Proverbs 18:11

In Israel a tower, migdâl, was a building for defence. Cities, villages and even single farms had them, built with thick walls and often on high ground, so that they were hard to attack. When invaders, raiders or wild animals came, people ran to the tower as their last place of refuge when every other defence had failed. The word comes from gâdal, “to be great”, and names a tower for its size or height. It can also mean a raised platform or pulpit. Solomon takes this familiar sight and says that the name of the LORD is such a tower. The word for strong, ʻôz, means strength or might, and it can also mean a stronghold.

Scripture says this of God again and again. “I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust” (Psalm 91:2). “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1). Nahum calls the LORD good, “a strong hold in the day of trouble” (Nahum 1:7).

The proverb belongs to the long collection of Solomon’s sayings in Proverbs 10:1–22:16, most of them two-line sayings that set the wise beside the foolish and the righteous beside the wicked. The verses just before it speak of the man who cuts himself off from others (verse 1), the fool’s self-conceit (verse 2), the ruin that comes with wickedness (verse 3) and the slack worker, of whom Solomon says, “He also that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster” (Proverbs 18:9). After that run of human failings, this saying stands on its own and points to God himself as the place of safety.

“The rich man’s wealth is his strong city.” The word for wealth, hôwn, means wealth or substance, and by implication enough. The rich man looks at what he has and judges it enough for every need. He calls it his strong city, and the word for strong is the same ʻôz that made the LORD’s name a strong tower in verse 10. Read side by side, the two proverbs set two strongholds before us, the name of God and a man’s money.

A strong city with a high wall was the surest defence people knew. Its walls kept out invaders, sheltered the people in war and guarded the goods stored inside, and Jerusalem was famous for its walls. Wealth gave real help too in a farming land where life was often unsettled. It could carry a family through famine, sickness and unrest, and buy land and food. So a rich man could easily come to feel that his money made him safe from every trouble, even from the judgment of God.

“And as an high wall in his own conceit.” Everything turns on this last phrase. The word maskîyth comes from a root meaning to look at, and it can mean a figure or image, even a carved idol, or a picture in the mind, an imagination. The high wall exists in the rich man’s own imagination and in his own estimate of himself. Here lies the irony of the verse. What he counts his greatest strength is the place where he is weakest, because his confidence hides from him how fragile his possessions are and how much he depends on God. His “conceit” is his own fancy, and it carries pride with it.

That is why trusting in riches is a kind of idolatry. It gives to created things the trust that belongs to the Creator. Proverbs says it plainly elsewhere: “He that trusteth in his riches shall fall” (Proverbs 11:28). Jeremiah pronounces a curse on the man who trusts in man (Jeremiah 17:5), and Paul has Timothy warn the rich against trusting in uncertain riches (1 Timothy 6:17). True security is the one a psalmist found when he called God alone his rock, his salvation and his defence (Psalm 62:6). It rests on God’s unfailing presence and power, and it lasts when every earthly wall gives way.

“Before destruction the heart of man is haughty, and before honour is humility.” The proverb sets two pairs against each other, haughtiness against humility and destruction against honour, in the form of Hebrew poetry called antithetical parallelism. Its best-known companion is “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18).

The word for haughty, gâbahh, means to be high, lofty, tall or exalted, and figuratively to be haughty. The proud heart lifts itself up. The heart, lêb, is a person’s inner self, the seat of thought, will and feeling, and the word for man here is ʼîysh. So the proverb finds the root of both pride and humility deep inside a person, where they shape everything he does. Pride rates itself too highly, sets itself against God’s authority, shuts its ears to wise counsel and leads to poor judgment and estrangement from others. The order in this verse is God’s own order in the world he governs, and pride carries in itself the seeds of its own undoing.

The word for humility, ʻănâvâh, means gentleness, meekness and modesty. It is a true view of oneself before God and before other people, teachable and willing to serve. The word for honour, kâbôwd, means glory, honour and splendour. Humility waits for honour to be given, by God and by others who see a life of integrity and service. God lifts up those who leave the lifting to him: “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble” (James 4:6). Jesus taught the same in Luke 14:11 and Matthew 23:12: “whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.”

Israel prized honour and a good name. Proverbs grounds true honour in dependence on God and a life lived by his covenant, so that a person’s character decides his lasting standing before God and among his people.

In Jesus Christ “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9), so God’s name, his character, power and saving presence, has come among us in human form. To run into the name of the LORD is to run to Jesus, for “there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). He is the stronghold against sin, death and the powers of darkness. Through his death on the cross and his resurrection, sinners are declared righteous and find their safe place in God.

Jesus also exposed the rich man’s wall. He warned against laying up treasure on earth, where it decays and thieves take it (Matthew 6:19–21), and he said, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24). Though he was rich, he became poor for our sakes (2 Corinthians 8:9), so that we might share in the riches of God’s grace. The gospel ends the conceit of self-sufficiency by showing how completely we depend on God’s mercy. Christ is the foundation that has been laid (1 Corinthians 3:11), the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and the giver of “a kingdom which cannot be moved” (Hebrews 12:28) and of his own peace (John 14:27).

He is also the clearest picture of verse 12. Being in the form of God, he “thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.” He humbled himself to the death of the cross, “wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow” (Philippians 2:6–10). His humility ran from the manger to the evening he washed his disciples’ feet and gave them an example (John 13:1–17), and on to the cross, where he “learned he obedience by the things which he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8–9). Humility came before honour for him, and the name above every name is the name the righteous now run to.

These three verses put two strongholds before us and show where each one leads. One is the name of the LORD, strong and high and open to everyone who runs to it. The other is a wall a man builds out of what he owns and then believes in, high only in his own mind. The heart that lifts itself up behind that wall is on the way to a breaking, and the humble heart that runs to God is on the way to honour.

They show us a God who is both strong and near. His name is a tower that keeps safe everyone inside it, and the way in is simply to run to him. When trouble comes to you, the tower that sheltered Solomon’s first hearers stands open still, and the one who sets the righteous on high is the same God who gives grace to the humble.