December 4

Dec 4 - Today from Proverbs 4 we look at verse 8
"Esteem her, and she will exalt you; embrace her, and she will honor you."

The subject of this verse, of course, is wisdom (personified). Wisdom is understanding life the way God meant it to be. Chapter four is a father's lengthy and descriptive plea for his children to seek and pursue the path of wisdom early in life. In verse 18 he tells them it is like 'the first gleam of dawn'. Keep moving on that path, and it will get continually brighter in clarity and understanding.
The two thoughts in today's verse are somewhat of a play on words. In the first, the Hebrew word for 'esteem' here literally means to 'mound up'. In the positive sense, it suggests a picture of a path or a highway, where the earth is mounded up above common ground level in order to provide the traveler with a relatively smooth and passable way through what would otherwise be difficult terrain. The Hebrew word for 'exalt' here literally means to 'raise up'. Thus the play on words; we must do the work of mounding up wisdom if we want to benefit from wisdom in raising us up through the rugged and difficult terrain of life. We mound up wisdom by seeking it out, and then applying that which we find. We cannot walk the mounded path of others. We can receive wisdom from others as we mound up our own path, but each person is responsible for their own path.
The second thought does not have to do with height, but rather with weight. The Hebrew word for 'honor' here means to 'make weighty'. We use the concept in our modern vernacular when we say things like, "His word carries a lot of weight around here." That usually means that he is a person of honor. We address Judges as "your Honor" because of the weight their words carry. The Hebrew word for 'embrace' here means to 'enfold'. Think of the picture of an envelope enfolding a letter. The greater the content of the letter, the more weight the final sealed envelope will be. The envelope itself does not increase in weight, it is the contents of the letter which determines the final weight. Thus the play on words; if we will enfold wisdom into our lives, wisdom will increase our honor. We cannot stuff the wisdom of others into our envelope. We can receive wisdom from others and make it our own through application - only then does it become weighty in our own lives.
Wisdom is a great asset to any person. I pray that as parents and grandparents, we too will have the same passion to direct our offspring to seek and to love wisdom, that they may find a stable path through the difficulties of life, and to do so honorably.