by Brian Allred
Proverbs 9 is a provocative portrait of our world where the voices of wisdom and folly are at every moment vying for our attention. The chapter is creatively arranged to move us inward toward the middle where the central point is found in v. 10. The chapter begins and ends with invitations presented to the simple from both Lady Wisdom (vv. 1-6) and Lady Folly (v. 13-18) – one offering life and the other ultimately death. Moving a step closer to the center, we discover that there are different responses to the voices. Some people listen to wisdom and others do not.
We read in vv. 7-8, “Whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse, and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury. Do not reprove a scoffer or he will hate you.” The scoffer is later described in Proverbs 13:1 as someone who “does not like to be reproved; he will not go to the wise.” Simply put, the scoffer is a wicked person who opposes and resists the correcting voice of wisdom. There’s reason to believe that this resistance is rooted in pride and a self-inflated arrogance that perceives no need for reproof as we’re told in Proverbs 21:24: “‘Scoffer’ is the name of the arrogant, haughty man who acts with arrogant pride.”
By contrast, we read in vv. 8-9 that if you “reprove a wise man, he will love you. Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be wiser still; teach a righteous man and he will increase in learning.” Wisdom means acknowledging that we’ll never reach the point where we no longer need correction and reproof. As long as we bear some marks of the simple – as long as we’re in the process of spiritual and moral development, prone to wandering and making poor choices – we need wise correction and moral reproof.
So, here’s a key piece of evidence that reveals whether you’re living according to wisdom or according to folly: do you receive wise correction and rebuke? Are you accepting of reproof from God, from his Word, from your brothers and sisters in Christ, from your church leaders and spiritual authorities? A wise husband is receptive to correction from others when he is not loving and cherishing his wife as Christ loved the church. A wise wife is accepting of correction when she is not respecting her husband in the ways she talks to and about him. Wise parents listen to correction when they are not exercising proper godly authority over their children or when their parenting is devoid of tenderness and grace. People who have ears tuned to wisdom are open to loving, truthful, biblical correction when they are harboring bitterness and grudges in their heart, when they are not taking appropriate care of their body with proper exercise, diet and sleep, when they are not stewarding their time or money very well because they are spending both in frivolous pursuits at the expense of important commitments, and when they are seeking from idols the comfort and contentment that only God can provide.
If you are wise, you will listen to biblical correction. And not only will you listen to it, you’ll welcome it, seek it, invite it. Do you sit under the preaching and teaching of God’s Word, spend time in personal Bible study, and offer up your heart to God in prayer in ways that move you toward repentance and alter your choices and decision-making? Do you intentionally pursue and cultivate relationships where others are allowed to speak into your life with loving rebuke?
We shouldn’t miss the significance of v. 12, “If you are wise, you are wise for yourself; if you scoff, you alone will bear it.” In other words, if you listen to wisdom, you’ll be the beneficiary and enjoy the fruit it brings. But if you scoff, you yourself will suffer the consequences. What’s at stake in accepting or rejecting wisdom’s reproof is powerfully presenting earlier in Proverbs (see 1:23-26).
In Proverbs 9, we hear two voices extending invitations and see two very different ways of responding. Interestingly, we discover echoes of these two voices throughout the Bible. We encounter two women near the end of Revelation. We encounter the bride of Christ in Revelation 19:7 and 21:2:
Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready. – Revelation 19:7
And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. – Revelation 21:2
We also encounter Babylon, the great harlot:
Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk.” And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality. And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations.” – Revelation 17:1-5
Like in Proverbs 9, aligning with one ends in life while aligning with the other brings destruction and death. In addition, two ways appear in the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus speaks of the broad way leading to destruction and the narrow way leading to life (see Matthew 7:13-14). In the Old Testament, we see Moses setting two options before Israel in Deuteronomy: life for keeping the covenant and death for disobedience.
“See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your Godthat I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish.” – Deuteronomy 30:15-18
We can actually go all the way back to the beginning of Genesis in the Garden of Eden we there are also two voices: the voice of the Lord and the voice of the serpent. One was the voice of wisdom, the other the voice of folly. Listening to one would lead to life while listening to other would lead to death. The voice of Wisdom is still calling out: “Come in.” The voice of folly is still calling out: “Come in.” And we still must make a choice. Who will you listen to?