Saying Eleven

Proverbs 23:10-11

Do not remove the ancient landmark, nor enter the fields of the fatherless; for their Redeemer is mighty; He will plead their cause against you.

Don’t be the villain of someone else's imprecatory Psalm.

The principle of incremental growth is a gift. Lay one brick every night for a year, and you have a wall. Write fifty words a night for five years, and you have a book. Preach the gospel every Sunday for thousands of years, and you have a glorious kingdom.

Like every gift, however, it can be abused. In times gone by, when moveable landmarks punctuated the boundaries of family properties, it often took no more than shrewd planning and long patience to inch your way into a larger field. This is the example used in Saying Eleven, but it may be taken as representative of any number of equivalent scenarios. The office worker who wants more desk space might nudge his neighbour’s decorative knick-knacks a few millimetres further away every time he takes a bathroom break. The discontented wife may diligently and consistently select her husband's most vulnerable moment every day to wear him down with her nagging. To cite a less intentional example, the anxious teenager in a moment of boredom might deduct yet another slither from her ever-shortening fingernail — that little white bit needed trimming anyway.

The challenge, when it comes to proverbs like Saying Eleven, is to recognise that one’s instinctive ‘I-would-never-do-that’ reaction is just as wrong as the more easily addressed ‘we-don’t-have-ancient-landmarks-nowadays’ error. In many cases, proverbs expect the reader to generalise what is said, and apply the generalised principle. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, for example, isn’t only relevant when you find yourself in the dairy aisle at Woolworths. In fact, it’s generally used as financial advice, believe it or not.

Reading between the lines of Saying Eleven, we discover that God’s might and wrath is against those who intentionally devise schemes to get their own way at the expense of the disadvantaged. Now, it is worth noting that the scriptures are at pains to emphasise how much God hates this, especially (it seems) when the scheming takes place in bed. If God had bugbears, this would be one of them:

Woe to those who devise iniquity, and work out evil on their beds! At morning light they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand. (Micah 2:1)

He devises wickedness on his bed; he sets himself in a way that is not good; he does not abhor evil. (Psalm 36:4)

For they do not sleep unless they have done evil; and their sleep is taken away unless they make someone fall. (Proverbs 4:16)

These six things the LORD hates, yes, seven are an abomination to Him… A heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift in running to evil. (Proverb 6:16, 18)

God has apportioned intelligence to each man as he sees fit. To one more; to another less. But no matter how many IQ points we have, God commands us to use every last one of them to love him (Matt 22:37), not to devise wicked schemes against our neighbours. If you truly put your mind to it, you will probably find a way to get back at your neighbour for whatever sin he happened to commit against you last week.

Don’t.

If you are inclined to do this, then heed the warning of v11. God himself — the one who invented levels of intelligence — will plead the cause of the one you oppressed. He will render to each man according to his works. He will devise plans against you whilst reclining on his own metaphorical bed. If this is what you want — for the all-powerful God to start brainstorming ways to punish you — then by all means take advantage of the weak. Otherwise, it would go better with you to protect the weak, to do good to those who hate you, and implement any other permutation of the Golden Rule that is relevant at the time. In that case, God may plead your cause, and with gusto.

Scriptures for Comparison

Proverbs 15:25

Isaiah 10:1-3

Micah 2:1-3

Deuteronomy 19:14

Deuteronomy 27:17

Job 24:2-4

2 Samuel 12:4

James 5:1-4