Don't Follow Folly

How wonderful all things were in the beginning! When we read Genesis 1, we hear this theme repeated: “And God saw that it was good.” Time and again, culminating with this declaration on the sixth day: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (v 31).

It was very good. Man and woman sparkled as the crown of creation. They were given the beautiful task of being fruitful and increasing, of filling and subduing, even of ruling all the earth, as the sun, stars and moon ruled the heavens. In the beginning, man and woman were righteous and holy, they lived to the praise of their Creator, they knew God and loved God.

But then arose, as they say, “troubles in Paradise.” There had been proud discontent among the angels in heaven, and Satan had led a great host in rebellion against God. Deprived of their glory, but not of their strength, Satan and his demons got to work spreading the revolution from heaven to earth. And down Satan came, in the form of a snake, to try ensnare the greatest of God’s creation, man and woman.

We know well the sorry sequence of events in Genesis 3: the deceptive appearance, the beguiling words, the attractive fruit, the hesitation, and then, the deed. Yet we should remember it didn’t have to be this way. For in the Garden, man and woman were presented with a choice: To follow God, or to follow Satan. Put before two masters, Adam and Eve had the ability to choose to serve God, but they did not.

Instead, their choice was for the attractiveness of sin – for that lovely fruit (“good for food and pleasing to the eye”), and for all that it could allegedly offer: It was “desirable for gaining wisdom” (Gen 3:6). Maybe that fruit did taste good for the moment, and maybe it did look really nice. But its offer of wisdom was decidedly false. Sure, mankind would know more about certain things, but it was a knowledge of things like deception, anger, jealousy, guilt, greed and death. Such darkened wisdom they gained with their sin!

And though he had succeeded once, Satan was not finished with God’s fallen creatures. That first sin was only the beginning – he wanted Adam and Eve (and all their descendants) to continue to follow him! From that moment of the Fall, God and Satan began their battle in the hearts of mankind. At many times and in various ways this grand battle has been played out: in the tents of Abraham; in the words of the prophets; on the battlefields of Israel. The war rages on in the book of Proverbs; we hear it in the invitation of Wisdom, and the invitation of Folly.

In Proverbs, “wisdom” and “folly” are portrayed as women. They are “personified,” like death is sometimes personified today as a skeleton wearing a black hooded robe, and holding a scythe. To personify something makes an abstract idea become more real and vivid in our minds.

Wisdom appears as a woman in a few different places in Proverbs. Wisdom “calls aloud in the street; she raises her voice in the public squares” (1:20); “her mouth speaks what is true” (8:7); Wisdom laughs (1:26) and Wisdom pleads (1:23). Especially in the first part of ch 9 we read a fine description of Wisdom: her house, her banquet, her invitation, her promises. Wisdom stands there, inviting all people to gain a saving knowledge. But Folly stands over here, and she also invites all people – not so much to gain understanding, but simply to join her, and to enjoy all her “delights.” The battle between God and Satan continues in Proverbs 9,

God’s fallen creatures are tempted to follow Folly:

1) folly’s open invitation

2) folly’s false promise

3) folly’s deadly result

1) folly’s open invitation: As we said, Wisdom has been pictured as a woman in a couple places already in this book. But in verse 13 we encounter for the first time another woman, “the woman Folly.” When you meet someone for the first time, a few things jump out at you right away, things that form an initial impression. As we look at the woman Folly, we receive these impressions right away: “[She is] loud… undisciplined and without knowledge” (v 13).

If we’re in a charitable mood, we’ll say: “Don’t judge by appearances.” Indeed, let’s understand exactly who this woman is; a great danger is that we take a gentle view of Folly. We could think “folly” is some tolerable ignorance, some harmless joking around.

But just the way in which these two women are contrasted with each other should tell us Folly is no benign ignorance. Of Wisdom we read in v 10, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding” (v 10). That is the rich content of the one woman’s invitation: Fear God!