They Say, "To Err Is Human, But To Edit Is Divine."
*He who walks *in this *justification *is righteous; *blessings are in *the children that *follow him. (MAST)
Proverbs 20:7 (NKJV)
7 The righteous man walks in his integrity; His children are blessed after him.
*[He who walks] literally, he who goes about dying. This verb stem is a relative participle to the antecedent answer of the rhetorical question of the previous proverb. In other words, the man who applies the obvious “theological” answer to the question of (what a man is in Adam’s fall) will be able to find the blessings of life in God’s mercy. All the mercies of the nature of creation have nothing to say to us apart from the mercies of the nature in God (Ps.19:1-2;Rom.1:18-20). The previous proverb testified that a man is merciful for his own sake but cannot be justified in this. If a man is to be merciful, he must be merciful for God’s sake (Lk.6:32-36;Matt.5:43-48). Therefore through the wisdom that was given to Solomon, this question was posed through his own self-examination: “Who can find a faithful and true man?” The answer was in the theological promise of the Spiritual Seed, who would save the fallen but chosen race of Adam from his sin. The seed of the serpent, however, was promised to eat dust all his days (Gen.3:14,17-19). His curse was that he would never be given the spiritual food that leads to true life. His life is in the dust, which has no part in the Spirit. He has no part in the new creation of God or what Adam is being conformed into (Gen.3:22-23). The serpent was cut off forever from declaring the glory of heaven, as Adam was cut off for his own sake to learn the gift and grace of God. The mercies of creation cannot (and do not) teach us the grace of God (Num.22:28), all that creation can teach us is that God is in none of our thoughts (Ps.10:4;Rom.1:21-23;Jn.9:31-34). What the blind man knew from his birth was that he was born in sin, completely too, just like the self-made Pharisees (Jn.9:34). This, the blind man knew from the testimony of creation, but what opened his eyes was not the mercies of another creation but the grace of Almighty God! So, like Solomon, this blind man got it right. Apart from God, we are good for nothing! We are TRASH at the end of the driveway to be reaped by the garbageman! Therefore, the one which is relative to this nature is the one who applies the advocacy and justification of the theological answer (moral justification) in the promised Seed (Gen.3:15). But what is relative to us, is that this Seed has already been planted and revealed in the earth for our justification, for as Solomon testified, it was not in the fathers of the covenants. Each of these was merciful for their own sake, but the promised Seed will be merciful for the sake of God and man (Heb.1:5;2:6,9-12;Gal.3:20;1Tim.2:5). There is no salvation for fallen angels because they were given the eternal perspective from the beginning, but for the man who confesses his moral inability, the offer of salvation remains. That is what we see Solomon introspectively doing as he rejects every man who justifies himself before his throne of judgment (see the following proverb). So this “walking about” is in the self-denial of one’s own value and moral goodness. It is walking about in humility of the truth of what a man is in Adam, theologically applied (Gen.5:3;1Cor.15:22;Eph.2:5;Gal.2:20). The Hebrew verb is applied in its Hithpael stem, which means it is an active action to bring about a desired but passive or reflexive result. The Greek Septuagint uses anastrepho in the middle/passive, to turn oneself inside-out or upside-down, but the Hebrew term, in its verbal form, is associated with “the vanishing away in death” (1Cor.15:31,36;2Cor.4:8-15). The intention of this Hebrew verb then is to lead us into the (active) confession of our moral inability, not our personal integrity, to achieve something that we cannot nor ever will (in ourselves). The verb is not asking us to walk in “ourselves” but to walk in what we can never do for ourselves. The verb is leading us to answer the rhetorical question of Solomon’s introspection; (i.e., Search for a faithful and true man of God).
*[in this] literally, in the same. While this is a genitive construct, it is antecedent to how Solomon is justifying himself within his own introspection (1Cor.2:10-11,14-16). He is justifying himself in what he is searching for, and he is searching for the moral ability to be king (Ps.51:11). But he knows that he must first confess his inability before God will ever draw near. He must draw near to the perfection and presence of God with nothing of his own design and making (Ps.19:7). He must humble himself of all his pride (and hope to be wise in himself) (see Pr.20:9). Solomon can’t be intending in this very context that a man can be righteous by walking in himself. As king, he understands the moral inability of everything that enters his court, but he also feels the eyes of His own Sovereign looking upon his judgments (Pr.20:8). Therefore in answering this question faithfully and honestly, he knows no man can make his heart pure (Pr.20:9). Therefore this verbal construct is not a genitive preposition of oneself (but of who is) found to be faithful and true. In Solomon’s context, the search continues (Lk.19:10)!
*[justification] literally, a clean conscience. It can be understood as a blameless state of mind or a condition of life, not of anything morally good in the nature of the man (Rom.7:18) but a peaceful recognition of the justification of God through the theology of the sacrificial system (in Solomon’s context) but is fulfilled to us in the death and resurrection of Christ (Matt.5:17;Rom.7:4-25). Therefore it is not an integrity of works stored up within a person, but a submission to the nature and character of God according to what the sacrificial system teaches the worshiper (1Sam.15:22;Heb.4:7-10). God has not bestowed His grace on us as a license to sin. We sacrifice because God is worthy and we are not, and these earn us nothing before God but are given to us much more as a teaching tool to conform us to obedience (Rom.10:16;1Pet.4:17) than to justify us to God. Now we see they are designed to lead us into confessing our moral inability and seeking to know the will of God to please him through understanding (Rom.12:1-2). Therefore the sacrificial system was for a cleansing of the conscience, not a moral ladder to sit in judgment over the consciences of others by sitting in the seat of God (Jn.9:34;Matt.23:1-12;27:20,24-25;Lev.16:2;Num.7:89). Nevertheless, Solomon’s seat was not in the Temple, for that was the mercy seat of God, but his seat is a seat (to protect) not the soul of the kingdom but her flesh and blood (Ezk.18:17-23;Eph.5:28-30). Nor was his seat to cleanse the conscience from evil but to be just and thoroughly punish all evil from within and without of that which works to corrupt her borders through a foreign or domestic invasion. By the mercies of God, he was justified to do this, but only according to the Word of the LORD (1Kgs.9:4-9). Therefore the “integrity of heart” referred to here is not his own but the heart and soul (the image) of the LORD, in whom his father (was chosen to) walk after (1Sam.13:14). The implication is that not every man is made to follow after the image of God. The pattern of life in God is perfect (Ps.19:7), and therefore the conscience of an evil man must be continually cleansed by that which can only reconcile the soul of man to the nature of God (1Jn.1:5-10). The wisdom of men cannot do this; only the pure wisdom from above (Lk.11:13;18:27;James 3:17).
*[is righteous] literally, lawful. This is a Hebrew adjective to describe a legal term in a court of justice. It is “the result” of the Hithpael verb stem that began this construct (Rom.3:28,30;5:1;Gal.3:8,11,24;James 2:4). It is by decree of the court of justice. The one who actively walks in this confession of faith is declared righteous by the standard of the court. But it’s not Solomon’s court or place that declares this righteous decree. Solomon’s court declares guilt, but through confession and the mercies of God, the acts of the court are righteous. This is what Solomon is declaring to walk in to justify his court. He is “going about dying” to his sins through confession of his moral “inability” (observed in the previous proverb) in order to be righteous to make these (moral) judgments from his throne (1Cor.2:15-16), because his throne is not given to show mercy to violators of the civil law but to establish and uphold it (Rom.3:31;13:1-10). Therefore the justification that was (not in himself) but in the God who covenanted with him is His own righteousness (Jer.23:6;33:16). He is righteous by only walking in God’s Light and Nature (1Jn.2:29;3:3,7,10). For it is only by (walking in) the righteousness of God’s nature that justifies him and makes his testimony clean (Ps.19:9;Matt.5:48;Lk.6:40;Jn.17:23;Gal.3:3;Heb.7:11;10:14;11:39-40).
*[blessings are in] literally, blessings. But this noun is in construct with the only verb of this Hebrew stem. In conjunction with the reflexive cause of the verb “to walk in,” blessings are stored up in the children of him as a result of going about confessing his sins and declaring the grace (or heart) of God toward Adam “theologically.” His children (emphatically or exclusively) will be created in the knowledge of the Holy One (Pr.9:10), because they will have learned to confess the ignorance that is (in them) as result of their father’s confession rightly taught through true humility (Pr.30:1-5;Eph.4:17-24;Tit.1:9). The Hebrew noun here is plural, which has more to say than an adjective would, in describing the children that follow in this image of worship. These children who walk in this image have blessing upon blessing in the riches, not only of His mercy, but of His grace. They are not merely “happy” (in the riches of the world) but have all that which pertains to “spiritual” blessings in the heavenly places (Eph.1:3-14;1Cor.3:21-4:2;Eph.6:12). So the blessings (of the LORD) are what have been sown into these children, and the children will have learned how to apply these more effectively through every trial that God throws them under in His sovereignty (1Pet.4:12-15).
*[the children that] literally, children of the same. Again, this construct is antecedent or qualified by the image of the Hebrew verb, which began the proverb. Therefore it is only those children who are born of the same spiritual action of the verb. Literally, these children are of the same Spirit (Num.11:17,25; 1Cor.12:4,8-9,11; 2Cor.3:18; 4:13; 12:18).
*[follow him] literally, his backside or butt. This is a Hebrew noun identified with the blunt end of a stick (2Sam.2:23), but I believe he intends to use it more like an adverb to describe the verb stem. It could be translated, ‘blessed are those children in his rear end.’ These are the children who cover his backside or who form the seat of his throne upon which he sits. These children uphold and sustain the work of his position as king (Matt.11:19;Lk.7:35). Therefore these children are members of his body of divinity. It’s a strange place to put them in our dirty minds, but it is what makes the weakness of the man who sits upon the throne strong (1Cor.1:18,21-25,27-31;2Cor.12:7-10). This throne was often like a thorn in his rear end, but it was (for him) a mercy from God to learn of His amazing grace because he had been given the Spirit of Understanding to learn in humility. So in the application of the verb, it’s better observed as an adverb to help create the flow of the verb stem. These children, being members of this type of man in their plurality, are (at his rear end) and follow hard after him in the very shape and image of the verb. They are on his tail end to imitate and do all his wise commands. And when they do, they are blessings for all the generations that come after him. Also, because the noun is plural, imagine a picture of many arrows sticking out of his backside. That’s how tightly these little members were clinging to (that) man who was found to be faithful and true. These children are like little clubs that beat his sinful nature to death so that righteousness should rise out of him in true and unchangeable life (Num.23:19;Eph.4:15). “They say,” “To err is human, but to edit is divine;” but God says, “To err is human indeed (Acts 17:26), but to repent is divine” (Acts 17:29-32).
