It was a great moment in the history of the youthful king, Solomon, when the Lord appeared to him in a dream by night, saving, “Ask what I shall give thee” (1 Kings 3:5). The response to this was very beautiful. He might have been intoxicated by pride of his position. He might have asked for success in arms. He might have asked for enlargement of his kingdom. He might have asked for riches or long life. He asked for none of these things.
How beautiful is Solomon’s response! “I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come in … Give therefore Thy servant an understanding heart to judge Thy people, that I may discern between good and bad” (1 Kings 3:7-9).
The Lord was well pleased with his answer. He bestowed upon the youthful monarch wisdom, superior to any before him, and not to be attained by any after him. His wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country and all the wisdom of Egypt. God gave him also long life and riches.
In short Solomon was the wisest man the world has ever known, or will know. The Book of Proverbs bears ample testimony to this. It is indeed a notable book. It has a unique place in the Word of God. If young men would pay heed to its page; they would be saved many blunders, sins and sorrows. It consists of just thirty-one chapters. Some businessmen have made a practice of reading a chapter each day of the month to their great advantage.
And yet, and yet, the wisest man that ever lived failed, and failed egregiously. Solomon in his old age married heathen wives—women of Egypt, of Moab, of Ammon, of Edom, of Zidon, and of the Hittites. Seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines was folly and madness indeed. His wives turned his heart from the Lord. He went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites.
The Lord was angry with him, and no wonder, “I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and give it to thy servant” (1 Kings 11:11). This came to pass, not in Solomon’s reign for God had respect to his father, David. In the reign of his utterly foolish son, Rehoboam, the kingdom was divided—ten tribes going with Jeroboam, Solomon’s servant; Judah and Benjamin remaining with Rehoboam. It was a big price to pay for his folly and sin.
What a lesson we may learn from this. What is wisdom? Wisdom is not mere knowledge. The more knowledge a man has, if he has not wisdom, the greater mess he can make of things. What is wisdom? It is the right application of knowledge to the circumstances of life. Learning a lesson from Solomon, we find that even wisdom is no sufficient safeguard. Knowledge without wisdom makes knowledge a dangerous possession. Wisdom without wisdom from above is not enough.
Look at the case of Solomon, He wrote, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 9:10). Wisdom without the fear of the Lord is not the wisdom that is “better than rubies.” Without the fear of the Lord the very A.B.C. of wisdom has not been learned. A man may be accounted wise in the learning of the schools, or in diplomacy, or in military strategy, but if he has not the fear of the Lord, he has no true wisdom. He is out of touch with what really matters. He has not adjusted himself to God. He is building on sand and not on the rock. His efforts end with fitful time, and enter not into eternity.
Solomon is a beacon to warn us. Was it the fear of the Lord that led him to marry heathen wives to go whoring after heathen gods, and wreck his splendid kingdom? Surely not!
It is after all not a question of the head, but of the heart. Solomon himself in the Book of Proverbs lays much stress on the heart. “My son give me THINE HEART” (chap. 23:26). “Keep THY HEART with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life” (chap. 4:23). “When wisdom enters into THINE HEART … discretion shall preserve thee” (chap. 2:10-11).
Solomon continually exhorts his son to listen to the voice of wisdom, and refuse the voice of folly. How multitudes of young men on premature deathbeds have rued the folly of going the pace, forgetting God, paying no heed to the voice of wisdom. We are ever listening to the voice of wisdom, or of folly, and we assuredly reap what we sow.
But Solomon strikes a wonderfully high note in chapter 8. Wise as he was, intellectual as he was, learned as he was, he never could have attained to this knowledge by his own powers. He speaks of that which is too wonderful for man to search out. “Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?” (Job 11:7). No, this must be a matter of REVELATION.
Solomon speaks of Wisdom as a PERSON. There is a Fountain-Head of wisdom. There must be some Source from which it flows. We may drink of a little trickling stream, but where does the stream come from. Whence is the Reservoir?
Solomon traces it to a time when there was no beginning. He writes as if Wisdom personified were speaking, “I was set up [anointed] from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was” (chap 8:23). This could only be said of One, who is God it is Deity, who speaks here. Again, “I love them that love Me, and those that seek Me early shall find Me” (v. 17). You can admire a quality. You cannot love a quality. We can love a Person, and in this case rejoice that this wonderful Person loves us.
The New Testament confirms us as to who Wisdom is. “Christ Jesus, who of God is made to us WISDOM” (1 Cor. 1:3). We have the key to Proverbs 8 in our knowledge of the Lord Jesus, the one great Mediator between God and men, the fulfilment of Jacob’s ladder set up on earth, which stretched to heaven. “Unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the, POWER of God, and the WISDOM of God” (1 Cor. 1:24).
So we read, “Then I was by Him, as One brought up with Him: and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him” (Prov. 8:30). Here we read of two Persons—One is WISDOM—who enjoy an eternal and reciprocal flow of affection. It must be so. Never in all the searchings of philosophy did such as Socrates or Plato reach to such a height. It remained for a simple fisherman, called from his boat and nets by the Sea of Galilee, to write three words, which the greatest philosopher never dreamed of, “GOD IS LOVE” (1 John 4:16). Surely this was revelation pure and simple. In heathen lands, where men have fashioned gods after their own liking, we find they are marked by frightfulness, cruelty, lust and every evil passion—gods of fear and dread. To have such gods as the object of adoration is frightful and debasing in its results.
But if “God is love,” and God is eternal, then it follows that the interfow of love must be eternal and so we have it here. How was it that Solomon could anticipate John’s sentence, “GOD IS LOVE”?
But Solomon goes further. He rises to the heights, none higher. We get a peep by the Spirit of God into the eternal relation of the Father and the Son—the Father delighting in the Son, the Son rejoicing in the Father, and that without a beginning. But Solomon goes one further, and in this we are intimately interested. He says, or rather the Word of God says, “Rejoicing in the habitable part of His earth; and My delights were with the sons of men” (v. 31). Why should we have revealed to us the Persons of the Godhead, it there were not the blessing to flow to us? Why should the Fountain-Head be unveiled, if the stream of blessing were not to reach us?
So we get Proverbs 8:30-31 unrolled to us by the four Gospels of the New Testament in the Person of Christ, who has revealed God and made Him known to us. Surely we find that His delights were with the sons of men, when we hear Him saying, “Come to Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28) when we see Him blessing the woman that was a sinner, the outcast, the fallen; probing the proud Pharisee, “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7); arresting Saul of Tarsus on the Damascene Road with the words, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?” (Acts 9:4). We know His delights were with men when He died for mankind, that there might be a new creation scene of blessedness, composed of a multitude that none can number of all, nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues.
Let us not forget the wisdom inculcated by Solomon—WISDOM in its source from which every blessing flows, wisdom as we may begin to exercise it—“the fear of the Lord.”
Let us clearly grasp it, that wisdom is not merely the application of human sagacity to human circumstances, but it must be in connection with Him, “who of God is made to us WISDOM” (1 Cor. 1:30). “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom” (Prov. 9:10). “The fear of the Lord prolongs days” (Prov. 10:27). Have we begun with wisdom? Let us learn a lesson from the wisest of men. “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not to thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths” (Prov. 3:5-6).