Proverbs 28:19 Commentary and Bible Study

It should be our aim to get through this life with sufficient for our daily needs without trying to hoard this world’s good as if we were here forever. The focus of the wise man is not on this life but on the world to come. His treasure is there in heaven where he will spend eternity and not here on earth where he will only spend a few brief years; the length of time in each place is enough to teach their relative importance. God has ordained that man works for his bread here on earth and the righteous submit to this ordinance and seek honest work by which they can feed themselves and their families as well as having something to give to those in need. Those who trust God and accept his due order will be provided for in ways that only God could provide and which transcend their own ability to provide for themselves. This is their earthly security which ultimately comes not from themselves but from the Lord. But there are others who, as Solomon puts it, seek vanity. This may take many different forms, but all have in common that they refuse to submit to God’s requirement that we engage in honest work for our living on earth. It may take the form of laziness accompanied by many excuses why the individual cannot work – he or she is too sick, lacks skill to work, or finds it too hard to find work. Real unemployment is a great trial and those afflicted by it must pray for patience, but let them not make an excuse out of it. It may take the form of some vice which prevents work – an addiction to gambling that wastes drains their resources; an incapacity which comes from alcohol or drug abuse. But it may also take the form of fanciful pursuits which are designed to avoid hard work, in which we dream of riches by other means than those which God has appointed – market speculation, marrying into money, swindling and oppression of others, outright theft of what does not belong to us.Such will have poverty enough, a sufficiency of poverty; the expression is an ironic echo of the corresponding phrase in the first half of the verses – ‘bread enough’. Who wants poverty enough? But that is what vanity has justly earned them. They sought vanity, though they would not admit it was vanity, and their efforts have brought them what they sought and deserved. All who make a god out of anything other than the true God will find that they have to live with their idol forever.