Proverbs 8.32-33
“And now, O sons, listen to me: blessed are those who keep my ways. Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it.”
This exhortation has been a recurring theme in Proverbs, and Solomon is not embarrassed to keep making the appeal. Neither should we be embarrassed to repeatedly make the appeal in our generation.
Certainly we need to remind young people to listen to God’s wisdom, as it is the nature of youth to be tempted to act impetuously and without thinking. But increasingly it is the adults in our world who speak and act foolishly. Just read through Twitter and you will find a stream of impulsive and irrational declarations.
The Lord admonishes us to “keep his ways.” In other words, know and apply the Lord’s standards and principles to the way you live and the way you work. There is a way that things are designed to operate. Know the way and align yourself with it.
And once again we see our words musar and hokma. “Hear instruction,” the Lord says. That’s musar. Disciplined training. That is how you learn “the way” something works. If you commit to the disciplined process of instruction / musar, then you will be wise … hokma, which means knowledgeable and skillful. Because it refers to skill as well as knowledge, hokma is often used to describe craftsmen … highly skilled artisans and workers.
So the Lord is saying: Submit to the lordship of Christ, and commit to the process of disciplined training so that you will be knowledgeable and skillful in the way you live your life. He warns: Do not neglect disciplined training, because that is how you will learn and acquire hokma.
Proverbs 8.34-35
“Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord, but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death.”
Note that Proverbs continues to describe wisdom as something you must search for and seek to find. Daily. And having found wisdom, you must listen to it and apply it to your life. Daily. In other words, wisdom is not something that you passively receive; it is something you must actively pursue every day.
Solomon is clear: If you learn (musar), and apply (bina) the wisdom (hokma) of God’s physical and spiritual principles and standards (tsedek) to your life, you will be blessed and will experience the Lord’s favor. But if you fail to pursue and apply God’s timeless principles, you impair yourself. You injure yourself. And it is a self-inflicted wound.
Lady Wisdom ends the section with a very strong statement: “All who hate me love death.” To reject God’s wisdom is a death sentence.
