A Life of Plunder: The First Temptation of Foolishness

Proverb begins with a promise of, and praise for, the value of wisdom. Verse 7 warns that fools despise it and/or being instructed in it.

But the first warning Proverbs gives of a specific sin seemed, at first, counter-intuitive to me:

Hear, my son, your father’s instruction,
and forsake not your mother’s teaching,
for they are a graceful garland for your head
and pendants for your neck.

My son, if sinners entice you,
do not consent.
If they say, “Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood;
let us ambush the innocent without reason;
like Sheol let us swallow them alive,
and whole, like those who go down to the pit;
we shall find all precious goods,
we shall fill our houses with plunder;
throw in your lot among us;
we will all have one purse”—
my son, do not walk in the way with them;
hold back your foot from their paths,
for their feet run to evil,
and they make haste to shed blood.
For in vain is a net spread
in the sight of any bird,
but these men lie in wait for their own blood;
they set an ambush for their own lives.
Such are the ways of everyone who is greedy for unjust gain;
it takes away the life of its possessors. (Proverbs 1:8-19, ESV)

Why is this temptation the first concern of wisdom”

After the Fall, as we find it recorded in Genesis 3, the first big sin was brother murdering brother–the sin of Cain against Abel. One might be inclined, at first glance to associate this story with Solomon’s warning to resist the lure, “let us ambush the innocent without reason.” But I don’t think that hold’s up. Here “without reason” isn’t referring to the motivations of a psychotic thrill killer (though there is a hint in much of Proverbs that this way of life leads to an addictive thrill), but it means simply unjustly–that is, “without cause.”

Cain was motivated by resentment due to God’s approval of Abel. That is not the temptation here in Proverbs 1. Rather, the bloodshed is a means to an end. The temptation here is for a life of plunder, a shortcut to wealth:

we shall find all precious goods,
we shall fill our houses with plunder;
throw in your lot among us;
we will all have one purse…

Such are the ways of everyone who is greedy for unjust gain.

So of all the sins that could possibly head the list in Proverbs, why does Solomon start with the temptation to join a gang and acquire loot? Why is a life of plunder the first temptation?

A general observation: From my reading in Proverbs, I think the main concern is how people drift into sin–how they start down a wrong path. If so, it is not surprising that Cain’s sin wouldn’t be the forefront. His hatred of Abel, who had done him no harm at all, and from whose death he gained nothing, seems to go far beyond what we have here in the beginning of Proverbs.

If my instinct is right to look back at the first stories of Genesis as the background to Biblical wisdom (stories that include a contrast between God’s way and humanity’s way to “become wise”) perhaps we should go back earlier than the story of Cain and Abel. Rather than looking for a negative example of embracing a life of plunder, we might look for a corresponding positive command.

The first recorded command in the Bible is to embrace a life of productivity:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26-28, ESV)

So what are the alternatives. If you don’t want to take dominion over world, you survive and attempt to thrive by taking dominion over people. If you don’t live by being fruitful, you find those who have done so and cut them off, stealing the fruits of their life and labors.

Notice how rejecting God’s ways are parasitic. Someone has to work the land and produce good things by labor and exchange. Without such people, human life is impossible. But some find it tempting to let others do the work, and then take a shortcut by using violence to plunder such people.

One implication of all this which I believe Proverbs repeatedly addresses, is that it is not enough to repudiate plunder. Knowing you should not steal or rob is insufficient. You have to embrace as best you can a life of work and savings and investment. Otherwise, you will always find yourself tempted to resort to the other means of acquisition. In fact, by failing to work, you’ve taken the first step toward theft.

I can’t help but think of the national media campaigns against Wal-mart and McDonald’s for the crime of not handing over more cash to their employees. I’ve written several times about this recently:

• Learning from Anti-Market Wal-Mart Hatred
• Who Wants To Buy A $20 Happy Meal?
• Idiot Economic “Research” Claims McDonald’s Can Double Salaries
• McDonald’s Financial Advice Mocked For Wrong Reason

One way to teach plunder is to rationalize it as if it was owed. While people who have truly wrecked the economy (a crime perpetrated by as many Republicans as anyone else, by the way) are only given a passing glance, or even treated as saviors, companies who have no control over the economy, and who depend on the will of consumers to live, are used as scapegoats.

If laws are passed to match these impulses, we can say of the reduced employment and/or string of bankruptcies that result: “these men lie in wait for their own blood; they set an ambush for their own lives.”<>регистрация а googleтехническая поддержка а в контакте