Proverbs 11:1 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Proverbs 11:1

Comments

The first picture is going to be God's attitude and response to integrity. So, before we start thinking about what honesty is – what a lie is, how we should conduct ourselves in certain circumstances – the subject is introduced with an insight into how God feels about this in the lives of his children. A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, and the Hebrew word comes from the verb 'to loathe'. It is something which God finds disgusting. That is God's attitude whether you can get away with it or not. The proverb does not say that a liar will fall. The Bible says that in this world the cheat will succeed up to a point, he will get away with it. The argument is that God will be delighted in the integrity of his people in contrast to the world. The illustration is of a trader who measures out the quantity of goods to be bought or sold using a pair of scales and various weights (or stones used as weights). One trader is honest and tries to be as accurate as he can; it does not matter whether he is buying or selling: he uses the same weights in each case so that he is fair to those he does business with. But another trader is deceitful and cunning: when he is buying he wants more goods so he uses a heavier weight to measure out how much he buys, but when he is selling he switches to a lighter weight so that he gives less than he should for the money he receives, and so he swindles in both cases. A just weight obviously stands for integrity, soundness, genuineness, reliability, trustworthiness. All that is God's delight. If we live according to principles and we are absolutely straightforward for the Lord, then God is delighted with us. The proverb applies to all our dealings with men and women in this world, for there are a myriad of ways in which men cheat each other. The law taught the same standards of honesty in all trading (Leviticus 19:36), and that requirement of the law was almost a proverb itself, because it should have been obvious to Israel that the principle of integrity was to be extended to all areas of life. The false trader was in reality a thief for he secretly stole from those he traded with, and this was a premeditated sin which required careful forethought. When he went down to the market place, he took all his false equipment with him. Many who are not traders have a false balance in their hearts and take it with them wherever they go. They constantly make false judgments and those judgments always work to their own advantage. They excuse themselves, but condemn the same fault in others; they pretend to love justice but twist the evidence to arrive at the verdict they had already decided on. The Lord loves integrity because such a person has come into the light where all is open before God: he loves the truth above himself.

Application

We are talking now about Christians. This central portion of the book is for us and while we may be horrified at the idea that we deliberately, regularly lie and cheat, it may be that there is a lack of integrity about us which settles around us as a constant feature. Somebody here has got a subtle trick going, he puts on an act with this trick as he weighs out the goods. He is very charming and friendly and maybe he talks about all sorts of things and the customers don't realise that the reason why the shopkeeper is so chatty and so pleasant is because he does not want them to grow suspicious. He does not want them to notice what is going on the scales. So alongside the false scales, there is a tremendous act of distraction as the person seeks to come across as scrupulously honest.

Questions

A false balance - the Hebrew word for balance is interesting. You would never guess this but the word literally means a pair of ears! You can almost see kidney, or ear-shaped scales on a balance, and that is where the word comes from: a pair of big ears on a balance. The idea here is that somebody in a store or in some selling situation is running a false balance. The word translated there ‘just weight’ means a full stone. Stones were quite often used as weights in olden times. They did not corrode, they were very reliable and people would go and gather stones and make sure they were of standard weights and then the fraudulent shopkeeper would hollow them out underneath, or somehow chip something away, so that it was not a complete stone and therefore the balances would be wrong.

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Introduction

Proverbs 11:1 Commentary and Bible Study