Proverbs: Chapter 19

For additional notes and resources check out Douglas’ website.

Reading advice:

• Keep noticing how sayings are related, if only loosely.
• Notice how themes introduced in previous chapters are touched on again and again.
• Notice the doublets (14:12, 16:25) and near-doublets (19:5, 19:9).
• Understand the parallelism:
  • Synonymous (19:5); a comparison is being made, or a statement is begin repeated in a different form.
  • Antithetical (19:12); a contrast is being made. Many of the earlier chapters are filled with this type.
  • Synthetic (19:19); an augmentation of the first line -- the second line elaborates, or builds upon, the first.

Salient points:

• "Zeal without knowledge" (v.2) is alluded to in Romans 10:3. Many proverbs are echoed or quoted in the N.T.
• Sleep is good, but like honey if overdone the result is counterproductive (v.15). We will get up on time when we have a reason to get up.
• Kindness to the poor is lending to the Lord (v.17).
• V.25 LXX reads "When a pestiferous person is being whipped, a fool will become more crafty." The LXX was the O.T. (and the Bible) of Paul and the apostles who preached outside of Palestine.

Challenge:

• Get control of your sleep habits!
• Follow your system. Eat right. Exercise! Don't watch electronic screens during the half-hour before bedtime.
• Even then, you may have to push through fatigue. "The world is run by tired me."
• I love Longfellow's poem: "The heights by great men reached and kept / Were not attained by sudden flight / But they, while their companions slept / Were toiling upward in the night."

Next up: Proverbs 20.