Ep.36: Key Principles From the Book of Proverbs

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, this is Andrew Marcus from THE INDOUBT SHOW. We got a fantastic show for us today. We have Ivan De Silva, a good friend of mine in studio today. We’re going to be walking through the Book of Proverbs. He’s written a commentary with Bruce Waltke on Proverbs, and so we’re going to walk through themes and how relevant this book is. Written so long ago, but so relevant for culture today in 2023. So, we hope you enjoy today’s episode.

Amazing guest, amazing topic. We’re going through Proverbs Wisdom Literature, and we have one of my dear, dear friends in-house with us today. I can list off all the things. Okay. Teacher at Trinity. Teacher at Pacific Life Bible College, does a bunch of tours in Israel, which they’re doing one in May, retired VPD, Bible teacher, theologian, wrote a commentary. I can go on forever and ever. Ivan de Silva in the house. Ivan, how are you today?

Ivan De Silva:

I’m very well, Andrew. Thank you so much for having me. I’m looking forward to the discussion.

Andrew Marcus:

This is awesome, man.

Ivan De Silva:

Yeah, it’s been a while. Hey.

Andrew Marcus:

I haven’t seen you in a long time.

Ivan De Silva:

I know I missed you.

Andrew Marcus:

But you still look exactly the same.

Ivan De Silva:

Yeah, I don’t feel.

Andrew Marcus:

You haven’t aged. Haven’t aged a day. I know. I don’t feel it either. My back doesn’t feel it. But how are you doing? You’re doing good?

Ivan De Silva:

Yes.

Andrew Marcus:

Life’s good?

Ivan De Silva:

Yes, doing well. As you mentioned, I’ve retired from the VPD after 28 years. Just been over a year. Surprising, I thought I’d have a little bit more downtime, but…

Andrew Marcus:

You’re busier.

Ivan De Silva:

None at all. Yeah, just as busier. So, not making as much money, but…

Andrew Marcus:

But still busy.

Ivan De Silva:

But loving it. Yeah.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah. Okay. Awesome, man. Did you say 28 years or 20?

Ivan De Silva:

28.

Andrew Marcus:

28 years.

Ivan De Silva:

28 years with the VPD.

Andrew Marcus:

Amazing.

Ivan De Silva:

Yeah, it was a dream job, and I loved every minute of it, but towards the last couple of years, I began to feel that it was time to change and I didn’t retire because I had to, but I realized I could have gone a few more years, but I felt that it was time to change and do something else, and that my usefulness as a police officer. I was a detective for the last 18 or so years.

Andrew Marcus:

That is so cool, man.

Ivan De Silva:

Was coming to an end, and so, the Lord put it on my heart to do more teaching and writing and research.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, but you were doing a lot of that stuff as you were working. You’re writing a commentary while you’re working 10-hour shifts, while you’re teaching. Tell us a little bit about that journey. So, you wrote a commentary with Bruce Waltke on Proverbs. As you did a deep dive doing research, did you find anything in the Book of Proverbs that surprised you?

Ivan De Silva:

Quite a bit, actually. Prior to this, I had taught the Old Testament as a survey for many years, but not the Book of Proverbs in depth. So, we would do a quick overview of the Book of Proverbs and then move on. So, writing this gave me the opportunity to dig deep, and boy did I ever discover that the Book of Proverbs was not like I thought it was. So, I discovered first of all, that the Book of Proverbs is a book in the Bible that is primarily written for young people. That is a target audience. That was a surprise to me.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, Michelle. Because my wife just finished the Book of Proverbs through her devotions, and she was like, “Hey, did you realize that this is literally written for young people?”

Ivan De Silva:

Exactly.

Andrew Marcus:

And that’s what prompted me to reach out like, “Hey, if there’s a book in the Bible specifically written for young people, we probably should, as young people.” I still consider myself kind of young, but let’s…

Ivan De Silva:

Well, you are.

Andrew Marcus:

Thank you. Thank you, folks. You heard it here, folks. No, but let’s dive in if it’s written for. Yeah, I was surprised when I heard that a couple months ago.

Ivan De Silva:

Oh, so here, you have a book that is a whole book that’s written for, well, what it is it’s a parental manual. Solomon wrote most of this book and put it in the hands of every parent in Israel to teach to their children. So, right from a very young age, the children in the home would’ve been trained in this wisdom. And as the child grows, the book has two locations. There are two areas, two social locations that the book is addressing. One is the home, where the child is still with the parents, and so for the parents to impart wisdom to the children. The other location is those children that have left the home without choosing to embrace wisdom. They have kind of said, we are not sure about this, thank you mom and dad for all you’ve done for us, but we’ve got to go check this out on our own, and they have now left the home and they’re out in public.

And the Book of Proverbs sees that person as a type of a fool for leaving the home and denying their parents’ instruction and wisdom and in a very dangerous situation. Because to head out into the world, away from the parental home, without accepting and internalizing wisdom makes you a target to every danger that is out there. The Book of Proverbs will say, “You have no chance.” You have no chance if you go out without the armament of wisdom. And so, wisdom reaches out to them one last time. While they’re in the marketplace, wisdom Christ out to them, hey, those types of kids, they’re called the uncommitted, which is Hebrew. The way we translate, Bruce and I translate the Hebrew word, or the petite, which is the simple. Sometimes, it’s translated in English as the simple or naive ones. That person, the simple or the naive one is the one who has left the home without committing themselves to following the way of wisdom.

And so, in that location, outside, it’s not the parent reaching out to them anymore. The parents’ authority’s in the home. It is this figure called woman wisdom. She is the one that goes out and calls out to them. Now, this woman. Who is this woman, woman wisdom? Well, that’s a big discussion in the literature, in the scholarship, and also in our book. And we finally conclude that woman wisdom is actually the Book of Proverbs. It’s a personification of the Book of Proverbs. So, one last time, wisdom is offering the chance for these young people to come and embrace the way of wisdom. So, she has two primary addresses in the Book of Proverbs, one at the end of chapter one and the other in chapter eight. And sadly, in her address, her call in Chapter 1:20-33 is rejected. They turn their back on her.

And so, she tells them, “This is your last opportunity, and if you don’t reach out and embrace me, when trouble hits you and then you cry to me, it’ll be too late. There is no second chance here.” So, that’s it. So, that was one surprising thing that here is a book that is written primarily for the young person to equip them to face the world as they go out into life. The parental home is quite protected, right? Your parents protect you, your parents keep the danger away from you, but once you get out there, that’s it. And so, the Book of Proverbs is doing all it can to prepare the young person for life outside the home when they step out there. And yet, I’ve been a parent and I’ve been to many parental conferences and courses and all of that, but the Book of Proverbs were never mentioned. It was never seen for what it is. And I think we are the worst for it.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s fascinating. That’s fascinating. And even if you look at culture today, people have just run from wisdom. Young people are leaving the home and there’s just same thing that’s happening.

Ivan De Silva:

Oh, yeah. The Book of Wisdom realizes there are two atypical dangers that the young person is going to face, and it’s primarily the males because in that culture, it was the males that left the home to start the new family. The daughters stayed until somebody came and married them and took them out. So, it is primarily targeting the young male. The two archetypal dangers that are lurking out there are the danger of easy sex and easy money. And it is those two dangers that the Book of Proverbs is seeking to arm the young person against before they step out. It’s like, who would take a young man and put them out in the middle of a battlefield without training them how to use a weapon, how to detect a mine, how to recognize the enemy? You just throw them in there and say, “Here, go for it. And you are in a war now.”

It’d be impossible. You have to go through a whole rigorous training program, where they teach you. And that’s really analogous to what’s happening in the Book of Proverbs. It’s preparing them for those dangers out there. So, that was one surprising thing.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah. You mentioned that there are a few topics that come up frequently throughout Proverbs, and I find it fascinating because it’s geared towards young people, maybe towards more young males since they’re the ones who are leaving the homes before the women are because they’re waiting to get married. But specifically, you said easy sex, easy money. And again, I just love the reality that when people try to say, “Oh, the Bible’s irrelevant or it’s old.” Well, you look at 2023, easy sex, easy money, still a big problem with young people. And so, what are some of the things, maybe we can hit both of those topics and just kind of give us a synopsis of what some of the main things that we need to know as young people. So, easy sex. What does the Book of Proverbs say about that specifically?

Ivan De Silva:

Yes. Well, it says there’s no such thing as easy sex. And you can understand why this would be a major topic because here’s the young person, young male, going out into society, and his hormones are just raging at this moment, at this point in his life. And if he is not married, or even if he is married, there is a lot of temptation out there. And Proverbs personifies that temptation in the terms of an adulterous. And so, you get these warnings in the Book of Proverbs about how to avoid the temptation of the adulterers. Now, the adulterers, I think we can extend that to any sexual temptation that comes towards us, whether it’s in the form of an actual person, whether the person is married or single, the girl is married or single or pornography or all of these things. But it talks about the danger realistically. And the way the Book of Proverbs is arranged, it’s arranged into seven sections.

The 31 chapters fall nicely into seven sections. The first section is the first nine chapters, and it consists of 10 lectures by the father to the son, sometimes with the mother as well, these 10 lectures. And what is significant is the last three lectures that the father gives to the son, the final last three in chapter five, all of chapter five, chapter 6:20-35, I think, and all of chapter seven. And after that, the father moves off the stage until we get into the actual proverbs, are all to do with the danger of sexual immorality facing the young person. And so, what the proverb says is do not do that, and it’s very realistic. It talks about the power of the temptation that it is real.

She’s going to come, approach you. Her words are going to be dripping with honey. In chapter seven, she’s going to look amazing. She’s going to be dolled up. She’s going to tempt you. Chapter seven is just brilliant. The way the father recreates a situation for the son. She’s going to come and tell you, “Look, I’m the perfect girl for you right now. I’ve got the perfect pad to have sex with. This is the perfect time to have sex.” Everything like that. My bed is laid out with linens and I have perfume and it’s a boudoir. And then she promises him mind-blowing sex. We will do everything you ever wanted to do. But then, there’s the little hint in there where she says, “And my husband’s away. He’s gone on a trip and he won’t be back for a couple of weeks, so we can just enjoy ourselves in this romp.”

But the father says, the person who goes in there is like the deer that steps into the trap, like the ox that is going down to the slaughter. You think you’re going to heaven, but you end up in hell. So, it will ruin you. The ruination that the Book of Proverbs foresees for the young man who goes down that path is very interesting because what the father is concerned about, and also what woman wisdom is concerned about is the young person is. If they’re not careful in handling their sexual drive. They can right before they even get started in life, ruin themselves.

You’ll get shut down before you even start. These are the dangers that are out there. They can get you before you even have a chance, and you’ll make some decision, you’ll do something, and that’ll be the end. We’ve seen that over and over again. So, the father warns against the practical dangers. For example, in that culture, if you end up in a adultery with this person and the husband finds out, let’s say, there were two penalties that the husband could demand. He could go to the eldest of the city, accuse you of violating his home, and ask for the death penalty. Or if he really wanted to torture you, he could ask for all of your treasure, your possessions, be transferred to him in order to make up for what you have done to his home. And the elders would have no choice but to grant that. And then after he has taken everything that you own, he can then demand your body to work for him, and he will work you like a slave until you are absolutely done in life.

And so, all of the treasure that the family has accumulated over the years, and it is intended to be passed on through the generations to help, could be lost in one night.

Andrew Marcus:

Lose everything.

Ivan De Silva:

Exactly. So, that’s one thing. That’s one danger, and you will lose your reputation. Chapter five has a very interesting analogy, where the father wants the son and says, actually it’s in chapter six. “A person who steals because they’re starving, the community will still punish that person, but will recognize that the person did it for survival. But the person who commits adultery, they don’t treat that person the same way. That person will have shame for the rest of his life.” He’ll be in shame. The community will not forgive that because it doesn’t see sexual indulgence on the same level as starvation. So, even though our popular wisdom today says, “Sex is an absurdly essential for life,” the Bible doesn’t see it that way. You can live a good life absolutely.

So that’s one danger. The other danger, of course, is at the end of chapter five, the father wants all your ways are before the Lord. And so, the Lord is watching, and the Lord will get you if you do this. So, what is the antidote? So, chapter five lays out the antidote, and that is to have an amazing sex life with your wife, to be satisfied at her breast, to be quenched at her well. Here, the water imagery in chapter five. Do you want me to just read that out the passage out quickly?

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, sure.

Ivan De Silva:

Proverbs chapter 5:15. Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. Water here is an imagery for sexual satisfaction, and the cistern and the well is imagery for the wife. The wife has the source of sexual satisfaction.

Andrew Marcus:

Huge. Okay, so that’s a big topic. So, also we see a lot of people struggling financially. So, there’s a lot of the easy… So, you said the easy sex, easy money are two big topics. And I see in 2023 with young people, same problems that we’re wrestling with. Inflation is crazy. People are in debt. People can’t afford anything. So, what is the Bible? I know the Bible in Proverbs specifically talks about debt, and it talks about finances a lot in Proverbs. Could you give us a summary of that as well, because I think that’d be very helpful.

Ivan De Silva:

As I said, the other great danger is easy money. And there are two ways to make money, illegally and legally. And the problem with legal money, making money legally is you don’t make a lot of it and it takes a very long time to make it. The attraction of illegal money is you get it quickly and you can get a lot of it. And so, what is interesting is the first lecture after the introduction, the first seven verses, the first lesson of the father and the mother to their son is the danger of making easy money by joining a criminal gang. Talk about contemporary, there were criminal gangs in Solomon’s time. And so, they want to warn their son not to join one of these groups that comes to them and says, “Hey, come and join with us and let us lie and wait for some innocent soul, and we’ll ambush them and we’ll fill our houses with all good things. We will get what they have. We will kill the person and take their goods.”

So, the parents are saying, “That’s not the way to make money. Don’t make money that way.” Some practical advice that it gives on how to make money is, first of all, you can’t be a slugged. You have to be a diligent person.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah. It talks about laziness a lot, too.

Ivan De Silva:

Oh, a lot. Yeah. The slugged is a huge character. It’s a type of fool. And so, that’s be hardworking, manage your resources while it has a lot to say about that, and be generous. This is huge that no matter how much you are making, the purpose of money in our life is money is a tool that God gives you by which you fulfill his mission. It’s never your money. And even though I sometimes mistake and say, “Yeah, my money. I make this much or that much.” It’s really not. It is God’s money that he has given me to manage on his behalf. And so, he gives me this money every month, and then my duty is to ask him, “Okay, Lord, what do you want? Wow, this money showed up. What do I do with it now?” And then, he says, “Well, you pay this and pay that and that.” And then I say to him, “You know what? I need a TV. My TV’s nine.” He said, “How much do you want?”

“500 bucks?” And he says, “No, take a thousand and go buy yourself a TV.” So, that’s the way God is.

Andrew Marcus:

It’s important to have that perspective.

Ivan De Silva:

I think so, yeah.

Andrew Marcus:

I feel like when my wife and I had that perspective, everything shifted for us, as well. When we were in debt a few years ago, we want to get out of debt. So, we went beast mode to try to remove debt. And we had a shift where it’s like, and we’d pray every night. I’d pray every night with my little boy, “Lord, thank you that we got to borrow your dishwasher today. We got to live in your house today. I got to borrow your car today. I could drive it to work. You gave us the money we need.” So, everything we have is not ours. We just have to be good stewards. And I think when we had that understanding of this is not our money, this is God’s money that he’s giving us, and we can be good stewards of it, it kind of shifted the perspective for us.

Ivan De Silva:

Huge. It’s a huge perspective shift, and it’s a good perspective shift. It’s the right one.

Andrew Marcus:

I feel like there’s the way of wisdom, the way of the fool. I see, it takes a lot of humility from young people to say, “Okay, fine. I don’t have it right. I don’t have, I need wisdom. I’m not going to just leave my family’s home and jump into the battlefield with no armor, no protection, no nothing.” How would you coach a young person, who’s maybe watching this, who is maybe on the path of the fool right now and need to humble themselves and stick to the word?

Ivan De Silva:

Well, if you start by defining what humility is, in the Book of Proverbs, humility, the number one characteristic of humility is teachableness, that you realize that you need to be taught. But here, we run into a circle, a circular problem, and that is the Book of Proverbs is clear that you need humility to attain wisdom, but wisdom is what makes you humble. So, you’re in a circle here. So, how do you break that circle? In order to be wise, I need to be humble, but it’s the wise… One of the things that woman wisdom does is it makes you humble. So, how do I break into the circle? Well, you really can’t. It is God who breaks into that circle and gives you wisdom, which then makes you humble. So, humility is a fruit of wisdom.

However, on the human level, we have to appeal to all of these young people. Listen, you need to cry out for wisdom. You need to humble yourself and come. And one of the main requirements to being humble, of course, is the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom in chapter nine, the beginning of knowledge in chapter one. So, what is this fear of the Lord that is so critical? Well, there are many ways you can define it. It’s a lot of things. It’s a very complicated term, but in a nutshell, it is the willingness to totally submit to God’s revealed will, the willingness to completely submit to God’s will. And so, if you ask the young person to do that, we can’t ask them to be more humble. How do you do that? So no, you seek after, you submit yourself to God.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, that’s the… Yeah.

Ivan De Silva:

And that’s what gives you that attitude.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah. So, for young people who are watching, you’re not going to say, “Okay, I’m going to be humble.” No, no. Submit your life to God, His revealed will, come under his lordship, his authority, and that produces…

Ivan De Silva:

That produces humility. That gives you wisdom, who then enables you to see your lack of knowledge and your need to submit to teachers and mentors to become wise.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah. That’s really good. Michelle just finished Proverbs through her devotions and she’s like, “Man, this is incredible.”

Ivan De Silva:

Right.

Andrew Marcus:

A lot of people skip through it.

Ivan De Silva:

Part of the reason I think, is because they find it a very perplexing book because…

Andrew Marcus:

And sporadic, remember you were talking how it’s kind of like it seems random.

Ivan De Silva:

Now, what is interesting is the first nine chapters, they are pretty easy because they are self-contained lectures. You have these lectures up to chapter nine, but then when you hear chapter 10, where you actually get into the Proverbs. Chapters one to nine is not really Proverbs. They’re kind of sayings. They’re longer sayings. And then you go from chapter 10 to the next section, which is chapter 22:17, you just get these proverbs that appear to be all over the place. One is talking about money, the next one is talking about speech, the next one is talking about wickedness, and it seems all over the place. Well, one of the things that Bruce’s original commentary broke new ground was he was able to find clusters that actually what seems so random is actually a range at a deeper level in terms of smaller units.

They’re difficult to see in the English translation usually. So, his commentary breaks it down into these clusters, and so does our commentary here. The shorter commentary is broken down into clusters. But I sometimes think the reason for that seeming randomness is because that is the way our day is, our life is. So, in the morning, you start off. You get up in the morning and you’re already late for work because you missed the alarm or something like that. All right. So, for that, you need a Proverb on being this or that. But then you wake up and now you’re tired, or you’re late or whatever, and you have an argument with your wife. So now, you switched from the fact that you’re being late. Now, you need about speech maybe, why speech? And then you’re driving and…

Andrew Marcus:

Driving recklessly. You’re speeding.

Ivan De Silva:

You get… You’re speeding. So, then you need a proverb on following the authorities or something like that because that’s the way our days are, like those proverbs.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah. That’s interesting. Yeah.

Ivan De Silva:

And so, there’s a problem probably for almost every situation that we face in a day. Our day doesn’t have one theme.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, that’s good.

Ivan De Silva:

The whole day is not taken up with dealing with your kid.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s a good word. That’s very interesting. And I know a lot of people, and I admire them for this. They read, because it’s 31 proverbs, so they’ll read one proverb a day just to make sure they’re always…

Ivan De Silva:

A chapter a day. Yeah.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, a chapter a day, just so they’re always immersed in this wisdom literature. And I think it’s just important to be in this book. This book is written for young people to help them in the world and how desperate do we need this in today’s world.

Ivan De Silva:

And don’t worry about not memorizing it. As this lady said, her mind is like a sieve, but each time the water goes through, it cleans it.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah. Oh, yeah. That’s good. That’s a good word. That’s a good word. Yeah. So, don’t beat yourself up for not memorizing it, but just let it cleanse you and give you wisdom and insight and knowledge and all that. So, I love it. So good, man. Well, Ivan, thank you so much for joining us today.

Ivan De Silva:

You’re welcome. It was a blessing for me. Thank you.

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, thanks so much for joining us today. For more great content, check out THE INDOUBT SHOW on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you stream your podcast. We hope you enjoyed it today. Feel free to check out Indoubt.ca. We have some great resources available to you. Have an awesome day.