Proverbs 15:25 ESV
The Lord tears down the house of the proud but maintains the widow’s boundaries.
[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+15%3A25&version=ESV]
Powerlessness is a terrifying thing. When “the enemy comes in a’roaring like a flood, coveting the kingdom, and hungering for blood,” we generally feel quite powerless. What are we against the culture’s overwhelming depravity? What are we against the church’s sloth? What are we against our world’s grinding heel? What are we, even without all these dangers, against our own sinful hearts, longing for that which God hates? This proverb is an antidote to that despair; it states, to finish the first verse of King Alfred’s War Song quoted above, that, “When the enemy comes in… the Lord will raise His standard up and lead His people on… For the Lord is our defense.”
In the terms of the ancient world, the widow was one of the three most powerless type of people around (the others are orphans and slaves (though not slaves under the Mosaic law)). To be a widow was to lack the societal and physical protection that a husband afforded; more, it was to lose the provision which she relied upon for food, clothing, and shelter. In good situations, the widow’s family (by blood, marriage, or her children) could care for her, or she had sufficient wealth and a society that allowed her to use said wealth. In bad situations, whether by disease or war or circumstances of life, the widow was alone, without a provider and without a protector.
If an unscrupulous businessman or a greedy king wanted to increase his wealth, stealing a widow’s land would be high on the list of targets. He might move the border markers- and maintain those movements by force. He might pressure her to sell, using her inability to care for herself or her children as leverage to take the inheritance which should sustain them (1 Kings 21:1-24). He might, as a ruler, simply set up the laws to victimize her, relying on the fact that poor women worried about how to survive don’t have time to lobby or stir up a political problem.
Against all this force, the hand of the widow is nothing. She is powerless, and all calculations foretell only destruction. Yet the Lord “maintains the widow’s boundaries.” The might of the world is great; it is overwhelming; it is beyond the defense of the righteous to hold back. Against this might is set the Lord, and the fight ain’t even close. “The Lord has a day against all that is proud and loft, against all that is lifted up- and it shall be brought low” (Is. 2:12). The hand of the Lord is not merely a weight in the scales; His will is a decision already made, a decree. The world rages and roars only as He permits, for His glory and joy (Ps. 2).
The world rages, nevertheless, and it hurts. We are but men, and all about us sin seems triumphant. Western society is engaged in apathetic, passionate suicide, so far as we can tell, and it’s desperate to drag us all down with it, to kill us before it kills itself. We live in a culture which loves sin, loves death (Prov. 8:36), and for all Proverbs 15:25 assures us that He maintains the powerless, our powerless feels very un-maintained. It feels, in fact, as if it is actively pulling us apart.
Here only faith sees the truth (Heb. 11:1-3). The world crushes and beats and burns the children of God, but the end is this: we triumph, over world, flesh, and devil (Eph. 2:1-3). Even against our own overweening sin, the constant, nagging, urging, bleeding desire for that which would destroy us (Rom. 7:21-23), we triumph by His strength (Deut. 31:6). God is our “refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Ps. 46:1). Our souls are safe in Him, so that every wound we are dealt, by our own hands and by others’, is nothing to the joy which He brings.
God does not promise us, ever, an easy path. He promises deliverance. He says, “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name” (Ps. 90:14). We will suffer, and we will hurt, and we will at times wonder, in our own sin, whether He preserves us. The boundaries of our souls, though, shall not be moved. We are of His church, and it of His church which He speaks in Isaiah 54:5-6, saying, “Fear not, for you will not be ashamed…[for] the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more. For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name….” The widow which the world sees is no widow at all; the people of God are of the church, the bride of Christ, and the world will melt before the fire of His fury, the wrath of His justice, while those whom He has saved shall be blessed forevermore (Is. 66:15,22-23).
God bless.
Written by Colson Potter
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
