Proverbs 22:21 Commentary and Bible Study

Solomon wants us to be fully convinced about the certainty of the words of truth found in the Book of Proverbs and indeed in the whole of Scripture. The Hebrew is ‘that I might make you to know the truth of the words of truth’, but the two words for truth are not the same. The first word comes from a root meaning to balance and is translated ‘truth’ in Psalm 60:6 and in the Aramaic portion of Daniel (Daniel 2:47; 4:34) as ‘of a truth’ and ‘all his works are truth’. The second is the regular word for truth, meaning ‘reliability’, ‘faithfulness’. It is therefore legitimate to use a different translation for the first word for truth which indicates a quality of the second word.Certainty is a rare commodity in this world, for all that man discovers for himself is constantly changing and being corrected. Science boasts that it keeps all things constantly under review and is therefore ready to adjust what it thinks it already knows at any moment – it is a voyage of discovery. But the knowledge that the Christian receives from Scripture is altogether different. It is fixed, for it is the knowledge of God himself and cannot change. He can neither increase or nor decrease in knowledge and therefore what he tells us is sure and certain. We can build our eternal hope on it. Yes, we must grow in knowledge, and we do not instantly know all things, but that is because of our own limited understanding. What God reveals in his word is not corrected later because it is already perfect. Yes, he adds detail over time to what he tells us and there is an increasing level of instruction, but nothing that he says later contradicts what he said before. It is our knowledge that grows but the Bible stays the same. How is this different from the study of the physical universe? Don’t Christians speak of there being two divine books – the book of nature and the book of Scripture? Are not both of these given by God, and is not our study of them in both cases focused on God’s revelation, general in the case of nature, and special in the case of Scripture? If so, then why is one less certain than the other? Yes, we need to be taught and to interpret correctly what he says to us, but his word contains its own rules of interpretation, and the Spirit of God teaches us personally the meaning of his own word, and gives is the very thoughts of God, the mind of Christ. The difference between this Biblical knowledge and the knowledge which originates in man’s reason and speculation is that man’s knowledge without God is filtered through his own darkened understanding …