Wisdom – Seeking True Understanding of Life
Series: Wisdom for Life (The Book of Proverbs)
Brad Bailey - July 1, 2018
Intro
We all know the story of Alladin and the magic lamp.
There are many take offs of that story, such as the three sailors whose ship went down, and they made their way in a raft to a small atoll. One was an Englishman, the second was an Italian and the third of indistinct origin, (to be politically correct). They had eaten all the coconuts and were slowly starving to death when a bottle came floating up on the beach. They were almost too weak to go down to get it, but they drew sticks and the Italian had to fetch the bottle. When he brought it back, they pulled the cork out of the bottle, and a genie came out and granted each of them one wish. The Italian immediately said, "I wish I was back in Rome drinking coffee at a sidewalk cafe on the Via Venato, just watching the people pass by." Immediately, there he was back in Rome drinking his coffee. The Englishman said, I wish I were back in London eating fish and chips in Piccadilly Square, and immediately there he was back in London. The third then said, "I am so lonely without my two friends I wish they were back here to keep me company."
So let me ask each of us to consider: If you could ask for anything… or imagine that God spoke to you and said: ask “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”
Some of us may be thinking about what we SHOULD choose…
but if we were truly given the choice…I wonder what we might truly choose.
• Long life on earth
• Popularity
• Wealth
• Lebron to come to the Lakers
But as some may recall… one man was in a unique position in God’s redemptive history… and given such an opportunity.
You may recall that God had called out a people to Himself… to know who He was.. and to ultimately bless the whole world. At one stage they sought to have a King who would help them by ruling well… and that began with Saul…was followed by David… and then came Solomon…one of David’s sons. At the very start…one night he went off and offered a thousand offerings.
Needless to say… he was deeply sobered by the position he was in.
And we read…
2 Chronicles 1:7-12 (NIV)
That night God appeared to Solomon and said to him, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”
8 Solomon answered God, “You have shown great kindness to David my father and have made me king in his place. 9 Now, Lord God, let your promise to my father David be confirmed, for you have made me king over a people who are as numerous as the dust of the earth. 10 Give me wisdom and knowledge, that I may lead this people, for who is able to govern this great people of yours?”
11 God said to Solomon, “Since this is your heart’s desire and you have not asked for wealth, possessions or honor, nor for the death of your enemies, and since you have not asked for a long life but for wisdom and knowledge to govern my people over whom I have made you king, 12 therefore wisdom and knowledge will be given you. And I will also give you wealth, possessions and honor, such as no king who was before you ever had and none after you will have.”
Wisdom….
As we will begin to explore this morning…. nothing could have chosen that would serve his life and ultimately all whose lives he effected…more than wisdom.
Solomon grasped what few do…and he grew in the wisdom that became vital in leading…and to which he became known far and wide. What he learned he invested into some writings… parts of the Bible’s “Wisdom Literature”…including Ecclesiastes…Song of Solomon…and much of the Book of Proverbs.
Today we are launching a series and focus for these summer weeks…on the wisdom which Solomon sought…. and which serves life….particularly as shared with us in the Book of Proverbs.
These first nine chapters of Proverbs are the call to seek wisdom… wisdom is personified as calling one to listen….capturing the value of wisdom and the character required to pursue it with diligence. From chapter 10 on, the writer shares specific wisdom as it applies to various common aspects of life. In this series we will gain wisdom from the great book of wisdom… the Book of Proverbs… including wisdom related to friendships, marriage, work, money, and decisions. [1]
While I will be sharing the majority of the weeks…we have identified areas that flow naturally through various pastoral team… so we will be hearing from Joel, Marlo…and Kevin… in the final week before CV joins us on Labor Day weekend.
Today… we will engage the very nature of wisdom… what wisdom is… why it is so highly valued and nearly lost today…and how we can pursue it.
What is wisdom…
Solomon…
He is likely in his 20’s… and Israel has grown and prospered…but he would lead her into the heights of the Golden Age… build the initial Temple. [2]
In the parallel passage in the Book of Kings [3]…most translations translate this particular word as “discerning heart”…or an “understanding heart” ….which captures the nature of wisdom. (Notably they all refer to this in 3:28 as “wisdom.”)
This leads us to understand…
Wisdom is “understanding” and “discernment” that develops within us.
That is the broadest way to consider wisdom.
Proverbs 1:1-33 (NIV)
1 The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel: 2 for attaining wisdom and discipline; for understanding words of insight; 3 for acquiring a disciplined and prudent life, doing what is right and just and fair; 4 for giving prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the young—
A central word there is “understanding”… how things actually work
What thing? LIFE
And another key word is “prudent… discretion… to do what is right… just… fair.” Discernment… how to see what is right… amidst vast and complicated issues.
Wisdom is understanding how life is meant to work
Gerhard von Rad (who wrote Wisdom in Israel) ,
Wisdom is “becoming competent with regard to the realities of life. Knowing how things really happen, knowing how things really are, and knowing what to do about it.” - Gerhard von Rad
“Wisdom is knowing how things really are, how things really work, and what I should do about it.”
Wisdom transcends the limits of knowledge and moral rules…it is the perspective and understanding that guides them.
Wisdom is always related to knowledge…and to morality…that is “doing the right things”…BUT it transcends both mere knowledge and moral rules.
Wisdom is the guidance that knowledge and moral rules alone need.
Wisdom is not the same thing as moral goodness. It’s not identical to it. It’s related to it, but it’s not identical to it.
For example, if you want to help a poor family out of poverty, that’s good, that’s noble, that’s right. You can do it completely ethically and still ruin their lives, because you are not conversant with the complexities of how poverty actually works.
Many of life’s choices are not simply a matter of having information or a moral rule.
Who do you marry? Do you get married? Who should you date? Do you break up? What career should you go into? What school should you go to? Should I stay here? Should I go to another job? Should I move here? Should I move there? Should I confront the person, or should I hold back? Should I take the risk, or should I play it safe? All of these decisions are not simply settled by a moral rule. There may be moral aspects to consider….but they involved discernment… WISDOM.
Similarly… wisdom draws upon knowledge but it more than knowledge.
Wisdom is the ability to discern and judge which aspects of that knowledge are true, right, lasting, and applicable to your life.
In other words,
Knowledge may be a tool…but wisdom is the craft of understanding what is really needed and how tools may be used.
Many are describing our current world as one in which there is an overload of knowledge…but a lack of wisdom.
Knowledge is so assessable…just a quick Google away…and we’d like to think it is all we need.
We’d like to think that is what matters…that is what it means to be smart.
And if so…we may feel like the smartest people to have ever lived.
We are at the height of exponential knowledge…
We have more access to more knowledge… information…than anyone could have imagined.
In 1969 we accomplished what remains remarkable… technology allowed us to send a rocket to the moon…with humans….and then lift off and return.
The computing power that was in the spacecraft… had 64Kbyte of memory … and was less equipped than a modern toaster!
Back on Earth at the Goddard Space Flight Center thousands of flight technicians and computer experts employed the IBM System/360 Model 75s mainframe computer to make independent computations and maintain communication between Earth and lunar landers. These computers cost $3.5 million a piece and were the size of a car. Each could perform several hundred thousand addition operations per second.
The iPhone 6’s is 32,600 times faster than the best Apollo era computers and could be used to guide 120,000,000 Apollo era spacecraft to the moon, all at the same time. [4]
Most of human history… no one could access the information stored in even one book.
Today…the average school library has 10,000 books… rural library has 12,000 books…and city library has 30,000 books. [5]
The average Smartphone in your pocket or purse?
A 128GB smartphone would hold 384,000 books [6]
And this is what should give us all a profound pause.
These last 25 to 30 years… in which access to knowledge…to information…has become exponential… and for which we may feel smarter… YET…
• Despite all our knowledge about relationships… the tragic number ending in divorce remains unlike generations ago.
• Despite all our knowledge about the significance of parenting and family…the number of children without a father present in the lives has tripled since 1960. [7]
• Despite all the knowledge about sexual diseases… which once gave confidence to a safer future…we just had the highest cumulative number of cases of sexual diseases ever recorded. [8]
• Despite the increase in knowledge about financial management…we just hit the highest level of credit card debt in history….levels of personal debt that generations past would be confounded by. [9]
• Despite being the most informationally informed people in history… we continue to see forms of violence unfolding in new waves…including by youth…and including against one’s own life.
The suicide rate has risen 28% in the US in less than 20 years [10]
What does this tell us?
Knowledge alone is not our greatest need. We need wisdom.
Don’t despise knowledge…but don’t equate it with being smart.
We are a generation who may do well to realize that the value of wisdom has been lost. In generations past …the wisdom would stir a mans passion. Eyes would light up. But those of us who are raised on the other side of the 1960s… for all the good change that may have come… are those for whom that change became so oriented in change… in the value of what is new…and now in technology. We tend to appreciate what is new and novel… even when it does not help us actually understand the real principle of the way things are and how life works.
Wisdom is the unchanging order… that which rightly fits
Wisdom is rooted in the very fabric of reality… the way things are.
It’s not a matter of novelty or new opinions… but of discovering how to align with the deepest order.
Listen to how wisdom… personified here… cries out…
Proverbs 8:23, 29-31
I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began.
…29 when he gave the sea its boundary so the waters would not overstep his command, and when he marked out the foundations of the earth. 30 Then I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, 31 rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.
As Tim Keller notes…
Interestingly enough, all Western cultures, in all of their creation accounts, saw creation, the world, as a result of a power struggle. Whether you go to the Old Norse or to the German or to the Sumerian or the Babylonian or the Egyptian or the Greek or the Roman, it doesn’t matter. Always you have these accounts of some kind of battle between the gods, or the gods and the giants, or this god and that god. One kills the other god, and then they create a land out of his body, and that sort of thing. It’s always the result of a power struggle.
Only here do we have an account of the world not being based on a random accident, nor being based on a power struggle, but on wisdom. Here you have God in delight, the delight of an artist. In overwhelming joy, God designed the world to be a place of beauty and power and order and joy and peace.
That’s the reason the sages of Israel, the wise of Israel, said wisdom worked. Because if God created the world according to wisdom, then there is a fabric, or there’s a pattern, to all of reality. It’s not random.
For example, we all know there’s a pattern to the physical reality. For example, aerodynamics. An object that obeys the fabric reality of aerodynamics will fly, but if it disregards the rules of aerodynamics that are in the physical reality, it’ll crash. “Ah,” say the sages, “but that would mean there’s also a fabric pattern to relational reality, and if you don’t live in accordance with it your relationships will crash.
And that means there’s a fabric pattern to God’s spiritual reality, and if you operate your heart or your conscience or your emotions or your hopes or your meaning in a way that’s not in accord with that fabric pattern, your spiritual life will crash.” Foolishness is going against the grain or the weave or the structure, the pattern God put into creation, which always leads to breakdown.
So… let quickly consider…
How We Develop Wisdom
• Understand how valuable it is
Proverbs 8:10-11
Choose my instruction instead of silver, knowledge rather than choice gold, for wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her.
[TK]
Wisdom is speaking, and wisdom says, “I am more important than silver, than gold, than jewels,” and finally wisdom gets all the way down to “greater than anything you may desire.” Let me put this in a nutshell.
This is saying wisdom is infinitely more important than all the wealth and all the fame and all the power in the world. Far more important than the greatest of circumstances is the ability to grow and handle and flourish in life circumstances whatever they are. Having great life circumstances, fame and fortune and power and happiness, is nowhere near as important as having wisdom, the ability to handle and grow and flourish in life circumstances no matter what they are.
Wisdom is that which we should value gaining most
If we want to become wise: It takes more than Googling
• Understand it develops as a “path” in life… as we form patterns
“… in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” – Proverbs 3:6
The Bible is constantly talking about life as a pathway. In fact, there are 700 or 800 times in the Bible that living life is likened to walking a path. Why is that metaphor used?
First of all, walking a path is basically accomplished by steady, repeated, patterns.
Who you become, your final destiny, is basically a product of how you do the little things every day, your little choices, your little attitudes, the basic disciplines, the things you spend your time doing every day. It’s not the dramatic events. It’s not the turning points.
Going down the path of wisdom means you adopt certain practices, certain daily disciplines you’re going to do over and over and over again, and eventually it makes you wise. Wisdom in the Bible is a pathway not a door. The door image would be, “Here’s a door, and if I turn the latch, or if I have the key and I turn the key, I walk in, and there it is. I’m wise.”
• Form the Foundations of Wisdom
There are a few elements which wisdom=m calls us to establish as foundational to becoming wise. Let me simply note the two which are most foundational.
• Knowing God
Proverbs 1:7 (NIV)
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.
This is not speaking of fear in the sense of fearing one who wishes us harm…but rather fearing what is the unchanging force for which we should align our live. It might be more akin to the way we think of having respect for a massive mountain…or gravity. This becomes even clearer when we read…
Proverbs 3:1–12; 30:1–4
1 My son, do not forget my teaching,
but keep my commands in your heart,
2 for they will prolong your life many years
and bring you prosperity.
3 Let love and faithfulness never leave you;
bind them around your neck,
write them on the tablet of your heart.
4 Then you will win favor and a good name
in the sight of God and man.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.
7 Do not be wise in your own eyes;
fear the Lord and shun evil.
[TK]
Verse 3: “Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.” In English that comes across rather pious. What does that mean? First you must realize the words love and faithfulness are two Hebrew words that are always used of God, and they’re used to describe having a personal, intimate, covenant relationship with God.
The word love is the word checed, which means industrial-strength, absolutely-committed, unfailing love, God’s love for you in which he’s absolutely committed to you under any circumstances. Of course, faithfulness is essentially a synonym. If you want to go down the path of wisdom … “Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart”
It’s not enough just to know God loves you. If you want to become wise, you have to find ways to pound deep into the very heart of your heart of your heart every day that he’s absolutely committed to you, that he would never leave you or forsake you, that he will do anything for you.
You will know that this is central… essential… and will make it that in disciplines: prayer, worship, music, poetry, memorization. This roots us in reality. [11]
The second foundation to becoming wise is…
• Knowing Ourselves
[TK] -Secondly, knowing self. Verse 5 says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding …” A slight extension of that, verse 7: “Do not be wise in your own eyes …” The great paradox of the book of Proverbs is wise people are extremely aware of their foolishness; fools think they’re wise. To put it a little more starkly, if you don’t think you’re a fool, you’re a fool.
Do you? Or put another way, when you’re saying, “I’ve been a fool, I’ve been a fool,” you are barreling down the road toward wisdom at that moment.
Why? Being wise is to be absolutely in touch with reality, and the one reality you have to know in order to know all the rest of reality is who you are. You have to know that. You have to be absolutely, accurately, intimately aware of all of your limitations, all of your weaknesses, all of your flaws, all of your besetting sins, all your areas of foolishness. If you don’t, you’re going to make stupid choices all the time. Do you know the only possible way to do that? The only way you’re ever going to know yourself is if you know God’s love the way we just spoke of. Here’s why.
If you need approval, if you’re comparing yourself to other people, if you’re defensive about criticism, if you’re afraid of failure, if you’re always looking at how other people seem smarter and better looking and have better credentials than you, if you don’t have that absolute inner poise and that incredible unassailable calm on the inside that come from knowing in your heart of hearts he is absolutely faithful to you and absolutely loves you, you’re not going to see, you’re going to screen out, you’re going to deny, you’re going to repress the knowledge of your flaws.
You’re just not going to admit who you are. You’re not going to be willing to see it. You won’t psychologically be able to. You’ll repress it. You’ll make excuses all the time. You’ll say, “Well, that was a mitigating circumstance,” or you’ll say, “Well, of course. You’d be like that too if you had a mother like mine.” You do everything you can to avoid really seeing who you are, and if you can’t see who you are, you’re not going to see any of the rest of reality.
Therefore, the second daily discipline is ruthless yet non-traumatic self-examination. [12]
This helps us to understand the need CHOOSE wisdom. It involves knowing our limitations… and we don’t naturally want to see our limitations… foolishness… which may be what keeps us from becoming wise. We need to hear the cry of respond…and choose to seek her.
Wisdom is personified…she calls out to us.
[Adapted from TK]
Wisdom is personified. Wisdom is I, me, my. An quality is turned into a person. This may be in part because it is believed that it may have been used in schools for young men. That’s one of the reasons why when you read Proverbs you constantly hear the speaker in Proverbs saying, “My son,”
But there is something more to this. It is a poetic way of capturing and conveying that the calling of wisdom is profoundly personal. Wisdom is not so much a matter of mastering a bunch of rules; it’s a love affair with wisdom you need. You need to long for wisdom.
It’s not just poetry. Ultimately the wisdom of God really was a person you could know and love, and if you got into a relationship with this person it made you wise? Then those of us who never had the parents, never had the mentors, never had the guides, never had the counselors we should have … This would be the ultimate guide, the ultimate mentor, the ultimate counselor, the Wonderful Counselor.
Jesus spoke out…
“Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me. For I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
He’s saying, “I am wisdom in a ‘personic’ form. I am the wisdom of God. A relationship with me will make you wise. Wisdom ultimately is not a body of knowledge to master, not a body of principles to memorize. It’s knowing me. Living for me and learning from me is the only thing you can live for and learn from that won’t exhaust you,” he says.
Every other sage in the world has always said, “This is how you should live. Do it and you will live,” but Jesus is the only one who said, “This is how you should live, and I have lived the life you should have lived and died the death you should have died because of your failure to live that way, so that when you ask God, ‘Accept me because of what Jesus has done not because of what I have done,’ he will bring you into his love.”
Let’s pray.
Resources: I drew ideas from Tim Keller thoughts across texts in his series on Proverbs (2004), True Wisdom, Training in Wisdom, and The Wellspring of Wisdom. In these notes I used [TK] where those thoughts were included. I do not speak from notes directly but rather paraphrase the general ideas.
Notes:
1. The superscriptions divide the collections as follows:
• Proverbs 1–9: "Proverbs of Solomon, Son of David, King of Israel"
• Proverbs 10–22:16: "Proverbs of Solomon"
• Proverbs 22:17–24:22: "The Sayings of the Wise"
• Proverbs 24:23–34: "These Also are Sayings of the Wise"
• Proverbs 25–29: "These are Other Proverbs of Solomon that the Officials of King Hezekiah of Judah Copied"
• Proverbs 30: "The Words of Agur"
• Proverbs 31:1–9: "The Words of King Lemuel of Massa, Which his Mother Taught Him"
• Proverbs 31:10–31: the ideal wise woman (elsewhere called the "woman of substance")
2. A good summary regarding Solomon:
Over his 40-year reign, Solomon did many great things, but he succumbed to the temptations of lesser men. The peace a united Israel enjoyed, the massive building projects he headed, and the successful commerce he developed became meaningless when Solomon stopped pursuing God.
King Solomon's Accomplishments
Solomon set up an organized state in Israel, with many officials to assist him. The country was divided into 12 major districts, with each district providing for the king’s court during one month each year. The system was fair and just, distributing the tax burden evenly over the entire country.
Solomon built the first temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, a seven-year task that became one of the wonders of the ancient world. He also built a majestic palace, gardens, roads, and government buildings. He accumulated thousands of horses and chariots. After securing peace with his neighbors, he built up trade and became the wealthiest king of his time.
The Queen of Sheba heard of Solomon’s fame and visited him to test his wisdom with hard questions. After seeing with her own eyes all that Solomon had built in Jerusalem, and hearing his wisdom, the queen blessed the God of Israel, saying:
“The report was true that I heard in my own land of your words and of your wisdom, but I did not believe the reports until I came and my own eyes had seen it. And behold, the half was not told me. Your wisdom and prosperity surpass the report that I heard." (1 Kings 10:6-7, ESV)
Solomon, a prolific writer, poet, and scientist, is credited with writing much of the book of Proverbs, the Song of Solomon, the book of Ecclesiastes, and two psalms. First Kings 4:32 tells us he wrote 3,000 proverbs and 1,005 songs.
From: https://www.thoughtco.com/king-solomon-wisest-man-who-ever-lived-701168
3. 1 Kings 3:9 (CEV) - Please make me wise and teach me the difference between right and wrong. Then I will know how to rule your people. If you don't, there is no way I could rule this great nation of yours.
Most translations translate this particular word as “discerning heart”…or an “understanding heart” ….which captures the nature of wisdom. (Notably they all refer to this in 3:28 as “wisdom.”)
4. Your smartphone is millions of times more powerful than all of NASA’s combined computing in 1969… SEPTEMBER 10TH, 2017 - https://www.zmescience.com/research/technology/smartphone-power-compared-to-apollo-432/
5. https://www.answerbag.com/q_view/50441
6. https://dailyraaga.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/how-many-books-can-you-store-in-1-gb-hard-drive/
7. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation's website, National Kids Count, approximately 35 percent of children under 18 live in a single-parent home as of 2016. - https://www.liveabout.com/fatherless-children-in-america-statistics-1270392
Both white families and black families have about tripled the number of homes with kids without fathers since the 1960s. - https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/dec/18/the-social-costs-of-fatherlessness/
There is a movement in America today claiming that fathers are not necessary for effective child-rearing. But the cold, hard facts prove otherwise. The statistics show that children who grow up without a father are four times likelier to be poor, nine times likelier to drop out of school, and 11 times likelier to commit a violent crime. - https://www.thetrumpet.com/16885-absentee-fathers-are-destroying-the-united-states
According to the U.S. census bureau, 24 million children, 1 out of 3, live without their biological father in the home. Consequently, there is a father factor in nearly all social ills facing America today. - https://www.fatherhood.org/fatherhood-data-statistics
• 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes – 5 times the average. (US Dept. Of Health/Census)
• 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes – 32 times the average.
http://freebeacon.com/culture/mike-rowe-bemoans-epidemic-fatherlessness/
8. According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were more than 2 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis reported in the United States in 2016 — the highest cumulative number ever recorded. - https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/9/27/16371142/2016-record-year-syphilis-gonorrhea-chlamydia
9. The Federal Reserve announced in April that the U.S. had $1 trillion in credit-card debt. Americans now have the highest credit-card debt in U.S. history By Maria LaMagna Published: Aug 8, 2017 - https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-households-will-soon-have-as-much-debt-as-they-had-in-2008-2017-04-03
10. The suicide rate has risen 28% in the US in less than 20 years, according to new data - Hilary Brueck and Skye Gould Jun. 8, 2018, http://www.businessinsider.com/suicide-rates-climbing-higher-in-the-us-especially-in-middle-age-2018-6
11. Regarding God’s desire…and our pursuit… we also hear from James 1:5-6 (NLT)
If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. 6 But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind.
12. In this passage we have a great example of humility…
Proverbs 30:
1 The sayings of Agur son of Jakeh…
2 “I am the most ignorant of men;
I do not have a man’s understanding.
3 I have not learned wisdom,
nor have I knowledge of the Holy One.
4 Who has gone up to heaven and come down?
Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands?
Who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak?
Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is his name, and the name of his son?
Tell me if you know!”
And here we have a call from wisdom….that also calls us to not become the proud mocker.
Proverbs 1:20-22, 32-33 (NIV)
Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; 21 at the head of the noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech: 22 "How long will you simple ones love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge?
…32 For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them; 33 but whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm."
