This chapter sits in the middle of a group of “sayings of the wise,” which run from 22:17 to 24:22. The material is in some way artificially set off from its larger context. And yet, as we will see, it is not difficult to see a structure that holds together these sayings as their own unit.

Another important characteristic of this section of Proverbs is its use of admonitions with motive clauses. Here is an example:

    Admonition: “Do not speak in the hearing of a fool,”

    Motive: “For he will despise the good sense of your words.” (23:9)

This motive clause is also typical of the biblical law in the Pentateuch, which is unique in having (by far) more motive clauses than does any other form of ancient Near Eastern law. Not only do Proverbs and the Law reinforce their teachings with consequences, but they constantly point back to the beauty and order of God’s creation and our responsibility to respect it.

As can be seen below, food and wealth dominate the opening, middle, and closing verses of this chapter. Whereas Proverbs elsewhere maintains the essential goodness of food and possessions (e.g., 3:9–10; 9:1–5; 31:11–16), this chapter emphasizes our sinful tendency to overindulge (cf. 20:1; 21:17).

  III.  Words of the Wise (22:17–24:22) . . .

E.  Admonitions against Envy, Covetousness, and Gluttony (23:1–8)

F.  Varied Parental Advice: Speech, Parenting, Sex, Food, and Wine (23:9–28)

G.  Dramatic Mockery of the Drunkard (23:29–35)

Deceptive Passions

Proverbs 23 stands out for its focus on the risk of unrestrained pursuit of human passions. Much as we hate to comply, every God-given pleasure in creation has a fixed limit and a law of diminishing returns.

In the fourth century a saint named Gregory of Nyssa wrote a treatise titled “On Virginity.” The treatise is a reflection on the fading satisfactions of worldly pleasures. In one sobering passage Gregory describes pleasures as “evils common to life,” as “beneath this array of blessings the fire of an inevitable pain is smoldering.” The married Gregory illustrates his point in an example he takes from marriage.

I affirm that this very thing, this sweetness that surrounds their lives, is the spark which kindles pain. They are human all the time, things weak and perishing; they have to look upon the tombs of their progenitors; and so pain is inseparably bound up with their existence, if they have the least power of reflection. This continued expectancy of death, realized by no sure tokens, but hanging over them the terrible uncertainty of the future, disturbs their present joy, clouding it over with the fear of what is coming.166

These are heavy thoughts indeed, and we might rightly question whether Gregory abandons the goodness of this life too readily. Even the preacher in Ecclesiastes is able to commend eating, drinking, and finding joy in marriage and labor. But Gregory still makes a point in parallel to the one in Proverbs. The physical goods of creation do not provide ultimate satisfaction, and so our use of them must be guarded carefully.

A similar scene plays out in the beginning of Israel’s forty-year journey in the desert (Numbers 11). Having just taken the first steps into the wilderness, the people complain in want of bread, meat, and water. Gratitude for their freedom from slavery has left them, and they have abandoned their pleasure of the nearness of their God. When he sends a plague to punish the most rebellious among the Israelites, they name the place Kibroth-hattaava (“graves of craving”). The desert for Israel was a place of spiritual testing, of learning the paired virtues of patience and hope in the presence of the Lord. This pilgrimage of virtue failed to take root in their lives.

This part of Israel’s story climaxes in Jesus’ promise to the woman at the well in John’s Gospel: “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14; cf. 6:27). Paul too points to Jesus as one who rescues us from “this body of death” (Rom. 7:24–25), among which Paul includes our distorted craving and affections.

Passions Redeemed

We must remember that, once we have been rescued by Christ, we are put on a path to learn the practices of feeding upon him as our life—or, as Paul says, we “set the mind on the Spirit” (Rom. 8:6) and “present [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rom. 12:1). From the moment of our salvation God begins a work in us, a work of sanctification centered around our learning to desire the triune God above all else.

It is all too common for Christians who are saved by grace to fall back into complacency in their handling of the material gifts of this world. This amounts to giving in to the mind set on the flesh, enjoying things now while waiting for heaven. But God comes to save Christians in order that he might present us “blameless before the presence of his glory” (Jude 24; cf. Rom. 16:25).

This chapter of Proverbs uses the provocative and shocking language of bodily mutilation as a metaphor for self-control and temperance: “Put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite” (Prov. 23:2). The point of these proverbs is not that we should torture ourselves but that we should be willing to endure suffering and self-deprivation in order to be sanctified and to learn to enjoy the created goods as a means to the joy of the Lord. The prophets often appeal to the same extreme practices of repentance as part of our learning to trust in God and rely on him to satisfy our longings (e.g., Isa. 22:12; Jer. 4:8; Joel 1:13).

This takes us back to the writings of Gregory of Nyssa cited above. The central thrust of Gregory’s treatise was to use virginity, or celibacy, as a metaphor for the asceticism required of the Christian life as a whole, not only for our sexual passions. As such, “virginity” is a call not for all of us to become celibate but for us to train ourselves in the practices of temperance and contentment of a celibate monk in all our dealings with material things. This means enjoying the gifts of this world properly and finding the fullness of pleasure in our fellowship with God.

The twentieth-century Cistercian monk Thomas Merton helps explain how this works. Speaking of the practice of silence, he writes, “If we fill our lives with silence, then we live in hope, and Christ lives in us and gives our virtues much substance.”167 Self-denial should be used as a means to experience the fullness of Christ and thereby gain the ability to enjoy the things of this world as God intended. As Merton writes, “We must practice asceticism, without which we cannot gain enough control over our hearts and their passions to reach such a degree of indifference to life and death. . . . It is only when we are detached from created things that we can begin to value them as we really should.”168 Here we remember that Jesus also appealed to exaggerated language of self-mutilation to express the intensity required of our surrender to God’s sanctifying work within us (e.g., Mark 9:43–50). Only then will we know how to manage our desires.

In our overindulgent age we must draw upon the wisdom of the church in the past, such as in its practice of asceticism, silence, or fasting, in order to enjoy the pleasures of this world for what they are.

A Heart of Wisdom

The Hebrew word leb (“heart”) occurs eight times in this chapter (Prov. 23:7, 12, 15 (2x), 17, 19, 26, 33, 34).169 This is second only to chapter 15, which uses the word nine times. “Heart” has a multifaceted nature about it. In this chapter alone it communicates sincerity (v. 7), wholeness (v. 12), virtue (v. 15), joy (v. 15), desire (v. 17), devotion (vv. 19, 26), and deep or subconscious thought (v. 33).

Translating leb into English requires something that combines one part each of desire, thought, emotion, depth, and wholeness. As long as we keep these things in mind we can appreciate why the heart is the most significant home for love (Deut. 6:5), faith (Prov. 3:5), and wisdom (Prov. 2:2; 4:23).

Most of us probably recognize the memorable prayer of Moses for a “heart of wisdom” in Psalm 90:12. Many scholars categorize the prayer as a form of liturgy. It begins with a confession of faith, rehearsing the works of God in the past: “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations” (Ps. 90:1). These memories from the past bring Moses to lament human sin and mortality, starting in Psalm 90:3 and culminating in a confession:

    For we are brought to an end by your anger;

    by your wrath we are dismayed.

    You have set our iniquities before you,

    our secret sins in the light of your presence.

    For all our days pass away under your wrath;

    we bring our years to an end like a sigh. (Ps. 90:7–9)

Moses then turns from confession to a prayer for help, asking God to help his people: “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12). In the midst of life’s suffering, sin, and death we ask for God to help us focus our whole being on making our time count. Three further points can be made here. First, wisdom begins with the recognition of our mortality—we are all going to die. Death is a curse, as we all know. But death is also a gift because it marks an end to the vanity, toil, and suffering we endure in this life. Few of us recognize that Jesus constantly described his ministry in terms of his death, which focused him more purposefully on what he had come do to (e.g., Mark 9:31).

Second, wisdom attends to the passing of time: “Teach us to number our days.” Paul makes this same connection between wisdom to time: “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time” (Col. 4:5; cf. Eph. 5:15–16). The verb “making the best use” is from a word often translated “redeem” (Gal. 3:13; 4:5). The point Moses and Paul are both making is not that we should fiendishly soak up as much life as we can before we die. Nor is this Horace’s ancient Roman motto Carpe diem, “Seize the day,” by which we make the most of our personal life and pleasure. But, as Moses makes clear in his prayer, we are to pray that our work would reflect the work of Yahweh (Ps. 90:16–17; cf. Ps. 28:4–5). Such work “redeems” and makes something good out of what is broken, taking this moment and making something out of it that imitates God’s own work of creating and saving, of bringing life where there was death.

Wisdom is also a revelation of the “glorious power” of God to future generations (Prov. 23:15–16, 19, 22, 24–26). Luke offers us a similar vision of revelation of glory when he tells us about Jesus’ gaining “wisdom” and “favor” in his youth (Luke 2:40, 52). What Luke portrays so positively contrasts the fear of Mary and Joseph when they cannot find their son. As such, this moment at the synagogue has a degree of parental pride for the parents, perhaps, but also of utter seriousness and anticipation. For, as Jesus gains a heart of wisdom, he begins to discern his calling to death on the cross. Mary’s joy at finding her son, meanwhile, is tainted with apprehension, for “they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them” (Luke 2:50).

In Jesus’ death and resurrection we see the brightness of wisdom in the dark approach of death. The same journey is meant for each of us. Ephraim Radner explains it this way:

Teach us as you also grew in wisdom and grace (Luke 2:52). Teach us to number our [days], just as you numbered your own. Teach us to take stock of our birth, our feeding, our growing, our parents, our families, our learning; our movement, from generation to generation; our coupling and progeny; our toil and provision; our weakness and deaths. On each day of our labor, as we move from day to day, let us number each and mark the beauty and singularity of each marvelous element—and so to discover, through our mortal frames, your making of us. O Lord God, King of the Universe. Blessed be your Name.170Proverbs 23

Proverbs 24