Proverbs 27:14

“My son, be wise” is the voice of a father teaching his son, the voice in which so much of Proverbs is spoken. The word bên means son, and the father’s plea fits every learner and the one who has given himself to teaching him. The verb châkam means to be or become wise and to act wisely. It covers the settled state of a wise man as well as the growth into one, and it reaches his thoughts, his words and his deeds alike. The wisdom of Proverbs is practical skill in living rightly before God.

The son’s wisdom makes his father’s heart glad. The heart, lêb, is the centre of the whole person, his feelings, will and mind, so this gladness reaches the core of the father’s being. It tells him that what he taught has taken root and is bearing fruit. Proverbs says the same elsewhere: “A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother” (Proverbs 10:1). Later the book speaks of the great joy of the father who has a righteous and wise child (Proverbs 23:24–25).

The prudent man of verse 12 is ʻârûwm, shrewd and sensible. The word often has a bad sense, crafty or subtle, but here it is the good sense of a man who thinks ahead. He “foreseeth” the evil, and the verb is râʼâh, the common word for seeing, used here of seeing with the mind. He reads what is coming from careful observation and experience. The evil, raʻ, is anything bad or harmful: a disaster, the schemes of wicked people, the results of foolish choices, or the snares of temptation. When he sees it, he “hideth himself”. The verb çâthar means to hide by covering, and it describes a man who takes shelter or steps out of harm’s way. His action follows directly from what he saw.

The simple are the pᵉthîy, the gullible, the easily led. They lack experience and judgment, so they miss the danger ahead, and that makes them easy prey for deception and harm. Proverbs keeps them distinct from the hardened fool who scorns wisdom outright, yet their simplicity is still a fault, because they could learn and will not. They “pass on”, ʻâbar, a verb of crossing over, and keep walking past every warning. Then they “are punished”. The verb ʻânash means to inflict a penalty, and specifically to fine.

The verse sets the two men side by side in two contrasting lines, so that each throws light on the other. Other proverbs praise the same foresight. The ant gathers its food in summer (Proverbs 6:6–8), and the wise man prepares his fields before he builds his house (Proverbs 24:27). Paul tells believers to walk circumspectly, redeeming the time (Ephesians 5:15–16), and Jesus compares the man who hears his sayings and does them to a wise builder whose house on the rock stood through the storm (Matthew 7:24–27). All such wisdom begins where Proverbs says it begins: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10).

Verse 13 is advice to a lender. “Take”, lâqach, is a plain command. To be “surety”, ʻârab, is to give security for someone else, to guarantee another person’s debt. Ancient Israel had no banks, so credit rested on personal guarantees and pledges, and Proverbs warns again and again against standing surety, especially for someone you hardly know (Proverbs 6:1–5). A man who guarantees a stranger’s debt puts his own goods and future in the hands of someone whose character he has never tested. So when such a man comes to borrow, the lender should take his garment as security, because he has already shown that he is likely to lose what he has.

The second line says the same of the man who binds himself for a strange woman. The word for “take a pledge” is châbal, to bind, used here of binding a debtor by a pledge. The strange woman is nokrîy, a word meaning strange or foreign, and of a woman an adulteress. In Proverbs she is the adulteress who draws a young man away from wisdom, and the road to her house leads to ruin and death (Proverbs 7:6–27). Her company drains a man’s wealth and wrecks his name. The verse joins reckless lending and moral compromise as two signs of the same undiscerning character, and folly shown in one area of a man’s life is a fair warning about the rest.

The garment was often a man’s most valuable possession, needed for warmth and for dignity, and it was a common pledge. The law of Moses knew how much it mattered. A poor man’s cloak taken in pledge had to be returned by sunset so that he would have something to sleep in (Exodus 22:26–27), and the law set the taking of pledges within bounds of compassion (Deuteronomy 24:10–13).

Verse 14 describes a man who “blesseth” his friend. The verb bârak first means to kneel, and from that to bless God in worship or to bless a man with some good. The friend is rêaʻ, an associate or companion, a word that also covers a neighbour. In Israel a blessing was a weighty thing, often a declaration of God’s favour spoken by a father, a priest or an elder. Yet this blessing comes “with a loud voice”, where the adjective is gâdôwl, great, and the noun qôwl, voice or sound, and it comes “rising early in the morning”. The verb shâkam means to rise early, and bôqer is the morning.

The ending is the surprise: “it shall be counted a curse to him.” The verb châshab means to think, reckon or regard, so the friend reckons the greeting a qᵉlâlâh, a curse or vilification. The proverb leaves open whether “him” is the friend or the one who blesses, and either way the blessing has turned into its opposite.

Verse 15 draws its picture from a leaking roof. “Continual” is ṭârad, to drive on or follow close, and “dropping” is deleph, a dripping. The “very rainy” day is a day of çagrîyd, a pouring rain, and “day” is the ordinary word yôwm. Houses in Israel often had roofs of packed earth or thatch, and in the rainy season they leaked. Every Israelite knew the misery of water dripping into the house, drop after drop, while the downpour went on outside with no escape from it.

“A contentious woman” uses one word, spelled two ways, midyân and mâdôwn, meaning a contest or quarrel, brawling, strife. The woman, ʼishshâh, is marked by a habit of quarrelling. The two “are alike”, shâvâh, a verb meaning to level or make equal, and so to resemble. Each small drop or small complaint is minor in itself, but there is no end to them, and they wear down the peace of a home. Proverbs speaks of the contentious wife elsewhere too (Proverbs 19:13), and says it is better to live in a corner of the housetop than to share a house with her (Proverbs 21:9, Proverbs 25:24). “Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than an house full of sacrifices with strife” (Proverbs 17:1). Wisdom’s own ways are pleasantness, and all her paths are peace (Proverbs 3:17).

Proverbs 27 belongs to the proverbs of Solomon that the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied out, the collection of Proverbs 25–29. Most of its sayings stand on their own, and the chapter moves from one subject to the next: boasting about tomorrow (Proverbs 27:1), the worth of open rebuke and the faithful wounds of a friend (Proverbs 27:5–6), and the friendships of verses 9 and 10. In these six verses, the father’s appeal and the sayings on prudence, pledges and blessing each stand alone, while verses 15 and 16 belong together as one picture of a quarrelsome home.

Jesus is the wise Son in whom the Father delights perfectly. His obedient life and his death answer every accusation brought by Satan, whom Scripture calls the accuser of our brethren (Revelation 12:10). Through faith in Christ we too are children of God (Galatians 3:26), and when we walk in his wisdom our good works bring glory to our Father, as Peter says (1 Peter 2:12).

Christ is the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24). He saw the evil of sin and death more clearly than anyone, and where the prudent man hides himself from the evil, Christ went into it for us and bore the punishment we deserved (Isaiah 53:5). Because he did, he is our hiding place (Psalm 32:7).

Verse 13 warns against standing surety for a stranger, and Jesus is called the surety of a better testament (Hebrews 7:22), standing guarantee for people who were strangers to God. He paid with his own life, humbling himself to the death of the cross (Philippians 2:8). He takes no garment from us, and he clothes us instead with the garments of salvation and the robe of righteousness (Isaiah 61:10). Where the strange woman leads to death, he is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6).

Jesus also shows the quiet blessing that verse 14 commends. He often told those he healed to say nothing to anyone (Mark 1:44), and he came to serve and to give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). By becoming a curse for us he redeemed us from the curse of the law, so that the blessing of Abraham might come to us (Galatians 3:13–14).

Against the strife of verses 15 and 16 stands the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6), meek and lowly in heart (Matthew 11:29). Matthew applies to him Isaiah’s word that he would not strive or cry out in the streets (Matthew 12:19, Isaiah 42:2). His Spirit bears in us the fruit of love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22–23), which makes us able to live peaceably with all men as far as it lies in us (Romans 12:18). He calls peacemakers blessed, the children of God (Matthew 5:9).

These verses carry God’s wisdom into the most ordinary places: a father’s hopes for his son, a road with danger ahead, a loan between neighbours, a greeting at a friend’s door, and the daily life of a household. They show that God cares about how we handle money, how we speak to our friends and how we live under one roof. The father’s gladness over a wise son gives a glimpse of the Father’s delight in his children, and the shelter of the prudent man points to the refuge we have in Christ. In every one of these sayings, the wisdom that begins with the fear of the LORD turns out to be the way of peace.