9Then you will discern righteousness and justice and equity and every good course. 10For wisdom will enter your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul …
Wisdom, knowledge, discernment, and understanding are not static, self-centered traits for our personal enjoyment, as though we can sit alone in our chair and bask in what we have. Wisdom and its related characteristics provide the framework, the clothing with which we garb ourselves for interacting with the world around us, its events, and its people.
So how does all this look in action? Our passage outlines several out-workings of wisdom. The wise person is able to discern between what is righteous and just versus what is not (vs. 9), to know and understand what is fair and equitable. Things aren’t always black and white, and sometimes we need to choose between various options by weighing the pros and cons, which is particularly challenging when our decisions affect others. But wisdom provides us with confidence (vs. 10) in the rightness of difficult choices, even when other people may not understand or agree. Wisdom enables us to decide based on the long-term perspective and not just present benefit.
Wise living shows in our discretion (vs. 11), our ability to understand any given situation in which we find ourselves; wisdom protects us from superficial assessments. Discretion protects us from falling into the evil ways of others, from speaking or acting before we think. Uncontrolled words lashed out in anger make matters worse and destroy relationships (vs. 12-13).
The writer of Proverbs now begins to describe the ways of those who embrace un-wisdom (folly); they embody everything that wisdom teaches us to avoid. The prose of the passage morphs from straightforward discourse to an illustration that overlays much of the following eight chapters: the choice facing a young man to follow an alluring, enticing woman on a sexual escapade or follow the woman of wisdom. The wrong, foolish choice is tragic:
For her house sinks down to death and her tracks lead to the dead; none who go to her return again, nor do they reach the paths of life. (Prov. 2:18–19)
What a perfect illustration of the outcomes of rejecting God’s wisdom and embracing foolishness! For those who resist the adulterous temptation we read, “For the upright will live in the land and the blameless will remain in it” (Prov. 2:21). These divergent outcomes illustrate the larger, overriding choices of life, between living in God’s wisdom and choosing to reject wisdom for foolishness.
Lord, forgive my wrong, sinful choices, and continue to teach me Your wisdom.
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