The Amazing Old Testament: Pondering
Since we’ve been on Proverbs lately … just 3 more today and I’ll be done with you! (1) “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established” (Proverbs 19:21). In the thick of so many proverbs about human responsibility, we find sayings that feel deterministic (16:1, 9, 20:24, 21:31). Roland Murphy called this “one of the most profound insights of the Bible: there is human responsibility for one’s actions . . . On the other hand, God is the agent behind everything that occurs. These two large ‘theological’ truths emphasize the mystery of it all.”
Am I the net result of my choices? Or has it all been orchestrated? Somehow I got myself here, and yet I harbor a keen sense of what the philosopher Martin Heidegger called “thrown-ness”: I have been tossed into a life. The most important facts about me I did not choose: gender, parents, skin color, nationality, proclivity to disease. How free am I even in my choosing? Does the alcoholic choose bourbon? Does a woman choose to wear the latest fashion? Does a man choose to be materialistic? Yes, and no. Do you choose a relationship with God, or were you chosen? Is God in control, or are we on our own down here?
Does it have to be one or the other? How do you experience yourself? You choose a thousand times a day, but you feel hemmed in, little voices from the past wooing you, driving you to choose by forces you cannot see in the dark; yet still you choose, you inherit, you discover, you respond, you step back in wonder, you move forward, you know you were drawn there.
Is God in control? Eternally, yes. But day to day? God clearly chooses not to be in control. God’s will frequently is not done. God isn’t a master manipulator, because God is far more interested in love than control. God’s love seeks wisdom, which similarly God hasn’t prewired into us. God gives us space to be wise—or not. Yet then, when wisdom dawns, we see how God was there, engaged, administering surely yet with a light touch.
(2) Proverbs 22:2: “The rich and the poor meet together; the Lord is the maker of them all.” What do the rich and poor have in common? “The Lord made them both.” Notice the text does not say the Lord made the rich rich, and the poor poor. Wealth and poverty happen for myriad reasons, and if Acts 2–4 is any indication, God would prefer a redistribution of wealth instead of pride in wealth or shame in being poor.
The Hebrew translated “have in common,” nipgashu, means to “meet” or “come together.” Usually they do not come together. Is there a hint in the proverb that they could or should? The Lord made them both. Early Christianity seemed bent on shattering social boundaries. Acts 16 describes a church whose members included wealthy Lydia, a slave girl, and a jailer. Paul fumed against those who tried to preserve social distinctions at the Lord’s table (1 Cor 11:17-22). The proverb before this one claims that “high esteem” is better than silver and gold. Esteem in whose eyes? The Lord’s? The poor’s? Is a Christian’s goal perhaps to be like Dorcas, on whose death all the poor of the city grieved, and showed off all she had done for and with them (Acts 9:39)?
And then, probably my favorite in Proverbs: (3) “Three things are too wonderful for me; four I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a maiden” (Proverbs 30:18). You can spend hours contemplating the wisdom of this extended proverb – and come back to it years later and still be full of awe. Just what is it about the eagle flying, the serpent slithering, the gliding of a ship, and then the way of a man with a woman? Is it the mystery of movement? The eagle defies gravity effortlessly, the serpent scurries swiftly but with no legs, the ship is massively heavy but stays afloat. Is it the mastery of difficult environments? The crags of high mountains, nooks under stones, the terrible sea—and is the way to a woman just as mystifying to a man?
Some things simply are for pondering. The Latin pondus means something weighty, with density, layers, challenging to probe but rewarding if attended to. The wise are observers of life; they sit still and notice, they discern connections, patterns in the ways of creatures and things. They are awed by the haunting, beautiful mystery in creation.
The vortex of this reflection is what drives humanity to distraction, and will forever retain its befuddling mystique: “the way of a man with a woman.” Intimate relations are a riddle; we never quite get it figured out. It is the elusiveness of what is most heart-rending that is the intriguing delight of life, the humility that banishes all arrogance, the closest glimpse we mortals gain of the nature of tenderness and love—and our need for the grace and power of God.