Proverbs 28.3
“A poor man who oppresses the poor is a beating rain that leaves no food.”
A person who oppresses the poor is cruel and despicable, even if the oppressor is poor himself. Poor people should be helpful and beneficial to other poor people, not a destructive force.
The proverb likens the oppressor to a driving rain that ruins crops. The value of rain is to nourish the soil for growing crops, and it does this wonderfully when it falls gently and steadily. But when rain comes in a violent storm, it can easily wash away topsoil and the seeds contained in it by a flood of water. It can also flatten and ruin growing plants. In both cases, the very thing that ought to be a benefit for a field and its owner becomes a cruel and destructive force.
Solomon observed poor people being cruel and stingy to other poor people, and he saw it for what it is: a cruel and perverse practice. He also saw poor people given authority or riches, only to become merciless tyrants who abused their power over former peers. This is vanity and insanity.
Proverbs 28.4-5
“Those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but those who keep the law strive against them. Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the Lord understand it completely.”
The dominant theme in Chapter 28 is respect for the law and wise government. The focus of these two verses is the contrast between the lawbreaker and the law-keeper; that is to say, between those who respect God’s standards versus those who do not.
Laws exist to protect good people from bad people, and to provide principles and practices for a civil society. Evil people reject God’s standards and promote deviant behavior. As a result, they encourage moral confusion and undermine civil society.
We are witnessing this very phenomenon in contemporary American culture. The Judeo-Christian principles and traditions upon which our nation was founded have been largely abandoned and replaced with policies that protect a wide range of evil practices. None is more blatantly evil than our society’s legal and legislative protection for the killing of the unborn through the practice of abortion.
When God’s standards are rejected, justice is perverted. Indeed, without objective and timeless truth as the reference point, there can be no true justice. Instead, there is simply the quest for power.
This is why Proverbs 28.3 says, “Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the Lord understand it completely.” Justice is the right application of objective truth. When objective truth is abandoned, justice is simply not possible.
Those today who cry for “justice” but who at the same time reject God’s principles are either terribly confused or dangerously manipulative. Sadly, it is the latter who are misleading the former.
