CHAPTER 2

(1000 B.C.)

THE BLESSINGS AND REWARDS OF HEEDING WISDOM

¹My son, if you will receive My Words, and hide My Commandments with you (God gives His Words and Commandments, but does not force men to receive them);

²So that you incline your ear unto wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding (the words incline and apply simply speak of priority);

³Yes, if you cry after knowledge, and lift up your voice for understanding (this speaks of a conscious unending effort that sets ones heart to earnestly seek for Gods knowledge and understanding);

⁴If you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hid treasures (the Holy Spirit points to the earnest efforts of men in seeking wealth; if one will do the same in seeking after the things of God, our quest will not be fruitless, as it is for the far greater majority of those who seek for gold);

⁵Then shall you understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God. (The knowledge of God is the Bible.)

⁶For the LORD gives wisdom: out of His mouth comes knowledge and understanding. (If we do what the Lord has told us to do, He will give what He has promised.)

⁷He lays up sound wisdom for the righteous: He is a buckler to them who walk uprightly. (Sound wisdom is from God. All the wisdom of the world is sensual and is, therefore, devilish [James 3:15]. Consequently, it can only destroy.)

⁸He keeps the paths of judgment, and preserves the way of His Saints. (The added bonus of those who have the Wisdom of God is that God watches over and protects all such Disciples.)

⁹Then shall you understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity; yes, every good path. (Verse 3 in the previous Chapter says that we would receive such, with this Passage saying that we would understand such.)

¹⁰When wisdom enters into your heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto your soul;

¹¹Discretion shall preserve you, understanding shall keep you (how little discretion and understanding we have today, even in the ranks of the Church):

¹²To deliver you from the way of the evil man, from the man who speaks froward things (the sense of this Passage is that the world is filled with such a vortex of evil that it is impossible not to be sucked into this maelstrom without the Wisdom and Knowledge that God Alone gives);

¹³Who leave the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness;

¹⁴Who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the frowardness of the wicked;

¹⁵Whose ways are crooked, and they froward in their paths (actually, this characterizes the entirety of the world crooked; conversely, only that which is of God is straight):

¹⁶To deliver you from the strange woman, even from the stranger which flatters with her words;

¹⁷Which forsakes the guide of her youth, and forgets the Covenant of her God.

¹⁸For her house inclines unto death, and her paths unto the dead.

¹⁹None who go unto her return again, neither take they hold of the paths of life. (The Hebrew word for strange woman is zur, which means an apostate or foreign religion. Religious teachers who lead people away from the Scriptures are likened in these Passages to women who are faithless to their husbands.

The words, strange and stranger, are different in the Hebrew Text. The first means apostate; the second, foreign. They suggest that a faithless wife ceases to be of Israel and makes herself an alien.)

²⁰That you may walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous. (In this Chapter, we have evil men, strange women, and now good men. The choice is ours. What shall it be?)

²¹For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it. (The upright and the perfect is Christ.)

²²But the wicked shall be cut off from the Earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it. (Both Verses 21 and 22 allude to the coming Kingdom Age, and to every Child of God who can claim by faith the glory and the possession of these glad promises, even now.)