. . .TO GIVE SENSE TO THE SIMPLE;

Proverbs 1:1-6
The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel;

to know wisdom and instruction;
to recognize the words of understanding;
to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and uprightness;
to give sense to the simple,
knowledge and judgment to the young man;
the wise hears and increases learning;
and understanding ones get wisdom;
to understand a proverb and its meaning;
the words of the wise, and their acute sayings.


. . .to give sense to the simple;

When studying the Bible, if we are serious about finding out what God wants to say to us, we sometimes need to refer to the original language, as well as to the contextual culture. The word sense in this text holds the meaning of ‘wisdom in caution and prudence’. The word simple means, ‘foolish’, as in ‘easily seducible’.

As I was warning my students about the grave dangers of unsupervised and uncontrolled Internet use by teenagers, one of my young, obviously ‘simple’ and ‘foolish’ students said, “ I don’t care; if I want it, I’ll do it even if it is dangerous”!

When I heard this, my heart sank and saw that my work was cut out for the year with that student. She needs to learn ‘sense’, but as they say, ‘common sense is not always so common’.

The words in these proverbs are to teach us this prudence we so desperately need. These proverbs are to help us not be so seducible and gullible to the doctrines, ways and ‘truths’ sent to us by the enemy of our soul. These proverbs can help us get the truth again from the Word, without the foolish relative interpretations of men who constantly try to weasel away form the definite constant stability of God’s standards.

Let us in all honesty dig in these proverbs and find again the Word of life that is able to save our soul from certain spiritual death.