Monday, May 12, 2008

Proverbs 7:1-5

7:1 My son, keep my words
and treasure up my commandments with you;
2 keep my commandments and live;
keep my teaching as the apple of your eye;
3 bind them on your fingers;
write them on the tablet of your heart.
4 Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,”
and call insight your intimate friend,
5 to keep you from the forbidden woman,
from the adulteress with her smooth words.

These lessons are the important ones. None more important for a young man in the ANE culture than to remember to be wise and stay away from women you are not supposed to be with. This is pretty much the same today. You can over spiritualize the meaning and turn the forbidden woman into anything that you are not supposed to be healing, just chose one of the ten commandments or any of the hundred in the New Testament. But the simple meaning seems the most correct.

Make the commandment the apple of your eye. Often times as a Reformed Christian I do not delight in the law, probably some left over from Luther teaching me to not get hung up on it. Bind it on your fingers, find a way to remind yourself to do what is right. Sometimes because of who I am it is just easier to do wrong, if I simply remind myself it can save me from doing wrong. What reminders do I have in my life. One is reading, this to me is the greatest way to be reminded.

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