House and wealth are inherited from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord. [Proverbs 19:14] The family is the central institution of Scripture. The church institution has a high billing, by sharing its name with the body of the saved; civil government predominates much human thought, being the prime concentration of worldly power.…
While advancing computer technology brings us opportunities to improve medical care both for research and for individual patients, it also presents new choices to make about how we deliver health care. This technology crosses new horizons, allowing us to process vast amounts of medical data, for both large groups of people and individuals. This data…
A foolish son is ruin to his father, and a wife’s quarreling is a continual dripping of rain. [Proverbs 19:13] Familial discord is a problem as old as sin (what, you think Adam and Eve didn’t have some issues over the events of Genesis 3?), and it has the power to hurt like few other…
A king’s wrath is like the growling of a lion, but his favor is like dew on the grass. [Proverbs 19:12] Ill-favor and good favor are two sides of the same coin. On one side, the king dislikes you; his wrath bears heavy. On the other side, the king likes you, and his pleasure…
Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense. [Proverbs 19:11] Anger is motivation. Anger is not integrally sinful; anger is often righteous. But anger is dangerous, and anger is tempting, and anger is easily perverted. It is a primal motivation, and so our evil natures, dead or…
It is not fitting for a fool to live in luxury, much less for a slave to rule over princes. [Proverbs 19:10] Two narratives pop up in human thought throughout history: the victim narrative (prominent now) and the success narrative (prominent in Christ’s day, as well as now). On the one hand, men derive righteousness…
A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will perish. [Proverbs 19:9] Proverbs has a habit of repeating itself. Just as Psalm 14:1-3 and Psalm 53:1-3 are nearly identical, so Proverbs will on occasion repeat verses. By the rules of common sense, we can guess that these repetitions are important.…
Whoever gets sense loves his own soul; he who keeps understanding will discover good. [Proverbs 19:8] In an age of anti-intellectual emotionalism and anti-emotional intellectualism, Scripture provides the sanity which both sides recoil from (Ps. 10:4). The balance is difficult and not merely quantitative. Sinful man abhors it, in part because it resists making excuses…
All a poor man’s brothers hate him; how much more do his friends go far from him! He pursues them with words, but does not have them. [Proverbs 19:7] When we read a verse in Scripture, our common instinct is to set ourselves in the righteous man’s place. In this case, that means casting ourselves…
Many seek the favor of a generous man, and everyone is a friend to a man who gives gifts. [Proverbs 19:6] Money can’t buy love, they say, but that’s manifestly false. People ‘buy’ friendship and love all the time. The grossest forms of this, of course, are sex slavery, prostitution, and pseudo-prostitution. We live in…