Week 25 Proverbs 14
Solomon said: faithless people will be fully repaid for their ways, and the good person rewarded for his.
This idea has cropped up before in Proverbs. The idea that what I do now has an effect on what happens to me later. The idea of getting reimbursed for what I’ve done.
It’s Solomon’s Compensation Rule: I do something…I get something back in return. The rule works in all kinds of ways. A simple example is if I find someone’s wallet and return it the person will be happy (and I might get a reward).
But Solomon is talking about indemnification on a bigger scale too. A couple of chapters ago he said: the truly righteous person attains life, but the person who pursues evil goes to his death. So the Compensation Rule is scaled all the way from a lost-wallet right up to the question about “what’s going to happen when I’m dead?”
Solomon figures something is going to happen. I check a cross-reference that says the Lord is watching and he will judge all people according to what they have done.
I feel a bit concerned thinking about a perpetual but undetectable compensatory dynamic that’s in operation. But in the last couple of years I’ve been tracking the idea more carefully and Solomon isn’t the only one talking about it. When I’m reading through the bible it seems like some component of this day-of-reckoning idea keeps coming up again-and-again.
Note: quotes from Proverbs 14:14 11:19 (NIV) 24:12 (NLT)