Friday, March 3
Psalms 1: Three postures are considered in this psalm: walking, standing, and sitting. There are three places the just man will not be found: following the counsel of the godless, standing in the way that sinners go, seated among the scoffers. Warnings against these three categories are found all through the Bible’s wisdom literature, but the scoffers (letsim) appear here as the very climax of evil. Outside of this verse and Isaiah 29:20, “scoffer” is found only in the Book of Proverbs (14 times) and is a synonym for the consummate fool.
Now just what does the just man do? “He delights in the law of the Lord, and on that Law does he meditate day and night.” Here is our program for the week: at various times during the day and even the night to enjoy (hepets) meditation on God’s Law. (St. Paul also speaks of “delighting” in the Law of the Lord—Romans 7:22). The “meditation” could also be translated as “musing,” and it is a source of pleasure—“amusing.” This is how the week of prayer will be spent, our psalm is saying: in the enjoyment of meditation.
And to what does this constant meditation lead? “And he shall be like the tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth his fruit in his season.” Already, in the opening lines of the liturgical week, we are told that this is a matter of observing seasons. The habit of prayer, this incessant meditation on God’s Law, is not supposed to be something immediately useful. Trees do not bear fruit right away. They first must eat amply of the earth and drink deeply of its water. Such nourishment must serve first to build up the tree. The fruit will come later on, when it is supposed to. The life of Christian prayer and meditation knows nothing of instant holiness; it is all a matter of perseverance and patience. Some trees do not even begin to bear fruit for many years.
Proverbs 9: This chapter illustrates a contrast between two vastly different meals. From the “highest places of the city” (verses 3,14), both wisdom and folly invite “whoever is simple,” the man who “lacks understanding,” to “turn in here” (verses 4,16), which is to say, to their respective “houses” (verses 1,14). Their respective meals are quite different; the meat and wine of wisdom (verse 2) are contrasted with the bread and water of folly (verse 17). The former meal brings nourishment, whereas the latter is lethal (verse 18). (The contrast between the two women, Wisdom and Folly, in this chapter may be compared with the contrast between the two women, Babylon and Jerusalem, the Whore and the Bride, in the closing chapters of the Book of Revelation.)
If the young man thus admonished is a “scorner,” wisdom’s warning will go unheeded (verse 6), because wisdom is wasted on a fool (cf. Matthew 7:6). Once again, the beginning of wisdom is reverence (verse 10).
The “seven pillars” of the house of wisdom (verse 1) became the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy) of the medieval university. Seven, as the number of fullness, was important to the very concept of a university, or house of universal knowledge.
Saturday, March 4
Romans 10/1-21: Like chapter nine, the present chapter begins with an expression of Paul’s sorrow over the contemporary falling away of Israel. These present verses indicate that that defection was not inevitable. In His merciful providence, God dealt with it, but He in no way caused it. On the contrary, God made easy the path to faith (verse 9).
Israel’s defection was not caused by God; it was caused by Israel. Paul still prays for the salvation of the Jews, nonetheless (verse 1; cf. 9:1-3). As Paul knows from his own experience (Galatians 1:13-14; Philippians 3:9), they are zealous for God (verse 2). Their failure has not been in zeal, but in knowledge, epignosis, for they have been “ignorant of God’s righteousness” (verse 3). Thus, they resist the Gospel, as Paul himself had done.
“Christ is the end of the Law” (verse 4) in two senses. First, as the historical moment in which the Law lost its obligatory nature (Galatians 3:23; Ephesians 2:15; John 1:17). The new dispensation in Christ accomplishes what the Law could not. In this sense the era of the Law is over.
Second, “Christ is the end of the Law” in the sense of being its theological goal, its telos. The Law was given on Mount Sinai, only with a view to the coming of Christ, in whom it is fulfilled (3:31; 8:4; Matthew 5:17).
Whereas the Law is concerned with what man does, the Gospel is concerned with what God does. Faith is concerned, not with the Law, but with the Incarnation of God’s Son (“to bring Christ down”) and His Resurrection (“to bring Christ up from the dead”). These are the things that God does. Faith is concerned, then, not with what we can do for God, but with what God has done, and promises to do, for us. In the Incarnation and Resurrection of Christ (and, of course, everything in-between), God has reconciled the heights and the depths. Man is required only to believe and to confess what God has done in Christ (verse 9).
Proverbs 10: We now come to the central core of this book (Chapters 10-22), the 375 aphorisms gathered by Solomon (verse 1). In this respect, it is surely significant that 375 is exactly the numerical value of the Hebrew letters that make up the name “Solomon.”
This central core of Proverbs is divided into two parts, a division based on both literary style and philosophical outlook.
In the first section, Chapters 10 through 15, most of the aphorisms (10:19, for instance, is an exception to this rule) are structured on an antithetical couplet, in which there is a contrast between components in the first and second lines: just/wicked, prudent/foolish, wealth/poverty, accept/refuse, and so forth. In this first section the outlook of the aphorisms is not openly religious, as a rule, but simply “true to life.”
In the second section, Chapters 16 through 22, the couplets are synthetic and complementary, not antithetical, as a rule. In each couplet, rather, the second line completes or extends some component in the first line: the refinement of silver/the testing of souls, loving friend/constant brother, and so on. In this second section, likewise, the outlook or tone is “preachy,” or exhortatory, and more explicitly religious.
Within each section, smaller groups sometimes bind the aphorisms together by either theme or by some rhetorical device. These latter include, for instance, simple expressions common to each maxim, even though the maxims themselves deal with different subjects. An example is 10:16-17.
Considerable stress is laid throughout on the control of the tongue (for instance, verses 19-21,31-32), in terms that will remind us of James 1:9 and 3:2-12.
All through this central core we observe that wisdom is identified with righteousness, suggesting that Solomon would have no trouble with Socrates’ identification of knowledge with virtue. The knowledge itself is moral, the wisdom derived from acting wisely. Folly, likewise, is not a lack of IQ, but a moral failing.
Sunday, March 5
Romans 11.1-10: In Paul’s entire treatment of election and predestination, these terms refer to social entities, not individuals. Nowhere in Romans, or elsewhere, does Paul show any concern for individual predestination. It is simply outside his scope of interest, and none of his statements on the subject of predestination and election have any relevance to such a concern. For Holy Scripture, it is always a matter of the “chosen people,” not a collection of chosen individuals.
Election and predestination in Paul, therefore, are matters of ecclesiology, not individual salvation. Thus, here in chapter eleven he treats the Jews as God’s chosen people, because “the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.” The context is entirely social and historical, not individual.
Consequently, it would be a mammoth distortion of the text to apply these verses to the spiritual lives of individuals, pretending that God, having called them to justification, is somehow obliged to save them, even if they turn their backs on Him. God is said to remain faithful to Israel, but this does not imply that all Jews will be saved. God remains faithful to the Church, but that does not ensure that all Christians will be saved. In short, these texts are not about individual salvation.
Proverbs 11: In the midst of this practical, somewhat ‘secular’ wisdom, we do find some maxims of a religious nature (verse 20; cf. also 10:3,22; 12:2; 15:3,8,33; 16:1-7,9). Because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, even secular prudence in the Bible has a religious basis (verse 1). Biblical practicality, however, is not the same thing as modern pragmatism, which is intrinsically skeptical and essentially selfish. Skepticism and selfishness are really not very practical.
The wisdom of the Book of Proverbs comes from outside this world, but it is not other-worldly. It is this-worldly, in the sense that God formed the structures in this world, according to which man must live. The divine law is written into the composition of this world, so that those who live in accordance with the divine law are the ones who are most in touch with the reality of this world itself. Since the whole world is founded on the wisdom of God, those who live in accord with this wisdom will be the world’s most practical people.
Among the themes touched on in this chapter are commercial honesty (verse 1; cf. 16:11; 20:10; Leviticus 19:35-36; Deuteronomy 25:13-16; Amos 8:5-6; 12:8; Micah 6:10-11), the dangers of pride (verse 2), integrity as a guide (verse 3), the salvific fruit of righteousness (verses 4-9,18-19), control of the tongue (verses 12-13), the importance of a breadth of views (verse 14), and the value of a generous spirit (verses 24-26).
Monday, March 6
Matthew 18.1-9: Here begin the sayings that form the fourth great dominical discourse in Matthew; this one is devoted to what may be called “rules for the congregation.” It begins by the memorable scene in which Jesus holds up the faith of children as a model for adults. Far from refusing children access to Jesus until they arrive at the explicit and doctrinal faith of adults, Jesus admonishes adults to model their own faith on the more elementary faith of the child. Because children are the most in danger of being scandalized, this topic of children leads naturally into the subject of scandal, and in this connection come the Lord’s statements about millstones and self-mutilation. The latter are certainly to be understood by way of hyperbole.
Proverbs 12: The chapter continues the series of couplets containing contrasts: love/hate (verse 1), good/wicked (verse 2), wickedness/righteousness (verse 3), virtuous wife/shameful wife (verse 4), and so on.
Such sustained emphasis on contrasts and distinctions should put to rest the recent idea that biblical teaching is non-analytical and non-critical. For several generations some of those who dislike classical philosophy have pretended that “Semitic thinking” is unlike “Greek thinking” in this respect. They have told us that the Greeks applied critical distinctions to dissect ideas and look at them in an objective, detached way that separated the knower from the known. On the other hand, the Semites (so the story goes) took a unitive approach to knowledge, in which the knower became identified with what was known.
This version of the matter, however, involves an oversimplification that does justice to neither the Semites nor the Greeks. While it is true that the common Semitic verb for knowing, yada‘, implies union rather than division (as in “Adam knew his wife”), another common Semitic verb for knowing, bin, means knowledge of a discursive, critical sort. Both aspects of knowledge, that is to say, are contained in Semitic epistemology. Similarly, with respect to the Greeks, the application of critical, objective distinctions, of the sort characteristic of dialectics, should not be taken as the goal of classical Greek philosophy. Dialectics is a means, rather, of arriving at metaphysical contemplation, gnosis (the Sanskrit jnana), in which the knower and the known are united.
In short, the differences between Greek and Semitic approaches to knowledge cannot be reduced to the elementary distinction between analytical and contemplative knowledge. Nor can either approach be reduced to a single, simple description.
Tuesday, March 7
Romans 11.22-36: It has long been common to distinguish between God’s mercy and His justice, the former being the source of salvation, the latter the basis for punishment. This distinction, however, is overly simple, and consequently misleading.
In Holy Scripture the justice of God, His righteousness—dikaiosyne—is also the fount of salvation. It is not that Christ, by His passion and death, reconciled us to God’s justice. God’s justice, His righteousness, is the very cause of our redemption. He redeemed us in His righteousness. He redeemed us, furthermore, in order to manifest His righteousness by showing mercy.
The righteousness of God is not an abstract quality in God that obliges man to measure up. The righteousness of God is, rather, that activity of God that causes man to measure up. In dying on the cross, Jesus did not address Himself to God’s righteousness. On the contrary, He Himself expressed God’s righteousness. He was the expression, the very embodiment, of God’s righteousness.
Nonetheless, that popular distinction between God’s mercy and His justice, even though inadequate and misleading, seems to be an attempt to express a real difference, and that difference appears to be what Paul has in mind by distinguishing between God’s kindness and His severity (verse 22).
The continuance of God’s kindness, though unmerited and freely bestowed, does depend on human perseverance. “Otherwise you also will be cut off,” writes St. Paul. This apostle knows nothing about a level of grace that precludes the possibility of the believer’s defection. Even as he holds the winning hand, foolish man may still choose to discard. God’s grace never removes the freedom of man’s choice.
But just as it is possible for a believer to fall, it is also possible for an unbeliever to rise. The defection of the Jews, therefore, is not necessarily final (verse 23). Their return to the ancient tree would seem especially fitting (verse 24). Indeed, this is what God has in mind (verse 25). It is the “mystery” (mysterion) of His plan for the Jews, when history has run the proper measure of its course.
The “all Israel” that will be saved appears to refer to the fullness of the Church, drawn from both Jews and Gentiles. This return to the Gospel, Paul believed, was prophesied by Isaiah (verses 26-27).
Proverbs 13: Wisdom is not something that a young man can discover on his own. He either has the good sense to receive it as an inheritance or he will simply never have it. He must, therefore, listen and pay attention. It will be difficult, however, to listen and pay attention if he is forever running his mouth (verse 3). Custody of one’s tongue, then, is absolutely required for the attaining of wisdom.
This habit of guarding one’s tongue, in order the better to hear and learn instruction, can become a life-long habit, a distinguishing characteristic of the wise man even when he grows older. We see this phenomenon in a special way in the traditions of ancient Egypt, where the “silent just man” became a moral ideal of Egyptian culture, exemplified in The Instructions of Ani in the second millennium before Christ all the way to the ascetical literature of the Christian monks of the Egyptian desert. The “silent just man” maintained strict control over his tongue, and in order to maintain control over his tongue he was obliged to keep guard also over his emotions. His speech, when he did speak, would bear wise counsel and insight. Such a man could be trusted. To him could be given responsibilities over serious matters, even the destiny of nations.
It was proverbial in antiquity, and not only in Egypt, that no man could safely govern anything outside of himself until he had learned to govern his own soul (16:32). And a man began to learn this discipline in his youth, by not opening his mouth except to ask questions and to seek instruction.
Wednesday, March 8
Matthew 18.21-35: The case proposed here concerns sins that are not general knowledge, sins not commonly known. If a sin is blatant, open, and public, there is no need for this graduated approach indicated in the Sacred Text. Public sins, by their nature, come directly to the attention of the whole Church (cf. 1 Corinthians 5:1-5; Philippians 4:2). The reprimand of public sins may be just as public as the sin itself.
This is not the case here in Matthew, where clearly the sin that the brother has committed is not public knowledge. In such a case, what is the believer’s charitable obligation toward the erring brother? He is commanded to “reprove” (elegxson).
This would probably not be just any kind of sin. The context suggests, rather, the sort of sin that might affect the life of the congregation itself. That is to say, a serious sin, of the sort that, were it known, might prove harmful and scandalous to the Church. This kind of sin cannot be overlooked.
If in this case the sinning brother accepts the reproof—if he hears the one that corrects him—then the sin goes no further. It is not to be shared with others. The people of God have no “right to know.” If a sin can be dealt with privately, it is supposed to be dealt with privately, and it would be sinful to share such information with others.
Proverbs 14: Wisdom is the foundation of homes and households (verse 1). This is the inherited wisdom of the ages, conservatively handed down in the tradition of “families and villages” (to borrow Aristotle’s coupling).
Since the experience of family necessarily involves the transmission of identity, the tradition or inherited wisdom is not peripheral to family life. Unassailable tradition, based on perceived absolutes, is not something with which a family can dispense. It is of the essence, and it is this sense of tradition’s essential character that injects a note of urgency into the rhetoric of the Book of Proverbs. The exhortations in Proverbs are matters of life or death. Hence, this sense of urgency goes far to account for the toughness of discipline inculcated throughout the book.
Consequently, moral indifference or relativism, based on skepticism and an overly critical spirit, spell the death of wisdom and therefore the death of family life (verse 11). Nowhere does the Bible tolerate the relativism and despair (including a sympathy for suicide) that characterized some primitive writings of Mesopotamia, such as the ancient Dialogue of Pessimism. The latter work, written over three thousand years ago, reads today like a work of recent Existentialism. If such attitudes were characteristic of the philosophy of Mesopotamia, it is no wonder that Proverbs 15 Abraham insisted that Isaac should not go back there (Genesis 24:5-6).
The Book of Proverbs, in mighty contrast, represents the voice of moral and metaphysical absolutes, a wisdom based on the sense of the scrutiny and presence of God (verses 2,26-27; cf. 13:14; 15:39,11,29).
Thursday, March 9
Psalms 20 (Greek & Latin 19): It is to the redemption wrought by Christ our Savior that we refer when we say to Him: “We shall exult in Your salvation, and in the name of our God shall we be exalted.” The Church exults in His salvation whenever she gathers to worship in His name. And thus does she exult: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain / To receive power and riches and wisdom, / And strength and honor and glory and blessing” (Rev. 5:12).
In the name of our God, moreover, is the Church herself exalted. And thus is she exalted: “You . . . have redeemed us to God by Your blood / Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, / And have made us kings and priests to our God; / And we shall reign on the earth” (Rev. 5:9, 10).
In contrast to the worship of the Church, who trusts thus in the blood of the Lamb, there are those who place their confidence elsewhere: “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses.” This horse-trusting appears likewise in the prophets (e. g., Is. 31:1; 36:9) as a metaphor for man’s placing his assurance in such human forces as military might.
These “horses,” in which men put their trust, represent the designs of the worldly and powerful, but they are profoundly vain. Holy Scripture will finally describe these horses as white and carrying a conqueror, as red and bearing a warrior, as black and transporting famine, as pale and ridden by Death. These horses and their riders represent the forces of the world in its opposition to God, and “power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth” (Rev. 6:1–8). That is to say, these horses, in which men put their trust, will return to exact their toll on human happiness and human history.
Proverbs 15: This chapter contains several references to the acceptance of correction (verses 5,10,12,31,32). Among a young man’s worst enemies is his innate resistance to correction, a resistance spawned of rebellion and an independent spirit. Giving in to such a spirit generally produces three results, all of them bad: First, it strengthens a man’s spirit of rebellion. (A rebel’s spirit is useful in the face of oppression; otherwise, it is a counterproductive trait in a man. A sustained spirit of rebellion, a spiritual chip on the shoulder, renders a man useless for any purpose.) This leads to hardness of heart and self-absorption.
Second, refusal to accept correction deprives a man of instruction about some point on which at least one other person thinks he needs instruction. Third, it discourages that same person from making some attempt at correction and instruction in the future. Thus, many valuable lessons will be lost if the young man does not early recognize and deal with these inner impulses of rebellion. Following such impulses is not the path to wisdom.
A Christian reading of this theme in Proverbs should see more in the Sacred Text, not less, than a merely Jewish reading of it. Even the simplest, plainest reading of Proverbs, based on the most literal sense of the Text, shows the importance of being open to correction. The Christian reader, however, reading the Scriptures through the lens of Christ, will recognize God the Father as the True Parent who speaks in these lines.
Thus, the submission that all children owe to the discipline of their parents becomes the symbol of a greater docility that God’s children owe to their heavenly Father. That is to say, the Christian reader should see more in the meaning of Proverbs in this regard: “Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them reverence. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live?” (Hebrews 12:9)
Friday, March 10
Romans 13.1-7: One is impressed by Paul’s attitude of respect, deference, and obedience toward the civil authority, not simply because that authority carries the power to exact such an attitude, but also because such an attitude is required by conscience (verse 5). To respect and obey the State, in Paul’s view, is demanded by God’s own ordinance, because ultimately the State hold its authority from God. (Contrast this view with that of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson.) The State is “God’s minister” (verse 4).
Generally speaking, then, and proper exception being made for laws that violate the moral order, the dictates and decisions of government are binding in conscience. They are not simply penal laws. That is to say, in those instances where the State does not contravene God’s own law, the State speaks for God and is a valid channel for the discovery of God’s will.
Lest we be too quick to imagine that Paul is thinking of the State in very idealistic terms, we may bear in mind that the emperor at that time was Nero, and the “State” of Paul’s reference was the Roman Empire. Imperial authority had earlier expelled the Jews, including Christians, from Rome only a decade before, and about four years after writing this epistle Paul himself would be executed by this same authority. Three years later, moreover, the full weight of the imperial government would come down hard on the Christians at Rome in a fearful persecution. In other words, Paul’s attitude toward Rome was not one of convenience, but of principle.
Paul’s affirmations here bear witness to an important feature of Christian anthropology. They testify that man’s relationship to God is not limited to the specifically religious and cultic sphere. Man is also related to God in the political, social, cultural, and economic spheres of his existence in this world. Man’s relationship to God, in other words, is inseparable from his relationship to everything else.
Proverbs 16: Proverbs deals with more than human effort. This book shares, rather, the conviction of the Bible’s historians and prophets (including the author of Job) that God reigns over human history and has plans of His own with respect to human destiny (verses 1-4,9,25,33). Man is not in charge of history. The “big picture” is not man’s responsibility. Consequently, God does not generally let him see the big picture. God’s governance of history is unfathomable. (Even those prophets to whom the Lord gives a panoramic view of history are often unable to see even one step ahead in matters of their own lives. Jeremiah is an example.)
This is not to say, of course, that human choices count for nothing in the course of events. It means only that man should restrict his concerns to those aspects of life that he can actually do something about, and these are determined largely by the circumstances in which Divine Providence places him. Each man must do his duty, as determined by those responsibilities, leaving to God the outcome of events. Man must be content to do right “as God gives us to see the right” (Abraham Lincoln).
At the same time, God’s loyal and obedient servant takes strength from the remembrance that God holds governance over the whole historical process. Even as men struggle to remain faithful, while not seeing the larger picture of which their own efforts are but a part, faith in a ruling God offers the proper basis for a sane, holy, and rational hope. This truth has special pertinence for those charged with the rule of nations (verses 10,12-15).