Scripture Daily

Context No. 2047 of 4322 · Proverbs

Context · Reflection

Proverbs 23:1-16: in context

1When you sit to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before you; 2put a knife to your throat if you are a man given to appetite. 3Don’t be desirous of his dainties, since they are deceitful food. 4Don’t weary yourself to be rich. In your wisdom, show restraint. 5Why do you set your eyes on that which is not? For it certainly sprouts wings like an eagle and flies in the sky. 6Don’t eat the food of him who has a stingy eye, and don’t crave his delicacies, 7for as he thinks about the cost, so he is. “Eat and drink!” he says to you, but his heart is not with you. 8You will vomit up the morsel which you have eaten and waste your pleasant words. 9Don’t speak in the ears of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words. 10Don’t move the ancient boundary stone. Don’t encroach on the fields of the fatherless, 11for their Defender is strong. He will plead their case against you. 12Apply your heart to instruction, and your ears to the words of knowledge. 13Don’t withhold correction from a child. If you punish him with the rod, he will not die. 14Punish him with the rod, and save his soul from Sheol. 15My son, if your heart is wise, then my heart will be glad, even mine. 16Yes, my heart will rejoice when your lips speak what is right.

Among these proverbs comes a warning to those tempted to exploit the defenseless. Do not move the ancient boundary stone, it says, and do not encroach on the fields of the fatherless, for their Defender is strong; he will plead their case against you. To move a boundary stone was to quietly steal land; and to do it to the fatherless, who had no father to defend them, seemed safe, a wrong against those too weak to resist. But the proverb warns: the fatherless are not truly defenseless, for God himself is their Defender, and he will take up their cause.

The warning turns on who stands behind the vulnerable. The fatherless, the widow, the poor, the defenseless, seem to have no one to protect them, and so they seem safe to exploit; a wrong done to them appears to carry no cost, since they cannot resist or retaliate. But the proverb says they are not truly without a defender: God himself is their Defender, and he is strong, and he will plead their case against those who wrong them. To exploit the defenseless is not safe at all, for it provokes the God who takes up their cause. This reveals a truth that both restrains and comforts. It restrains us: whatever advantage we might take of the weak and defenseless, the ones who cannot resist, we take it against those whom God defends, and he will plead their case against us. The wrong done to the vulnerable is not overlooked because they are powerless; it is seen and answered by their Defender. A father of the fatherless, the psalm says, and a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. Those who seem to have no protector have the strongest protector of all. And this comforts the vulnerable themselves: those who are weak, defenseless, without an earthly advocate, are not truly alone, for God is their Defender, who sees the wrongs done to them and will take up their cause. This searches how we treat the defenseless in our own dealings. Is there a way we take advantage of those who cannot resist, who have no one to defend them, presuming that the wrong is safe because they are powerless? The proverb warns that it is not safe: their Defender is strong, and he will plead their case against us. And for those of us who are ourselves defenseless, wronged with no earthly advocate, it holds out comfort: God is our Defender, who sees and will take up our cause. We are called to treat the vulnerable not as safe to exploit but as those whom God himself defends, and to trust, when we are the defenseless ones, that their strong Defender is ours as well.

Is there a way I take advantage of those who cannot resist, the defenseless who have no one to protect them, presuming the wrong is safe because they are powerless, and can the proverb's warning that the fatherless have a strong Defender who will plead their case restrain me from exploiting the vulnerable, and comfort me when I am the defenseless one, that God himself is my Defender?

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