Saying Twenty-Six

Proverbs 24:13-14

My son, eat honey because it is good, and the honeycomb which is sweet to your taste; so shall the knowledge of wisdom be to your soul; if you have found it, there is a prospect, and your hope will not be cut off.

Stop overthinking your spoonfuls of wisdom.

On the edge of town lives an old apiarist named Mr Barrow — slight of frame, large of hat — whose hives line the fence like a row of festering barracks. Once, on an autumn morning that smelt of smoke and pears, a young man named Lionel Exactitude paid a visit. Lionel was the sort of chap who brings a pencil to dinner, lest he need to take notes on the gravy. He had lately resolved, with the type of fervour that strikes men who rarely resolve anything, to be a wise man; and having heard that Proverbs likens wisdom to honey, he thought it prudent to begin his education at the source.

Mr Barrow received him with a nod and a word that might have been “mornin’,” although a moustache like his performs certain acts of muffling that render transcription hazardous. Leading his guest to the recesses of a generous backyard, he drew a frame from a hive, tapped it, and let the light come through the amber.

“Taste,” he said, offering a corner of the comb.

Lionel repeated the word thoughtfully, as though he were trying it on in front of a mirror. An analytical man at heart, he attempted a question, wishing to plumb the depths of just what the honey meant. The old man, intolerant of the bibliographic method of processing earthly joys, pressed the comb to Lionel’s lips.

“Taste,” he repeated insistently.

What followed was not so much a culinary episode as a sacrament. Sweetness marched into his soul with banners; his eyes brightened; and for a magical, uncalculated moment he forgot his pencil.

Saying Twenty-Six teaches that wisdom is to the soul what honey is to the lips. When a spoonful of honey enters the mouth, it tends to bypass all instincts to analyse or calculate. The eater feels no obligation to explain his decision to dribble out another spoonful from the pot. In fact, should you question him on this, he might be excused for assuming an expression of perplexity, glancing around as if to say ‘Can you believe this guy?’, and finally responding, “Because honey is good, man.” If he is an uncultured man, he might even quote Colonel Sanders: “It’s finger lickin’ good.”

If you can believe it, wisdom possesses the same indescribable quality of goodness. It feeds the soul with a moreish sweetness that defies explanation — and, indeed, rarely calls for it. You do not justify an intake of wisdom by explaining the divine mechanisms that manufactured its goodness. (For one thing, you probably don’t understand these divine mechanisms.) You simply assert its goodness and point to its fruit as evidence. Jesus himself did this:

But wisdom is justified by all her children.

Luke 7:35

In this way, the Bible is remarkably presuppositional in its celebration of wisdom. The Holy Spirit does not explain how and why “a soft answer turns away wrath”; it simply provides the principle as an axiom from which to begin reasoning, and points to the fruit of obedience — “turning away wrath” — as justification.

Saying One, remember, gave logical reasons for obeying wisdom; but these reasons did not work backwards into the derivation of wisdom, but forwards into its outworking. Indeed, the reader of Proverbs never gets closer to such a derivation than in the following statement:

The LORD possessed me at the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I have been established from everlasting, from the beginning, before there was ever an earth.

Proverbs 8:22-23

It is a matter of axiomatic faith, therefore, to eat up wisdom, believing it was with God in the beginning, trusting it will be sweet to your soul.

This is not to say that we cannot seek to understand how and why divine wisdom works. I have done so several times in this book. But such attempts always risk assuming the audacious position of standing as judge over God himself — as though, after inquiring diligently of our god, Reason, he might deign to adjudicate the wisdom of the Triune God as defensible. When the comb of wisdom is pressed to your lips, like Lionel, your first response must be to drop your pencil, cancel your prideful contentions, and submit your soul to the sticky syrup of God’s goodness in medicinal form.

Author N. D. Wilson is known for saying “Stories are soul food.” This is true because an effective story takes the dry, latent nutrients of wisdom and cooks them into a three-course dinner. Such elaborate meals are undeniably the best way to acquire consistent nourishment for the soul — you should live on roast dinners, not multivitamin tablets. But one of the reasons for Proverbs and Ecclesiastes is so that malnourished, fussy-eating two-year-olds like you and I can supplement our poor diets with concentrated injections of divine truth.

Saying Twenty-Six, therefore, is a commandment to love wisdom for the simplicity of what it is, to gratefully submit to its sweetness with a smile, and to come back for more like a child. When you do this consistently, your countenance will perpetually brighten (1 Sam 14:27 cp Psa 19:8). Those around you will sense the nectarous aura you purvey. They will leave your presence wondering ‘What was that?’, as men do who examine their sticky hands after shaking that of an avid honey-eater. In short, wisdom will be justified by her children, and you’ll be one of them.

Scriptures for Comparison

Psalm 19:9-10

Psalm 119:103

Proverbs 16:24

Proverbs 27:7

1 Samuel 14:27

Ezekiel 3:3

Revelation 10:9-10

Luke 7:35

James 3:17

Psalm 34:8