Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Proverbs · About this commentary
Buy the Truth, and Do Not Sell It
Proverbs 23:19-24:22
19 Listen, my son, and be wise, and keep your heart on the right path! · WEB
The section contains the most detailed portrait of a drunk in Scripture, and the most direct command in the book about people being led away to die.
Buy the truth, and don't sell it. Two instructions, and the second is the harder. Truth is to be acquired at cost, and then never traded — not for advantage, not for peace, not at any price the man may later be offered.
The portrait of drunkenness runs for seven verses and it works by asking questions first. Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaints? Who has needless bruises? Who has bloodshot eyes? The list is of symptoms without a cause. The answer comes in the next verse: those who linger over wine. The word needless does a great deal. These are injuries with no story behind them worth telling.
Then the warning about the moment of decision: Don't look at the wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it goes down smoothly. Three attractions are granted, in the order a drinker meets them, and the counsel is to intervene at the looking. What follows is stated as a sequence rather than a judgment. It bites like a snake. The eyes see strange things. The mind imagines confusing things. And the man is like somebody trying to sleep on the rigging of a ship.
The last verse is his own speech, and it is one of the most unsparing things in Scripture. "They hit me, and I was not hurt! They beat me, and I don't feel it! When will I wake up? I can do it again. I will look for more." He recalls being beaten and cannot feel it, and while still describing that he is planning the next one. Nothing is added by way of comment.
The section's moral center is two verses about people in danger. Rescue those who are being led away to death! Indeed, hold back those who are staggering to the slaughter! Then the excuse is anticipated and dismantled: If you say, "Behold, we didn't know this," doesn't he who weighs the hearts consider it? Ignorance is treated as a claim that will be examined rather than accepted. The passage assumes a man usually knows more than he admits to knowing.
Two further instructions govern how a man watches other people's fortunes. Don't rejoice when your enemy falls, with a reason that stops the reader — lest God see it and turn his anger away from the enemy. And the encouragement that is quoted more than any other line here: a righteous man falls seven times and rises up again. The falling is expected. What distinguishes him is not that he stays upright.
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