Proverbs 7:2

Proverbs 7 is a warning against the “strange woman”, the adulteress. She has already appeared in Proverbs 5 and Proverbs 6, and this chapter brings the warning to its height with a detailed account of her flattery, her cunning and the young man who follows her to ruin (Proverbs 7:6–27). The first five verses come before any of that. They give the son his protection first, so that when temptation comes he already holds what guards him. The same order runs through the father’s teaching in Proverbs 1–9, where the call to wisdom comes first and its use in real life follows.

The father asks two things in verse 1. “Keep” is shâmar, a verb whose root idea is to hedge about, as with thorns, and so to guard, protect and attend to. A son who keeps his father’s words watches over them the way a man watches over something valuable, so that they are kept safe from loss and neglect, and he lives by them. “Lay up” is tsâphan, to hide something by covering it over, to store it away and keep it safe. The verb can be used in a bad sense, of lurking in hiding, but here it has its good sense of treasure put away where it will be found when it is needed. “With thee” makes the commandments the son’s own possession, carried inside him wherever he goes.

The psalmist did exactly this: “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee” (Psalm 119:11). A word hidden in the heart is ready at the moment of decision and temptation, and that is the very moment the rest of this chapter describes.

Verse 2 repeats the command and adds a promise. “Keep” is the same verb, shâmar, and “commandments” the same word, mitsvâh. The promise is one word, “live”, châyâh. It means to live, and it can also mean to be revived or restored to life. In Proverbs it reaches past bare existence to a full and flourishing life, the wholeness and peace Scripture calls shalom, lived in right relationship with God. Bodily well-being was often joined to obedience in Israel, and the life promised here includes it, but it is the life of the whole person. It stands over against the death that the strange woman leads to later in the chapter.

Moses set the same choice before Israel: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19–20). God’s commands are the gifts of a good Father, given so that his people may thrive.

“Law” in the second line is tôwrâh, instruction or teaching. It often names the law of Moses, and here it gathers up all the father’s teaching from God, set beside “my commandments” in the line before.

Verse 3 gives two pictures of how to keep the commands close. “Bind” is qâshar, to tie or bind. The same verb can describe one person bound to another in love, and it can also mean to conspire. Tied to the fingers, the commands are always in sight and always at hand, like a ring, or a string tied round a finger as a reminder, ready to guide whatever the hands do. The picture recalls the law’s own command about God’s words: “thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes” (Deuteronomy 6:8). The phylacteries worn as visible reminders of the law come from that same command.

“Write” is kâthab, to engrave or inscribe, and so to write. A “table” in the KJV is a tablet. In Israel laws, covenants and important messages were recorded on tablets, the most lasting way to keep them, and the Ten Commandments were written on tables of stone (Exodus 31:18). Here the tablet is the heart, lêb. In Scripture the heart is the centre of the whole person, the seat of the mind, the will, the conscience and the desires as well as the feelings. To write God’s commands there is to let them shape what we think, want and choose, until they are part of who we are.

The two lines move from the outside to the inside, from the hands that act to the heart that decides. The fingers carry the commands into daily conduct, and the heart is where they take root.

Verse 4 turns from commands to a relationship. Wisdom, chokmâh, is wisdom in the good sense: practical skill and moral insight, knowledge put to work so that a person lives rightly and well before God. “Sister” is ʼâchôwth, the feminine of the word for brother. “Kinswoman” is môwdaʻ, a kinsman or relative, which Strong’s gives as “acquaintance” and “kinswoman”. Wisdom and understanding are both to be family. Wisdom gives the skill to live well, and understanding grasps where each choice leads.

The verbs are ordinary ones. “Say” is ʼâmar, the everyday word for saying, and the weight lies in what the son says: “Thou art my sister.” “Call” is qârâʼ, to call or name. The son names wisdom and understanding as his own kin and takes them as his companions for life.

In Israel family ties were the strongest and most trusted bonds a person had, marked by loyalty, trust, protection and counsel. A sister is someone you live alongside, trust and turn to. Wisdom is meant to be that near, a constant companion whose counsel you know and rely on in every decision.

Verse 5 gives the purpose of everything before it. “That they may keep thee”: the words, commandments, wisdom and understanding of verses 1 to 4 will now keep the son. The verb is shâmar once more, so the son who guards his father’s words finds those words guarding him, like a hedge around him.

The wisdom these verses commend is found in full in Jesus Christ. Paul calls him “the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24), and says that in him “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:2–3). He is the Word who was with God and became flesh (John 1:1–14), and God has made him our wisdom and righteousness (1 Corinthians 1:30). One “greater than Solomon” has come (Matthew 12:42). To call wisdom our sister and understanding our kinswoman is, for us, to draw near to Christ and hold to him as our closest kin.

Christ is also the one who kept God’s commandments perfectly. He came to fulfil the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 5:17). The words of the psalm, “I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:8), are his words, and Hebrews hears him say, “Lo, I come… to do thy will, O God” (Hebrews 10:7). In him the law was written on the table of the heart and lived out in every act of his hands.

His words carry the life that verse 2 promises. “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). He is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). He came that we “might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10), and God gave his Son so that whoever believes in him has everlasting life (John 3:16). So the father’s “Keep my commandments, and live” sounds again in Christ’s own “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Against the stranger’s flattery he sets his truth: “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31–32).

The faithfulness the strange woman tempts a man to break is the faithfulness Christ shows to his church. He loved her and gave himself for her, to present her “holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25–27). Through him the Spirit writes God’s law on our hearts, and our keeping of his word rests on his work.

In these five verses a father’s love and God’s own care speak together. God addresses his people as a father addresses a son he longs to see live. He gives his word as a treasure worth guarding the way we guard our sight, and he offers wisdom as near kin. The commands we keep turn out to keep us. Temptation comes in smooth words, and God has given a word that is truer and stronger than any of them. What the son is told to write on his heart, God promises to write there himself by his Spirit, and the wisdom the son is to embrace has a name and a face in Jesus Christ, who loves his people and keeps them.