NOTES for Pro 3:1-35

Today we read that the Lord gave the human being the right to give names to every living creature. And about the first prohibition, concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. About how the Lord warned that if one ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, one would die. And how He watched as the human being gave names to the animals and birds.

When the human being was in his Father's house, and He showed him the world, spoke with him, and rejoiced in his achievements. And although today we do not read about the breaking of the first law, not to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, we know that this was how the fall took place. And having become proud, the human being began his rule on earth by the sweat of his brow.

And in the words of the prophet Isaiah we know that on the day of the Second Coming God will restore in us the memory of who created everything we manage. He will restore it through our fear. He will take away our strength and abilities, and once again we will become speechless. And our works will condemn us.

In the Proverbs of Solomon we read a remembrance and an indication that fulfilling the Lord's commandments is the fulfillment of the Father's will by His children. When the Lord entrusts something to us, we, as His children, carry out these requests and assignments. We need wisdom and understanding, humility, and the will to be with Him. Now we have to accomplish much labor in order to meet Him again. Almost impossible labor, were it not for His desire to meet us. Not only by His will, but by our love for Him.

It is not surprising that a person's relationship with God also presupposes God's instruction toward that person; the corresponding Hebrew word means, first of all, not "punishment," but precisely "instruction" or "correction." What are God's instructions like? And do they presuppose punishment in the sense in which we use this word today, and not in that archaic meaning assumed by the Synodal translation? Much here depends on how one understands instruction and punishment, and on where one sees the goal and meaning of each.

In the fallen world, instruction is often reduced to a kind of gentle training: a person is instructed in order to instill in him the corresponding rules of behavior, namely those advantageous and convenient for society. Often no one thinks about the person himself. Usually it is either presumed that the rules of behavior worked out by society are certainly good for everyone, or for those called "normal people" - in practice, this actually means precisely those people for whom the rules worked out by society are acceptable - or it is taken for granted that society and its interests are more important than the interests of an individual person, and more important than that person himself. And for those who, for some reason, do not want to accept this order of things, punishments are provided, whose goal is either harsher training where gentle training does not work, or revenge on the one who dares violate the rules of the game established for everyone. Of course, no one gives a thought to the person, to his spiritual life, or to his spiritual condition: such things are considered each person's private business, which concerns no one except the person himself and interests no one.

For God, however, the most important thing is precisely the person's spiritual condition, for which He cares above all. His main goal is to change a person inwardly in such a way that he becomes capable of full communion with God. Of course, in doing this He often has to rebuke a person, pointing out to him in various ways those sins, or simply those features of character and way of life, that can become an obstacle on the spiritual path. But God does not need trained beasts, even highly intelligent ones. Nor does He intend to take revenge on anyone.

Therefore punishments in the earthly sense are of no use to Him. The only thing God uses as something resembling our earthly punishments is His withdrawal. At times, when it becomes clear to Him that a person wants no relationship with Him, He can simply turn away from that person. Of course, He never forgets anyone definitively; otherwise the person whom God forgot would simply disappear like smoke. At times He can hand over an individual person or a community of people, and sometimes an entire nation, to their own fate. Usually this is enough for those who have been left to begin loudly crying out about God's punishment. Although in reality, of course, there is no punishment from God here at all: people are simply reaping the fruits of their own sinful life, and this harvest is in no way softened by God's intervention. For a person, such nonintervention proves more terrible than any punishment, since every punishment has a beginning and an end, and most importantly, it always has at least some meaning. Evil, however, whether generated by people or demons, has neither purpose nor meaning. And without God's intervention, it would also have no end. Without such intervention our world would already have turned into hell today. This is the harshest instruction of all those to which God resorts when addressing a person: to let him feel what hell is already here on earth. A frightening lesson, but an entirely visible one.

One of the two caricatures of the image of God settles down more easily in the consciousness of man darkened by sin: the dreadful gendarme, chastising without remorse for the slightest fault, or a grandpa looking with affection all "the escapades of the children". It is not probably even worth saying how much these representations are far from the images, which the Holy Scriptures proposes us. And the main of these images is the image of the Father. Probably, we all bear in us a distorted representation of paternity, because from childhood we were hurt or undergone indifference from the father, or by his cruelty, and maybe we had never known him. Perhaps, this is the reason why we even aren’t in the state to imagine the simultaneity of benevolence and chastening, justice and mercy, love and correction.

We take for God’s chastening just the natural consequences of our own sins and not the obscuration of our relationships with Him. We take for God's benevolence our temporary well-being, and not the constant desire of God to be present in our life. We are seriously sick - inside, spiritually. And for our healing, God manifests to us the perfection of the relationship of the Father and the Son and gives us the Spirit of adoption, so that we can become the children of God and heirs of His glory. And today’s verse calls each of us: my son, despise not what is stretched out to you!

What the Wise Man tells us today is, in essence, simple and obvious. It is roughly what each of us was taught in childhood by our mother, and roughly what is called the “moral law”: if you can help, then help; do not put off until tomorrow what can be done today; do not dig a pit for someone else; do not envy a scoundrel... Everything is simple. But the passage ends with a phrase which, according to the logic of the text (although this structure of a sermon may not seem obvious to a modern reader), is the conclusion of everything said above: “The wise will inherit glory, but fools disgrace.” This is not a continuation of the list, but its summation. For everything said above is wisdom, while rejection of the moral law is folly.

The fallen world often offers us solutions that appear temptingly simple, but when we resort to them, they lead us into a spiritual dead end, and sometimes not only a spiritual one. One example of such a temptingly easy path that leads to a dead end is violence. Sometimes it appears that violence can solve some long-standing problem, cutting the Gordian knot that cannot otherwise be untied. But on closer examination it always turns out that, after solving one problem for a short time, we have also created several other new ones, and they are often far more complicated than the one we thought we had solved.

Why is this so? Is the use of force always wrong? Obviously not, since even the Torah in some cases does not forbid resorting to force. The question is only whether it is used to keep the commandments given by God or to violate them. Strictly speaking, one can speak of violence only in the second case. And the most terrible thing here is not the use of force as such (in itself this action cannot be considered either good or bad), and not even the violation of justice toward one's neighbor (although that too is terrible), but the fact that force directed against a commandment given by God makes us His enemy and places a wall between Him and us that will be very hard to overcome. And the logic of the use of force is such that one act of violence inevitably leads to another, and the wall will rise higher and higher. That very wall, if it is not torn down, will block our road into the Kingdom. Forever.