“My son, keep my words, and treasure my commands within you. Keep my commands and live, and my law as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart. Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,” and call understanding your nearest kin, that they may keep you from the immoral woman, from the seductress that flatters with her words.” Proverbs 7:1-5
We are only in Chapter 7 of Proverbs and already it has mentioned the importance of treasuring and keeping the commandments around 20 times. But in this passage, we get a little more detail on how to actually do that.
Of course, “treasuring” the commands means to highly value them, to see them as treasure, greater than any silver or gold item. Love the commands of God. Think of something you treasure and treasure the commands of God even more. “Keeping” the commands implies attending to, being diligent to care for them, like a beloved pet. In other words, keeping the commands takes work.
Keeping the commands as the apple of your eye is an interesting translation. The Hebrew is literally “the pupil or center of the eye” which implies keeping yourself focused on the commands as the center of your attention. I think of baseball. One of the core lessons of being able to hit a baseball is keeping your eye on the ball. The phrase “apple of your eye” was apparently first coined by Alfred the Great as an expression of affection. The King James translators chose that as a way to express the thought in this verse. Again, we are to love the commands of God.
Bind the commands of God on your fingers implies action and means to have them close to you, ready to handle at all times. All you have to do to see your fingers is look down and there they are. Keep the commands of God close you, ready to put into action. “Write them on the tablet of your heart,” while evoking images of love, also means memorization and belief. We are to know His commands by heart, believe them with our heart, and love them.
Furthermore, we are to be so familiar with the commands of God that they should be like your immediate family. The people you live with, whom you see every day, eat, work, sleep with, the members of your home; The word of God should be like those with who we have daily familiarity and closeness with and not someone we only see periodically.
If we “keep” the commands in this way the commandments “keep” us from the immoral woman. Much of these early chapters in Proverbs is a warning to the son not to be enticed by the immoral woman. The rest of chapter 7 describes the fool who disregards this counsel and falls prey to the immoral woman to his own destruction. But this truth also has a symbolic relation to sin in general. Keeping the commands in this way keeps us not just from sexual sin but from all kinds of sin. In particular, it keeps us insulated, protected from one of the great weapons of the father of lies: flattery, which we will discuss next week.
To be continued!
His mercy endures forever!
Pastor Flynn