the first set of rapids we meet in the river. Proverbs 16:3 is clearly a synonymous parallel reinforcing the lessons in verses 1–2. But verse 4 is more like synthetic parallelism, with the second line building on the first to present a shocking surprise: does God really make wicked people just to punish them? The verse is not clear, and the statement is probably hyperbole with the broader aim of putting readers off balance and increasing their attention.

Verses 5–6 present two opposing synonymous parallels flowing from the lesson in verse 4. Verse 7 is probably a synthetic parallelism in which, as in verse 4, the first line gives way to a surprise: enemies’ making peace with us. Verse 8 ends the section by introducing a better-than saying and presenting the first of these verses that does not name Yahweh. The omission is yet another surprise, and the form of the better-than proverb is like a tool one can use to evaluate various levels of wealth and righteousness.

There is surely wisdom gained by reading one proverb at a time, just as there is skill in knowing how to paddle a boat in calm water. But when sayings are gathered into a collection, they take on new relationships to one another. And it is in those relationships that a new level of wisdom emerges in the book. The more closely one reads these sayings in one’s surrounding context, the more we learn about the book, but, more importantly, the more detail we see in the flowing river beneath us—in this case the finite detail in the wisdom we need to navigate a complex and morally dangerous world.

Wisdom and Royalty

Like chapter 25, chapter 16 has a unique way of building continuity between the actions of Yahweh, the king, and the individual citizen. This may extend to the city as a collective whole also (cf. 25:28). And this reinforces our interdependency—as families, cities, nations, and as a race. Yet our human history is a long chain of our failures to live as such—each of us choosing our own way and averting our eyes from the needs of others. The history of Joseph and his brothers represents this tendency well. Internal fighting, factions, and suspicion put the whole nation and its promises at risk. Only when Judah is willing to offer himself for the family and Joseph is willing to forgive his brothers does the family regain hope.

The continuity throughout the chapter also affirms the reliability and consistency of the created order. Said differently, we do not live in a random universe made at the whims of the gods or for their sheer entertainment. We live in a place in which the one true God’s good desires and creativity are reflected in the shape and operation of his creation (16:3, 4, 7, 33; cf. 8:22–30). And so living well in this world is a matter of our pursuing this God in “fear” (16:6) and doing the things he does in the way he does them.

“Yes,” we say, “but what about sin?” (cf. vv. 27–30). On the one hand our selfishness, rebellion, envy, coveting, and hatred tear our communities and families apart. On the other hand that same sin blinds our eyes to the moral order of God’s word, leading us to call evil good and good evil (v. 25). The immediate remedy for this in Proverbs is to increase our diligence in living wisely and to honor our responsibilities to one another. The NT encourages these same practices, but not as remedies for the deep fractures beneath them.

The only sufficient remedy is for the Creator to join us as a creature in this world. As one of us he can redeem the human family from within and then, by his Spirit, heal our blindness to see the world aright again.

Christians often overlook these royal and cosmic aspects of Christ’s person and his work. He comes to us as Yahweh, King, and second Adam in the human race. In Jesus’ genealogy in Matthew, in fact, we meet a royal line of succession made up of selfish, sinful, and disloyal people. Matthew puts Jesus at the end of this line. He inherits the faults and condemnation of the whole human race and promises to put right all the wrongs of our history. In the context of Proverbs 16 Jesus is Yahweh in the flesh. As divine King and lowly Israelite born in Bethlehem, he is able to hold together the community from its top to its bottom—from Yahweh to the king and the commoner.

Jesus’ role as the cosmic King of the world is at the heart of Paul’s letter to the Colossians. Not only does this King and his kingdom (Col. 1:13) hold the broken pieces of this world together through his death and resurrection (Col. 1:15–20), but he destroys the kingdoms of this world that hold us captive (Col. 2:13–15). And in doing so Jesus becomes to us wisdom from God (Col. 1:9–11, 28; 2:1–3), through whom our broken communities find new life and our blinded eyes are healed.Proverbs 16

Proverbs 17