Consciousness Doesn’t Compute

Posted on May 7, 2015 by ehurst

Just a quick item: Consciousness Does Not Compute (and Never Will), Says Korean Scientist.

Unless this is some sort of hoax, it’s nice to see someone with serious technology chops say that the math refuses to go where consciousness stands in the human soul. “The brain and consciousness are linked together, but the brain does not produce consciousness. Consciousness is something altogether different and separate. The math doesn’t lie.”

Even as a non-activist, I can appreciate someone skewering the massive misallocation of resources for bogus pursuits. We already have enough problems with the high probability of creating a functional AI simply because people wouldn’t bother to notice the difference. Humans at large tend to operate at the lowest possible level of consciousness in the first place.

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Room for Fellowship

Posted on May 7, 2015 by ehurst

I really do not like the way they have gone in recent years, but I’ll never forget some of the earlier stuff by Phillips, Craig and Dean. I’m not thrilled with all of the video, but this song is my favorite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWjbZhbRZAE

You might like their newer stuff and they seem rather unconcerned with non-paying consumption of their music, so search for it on the Net and you’ll get plenty of free samples. They have some of it on their official website.

I prefer the NET version of the Bible and the Protestant canon. I’m not against most other translations; we are so blessed with such broad coverage. We have translations proliferating in English that previous generations never saw. The primary reason I pick the NET is because they permit distribution of the text for free, such as with the Sword Project. There is no doubt I prefer the scholarship of other translations, but the copyright protection is downright satanic on some of them.

I prefer Debian Linux over other operating systems. I keep track of a couple of other types of Linux, and I would have no computer tech support ministry if I didn’t keep track of Windows. I’m willing to bet that, if I someday make money from knowing about Linux, it will more likely be through my acquaintance with Red Hat and their freebie clone, CentOS. I am acquainted with various types of BSD and some other things you probably never heard of, but I’ll be glad to help you with questions about any computer OS and the hardware, too.

But there are plenty of things I won’t help you with. It doesn’t matter whether I know about those other things; I have a calling from God and He sets the boundaries. Nor do I become your enemy if you persist in those things. Rather, to the degree you keep yammering about things outside my boundaries, to that degree I exclude you from my fellowship. There remains room for a more general friendship, but that’s not the same thing. I can be friends with anyone who acts friendly toward me.

Fellowship implies a genuine closeness that qualifies you to a much deeper level of support. You become family-in-effect, family as it should be. You gain the whole of my pastoral and brotherly concern. You gain a much higher claim on my personal resources. Not on your terms, but on those terms God allows me to offer. I can’t give you what I don’t have; everything I have comes from the Father.

Update: I’ve found some serious flaws with the NET Bible and now prefer the NKVJ.

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The Vacation Continues

Posted on May 6, 2015 by ehurst

Back when I was first sent to my assigned military duty station in the Netherlands, I spent a week shadowing my supervisor. He and another sergeant were chatting about taking in a volksmarch later that day. The other fellow said, “We should have no trouble getting off early for it.” He smiled, turned to face the open gateway of our tiny compound with his fists dug into his waistline, arms akimbo. “US Military Community of the Netherlands — the vacation continues!”

Yesterday’s ride around Lake Draper was partly a long slow slog against a stiff breeze. I didn’t fight hard, just rode slowly in a low gear. The terrain on the western side of the lake is given more often to open grassland. They mow a wide strip off both sides of the pavement with tractors bearing multiple reel cutters, but otherwise leave it natural. So all along the several miles heading south against the headwind, I was treated to a view of flowers blossoming in every color of the rainbow.

The one I saw most was a flower that most folks don’t see because it’s an odd shade of green-almost-turquoise. There must have been a half-dozen different shades and sizes of yellow. From time to time I spotted the deep purple cups of our wild violet vines. Mixed into the tiny carpet flowers of yellow were some blues and pinks. Farther off in the unmowed areas were patches of deeply tangled vines bearing strips of bright purple dangling bell-shaped heads. On the dam itself were generous sprouts of intensely bright red-orange flowers some call Indian Paintbrushes. Among them were some blue flowers waving at the top of tall stems. Fanciest of all were the bull nettles just now starting to bloom bright lavender.

Meanwhile, the early crop blackberries were losing their white blossom petals, as the center of the flower swells upward to become berries. Some are still in bloom while others are sporting tiny green knots. The sand plums in some places already have tiny green orbs hanging from the branches.

And today I’m starting a rewrite on my Debian book, a second edition to update for Debian 8 (Jessie). I think I’ll keep the same cover and just change the title. It’s funny: When I was finally able to ditch the crazy cultic Linux mindset so common among Linux users, after a while it seems God is now insisting I use it and be ready to teach it. I have no particular intellectual reason or enthusiasm about it, but it’s essential for some reason I can’t give a name. Just walking by the leadership of my heart.

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Heart Intelligence HOWTO

Posted on May 5, 2015 by ehurst

This is how I do it; your mileage may vary.

Bear in mind the systemic model of human nature. We are fighting generations of mythology and social conditioning that deny a separate intelligence in the heart and belly. Not only do we need to learn about them, but we have to start from scratch recovering how to make it all interact as God intended. You cannot fully claim the blessings of God’s revelation without this.

Right away, I’ll tell you the heart is the pinnacle of what you can touch consciously. It reads the signals from your belly brain better than your intellect can. Remember: The intellect organizes and implements. It is not supposed to rule. The heart rules. So while your mind can make some sense of the body signals, it requires the heart to decide what to do about them. The body doesn’t understand divine justice; the body knows only what it knows at the direct level of contact with the physical world around us. If moral necessity demands you deny some particular appetite, the body won’t suddenly quit wanting it.

Then again, there is no clinical descriptive language for any of this, so we are forced to use the indicative language of parables. On top of this, some folks are more naturally inclined to the meaningful interaction within their own system than others are. That’s why we always have to remind folks not to ape each other, but take each narrative as advisory and indicative. This business of factual accuracy is a construct of the intellect. It is not the nature of reality itself.

So I struggle with making sense of my heart’s superior understanding the same as most of you do. It is meant to be time-consuming. That’s another of those paradoxical things natural to divine revelation. We need lots of time “wasted” pursuing our internal changes so that we can make the best use of time when it comes the moment to act. That’s a sort of, “more sweat in training, less blood in combat” sort of thing on the moral plane of understanding. I spend years training my body for fitness and only a few moments here and there taking full advantage of it. In moral terms, it is the surrender and willingness that matters most, not what we can accomplish with it.

As part of that same paradox, the actual HOWTO part would make little sense without that explanation. Two things I do to bring my system into balance, but both are actually variations of the same principle — get your ego out of the way.

One: As part of my fitness activities, I love to walk in quiet places. But my legs aren’t what they used to be, so cycling is my outlet. Around here that means very hilly, narrow paved roads, mostly laid out in a grid across the Oklahoma countryside. It’s not just safety that leads me to seek low traffic routes that keep me out for two or more hours at a time. The Lord alone knows what I might do to occupy my brain, but I typically talk aloud to God about whatever comes to mind. Engaging the body and brain in this fashion allows my heart to speak. I’m not sure I can explain how I know something is from the heart and not my mind, but I am learning to discern the difference between intellectual-emotional obsessions and something persistent on a much higher level.

Two: I play simple computer games while listening to worship music. The games are things like card- or tile-based puzzle stuff. The music is a collection of albums from the Hosanna series (now owned by Integrity Music) that suit my personal tastes. I’ve posted in the past about using a script that downloads from YouTube and converts the video to a fat MP3 audio file (the script relies on a properly installed FFMpeg or similar conversion library; see script documentation). Integrity already got my money for the albums long ago, but the original media wore out. Someone uploaded them to YouTube and Integrity never bothered to complain. I rotate through the albums and listen for as long as one or two lasts.

In both instances, you’ll notice that worship is a central element. Distracting the ego is not an issue for everyone, but the worship is critical to ensuring that the Holy Spirit maintains authority over the process. Any music that brings you to worship is fine, or any other environmental element that allows you to leave yourself behind and be drawn up into the Spirit Realm. The idea is that Jehovah gets the glory and focus of attention.

What makes this different from simply going to church is that it is necessarily private. You come alone before God on the terms He gives uniquely to you. You come with the background awareness of your need to come under the rule of your heart. You come aware of the danger of letting mere emotion rule, and that you need not experience much of that at all. I’ve warned often enough that it’s too easy today to stir up an emotional experience and claim it was the Spirit of God. Emotions aren’t forbidden, but if you can’t tell the difference, you are a threat to God’s message.

If you don’t have time for this kind of thing, you don’t have time to walk in holiness.

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Notes on the Cult of Oester

Posted on May 4, 2015 by ehurst

So far as scholars can determine, there is only one source for the notion that Oester (or Eoster) was a genuine deity among the primitive Germanic tribes — Venerable Bede. The Brothers Grimm were convinced he was right, but aside from Bede’s comment, all we have is what is termed “linguistic evidence.” That is, the name is associate with words that mean something consistent with the legend.

Instead, the label has become a symbol for modern social mythology. Whether there ever was a widely regarded goddess named Oester (or variations thereof) isn’t nearly so important as a distinct thread of belief that most certainly does affect our society today. If there was no actual Cult of Oester in ancient Europe, there is one in the West now.

We are familiar with the primary canon law of this cult: Women are the root of civilization. Men are never more than overgrown boys. Women are inherently virtuous and men need to be feminized in order to be useful. These are the doctrines of modern Western feminism. Oddly enough, it was restricted to upper middle-class Western women until recent history. So far as anyone can tell, the primary political agenda of feminism falls flat outside of those who embrace Western middle-class values. In other words, it dies without materialistic assumptions.

Obviously, the whole message of the Bible includes countering materialism. One of the clearest biblical statements on the issue is also the most difficult for Westerners to grasp. Ancient Hebrew mysticism, with it’s symbolic logic, need not be so puzzling if you really want to understand it, but you can’t cling to the notion that it is inferior logic. It is simply different and must be accepted and understood in its own right. The paragraph beginning in Zechariah 5:5 is actually not all that difficult, but you have to pull in the wider background, so we need to take a detour first.

Perhaps you are familiar with Solomon’s writing about women. On the one hand, he never hesitated to add one more princess to his harem. This goes way beyond “skirt chaser.” Yet we know that he regarded noble and royal women as a major pain in the ass. They could be truly noble, but he didn’t seem to think many in his harem were. Instead, we are told he was too indulgent in their numerous idolatries and went so far as to join them, earning a serious warning. He refused to heed the warning (1 Kings 11). As you survey the rest of the Old Testament, you see hints that this symbolizes the primary weakness of women so bluntly stated by Paul in the New Testament: Eve was deceived about moral issues. Adam wasn’t deceived, just too lazy to intervene (1 Timothy 2:9-15).

I note that many Westerners are just as confused about Paul’s comments, reading Western values back into Paul’s Hebrew mind. Paul’s comments were not about “oppressing” women, but recognizing that God vested males with moral responsibilities and the equipment to deal with it. Women are relieved of the duty, and should not presume to judge on fundamental morality. It’s not that the Fall is blamed on women, but that Eve’s error revealed something of the nature of femininity. Women have tremendous authority over the household, and particularly child rearing. Westerners want to ignore that women ruled over the child’s life until around age nine, at which point a child becomes a social asset for covenant living. It’s roughly the point when gender differences start to matter. Between weaning and age nine, mama shares authority with the papa. However, up to weaning, the child’s life and death was mama’s business alone.

Oh, how blind is Western Christianity! You’ll notice the Bible ignores our Western political boundaries and many of our primary issues of contention.

Back to the symbolism in Zechariah: I want you to notice that virtuous women remove the threat posed by this small woman in the basket. The wings represent power to take action in this case; it is theirs to handle. The chick in the basket is small because she diminishes womanhood. She represents what would have been feminism in that age, making a deity of something that perverts feminine morality. The angelic voice tells Zechariah that she is going back to Mesopotamia where she belongs. Someone will surely build a temple to her there. Her cult has no place in the Restoration (Post-Exile). It was a bad influence brought back from their Babylonian Captivity; we know this from other sources. The heavy lid of lead was to make sure the little goddess didn’t escape. The net result of the passage is a prophetic call to women to recognize their moral duty under the covenant to purge their own ranks of this threat.

You’ll notice that the little goddess isn’t named properly, but simply called Wickedness (Hebrew feminine rishah, a moral injustice). That’s because the whole idea of female deity flies in the face of God revealing Himself as a father figure — not the mama. It’s not as if God has no feminine characteristics, if you look for them, but the whole idea is not that He’s male, but that male is the default gender in a fallen world. That’s why Genesis makes a point of saying Adam was created and Even was built from him. Ancient Hebrew didn’t ask the silly questions we do, but they could have told you that God transcends gender. The justification for avoiding a feminine deity is all the trouble caused by permitting women to take up priesthood and worshiping whatever they chose. Even the New Testament makes room for women in every other church office. If you see that as oppression, it’s your problem. You are the one who is missing the point; God came before us and clearly revealed His requirements after the Fall.

Females are fallen, too. Male and female both have their characteristic weaknesses and redemption means embracing God’s call to face them according to where He placed you.

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Pacem Maius

Posted on May 3, 2015 by ehurst

(Latin for “the peace of May”)

We’ve been having a peaceful time the past week or so. The car is working, though it still needs a new wheel bearing and we can’t seem to get the cooling fan to run on low speed. It works at high speed if you do something like turn on the A/C, but otherwise it doesn’t kick in until the engine gets a bit warm. Still, it’s good to be able to drive it some without all the advance notice and arrangements with a borrowed vehicle.

I’m spending a lot of time with my mountain bike. The hybrid has succumbed once again to the plague on all hybrids — pinch flats. That is, because of the crappy design of most rims, the tubes tend to slip down into the narrow channel for the spoke ends and blow out. You can’t patch next to the valve stem, so it requires buying a new tube. The cheaper tubes don’t work at all, blowing out in less than a day most of the time. In other words, the hybrid is just a shoddy design all the way around. I regret buying it. I’ve given up on it lately and have been riding the mountain bike everywhere. It takes a different riding posture. But while the mountain bike is a little heavier and offers a bit more roll resistance, it goes more places with little risk of damage from rough surfaces or terrain.

There seems to be little in the news that provokes a prophetic response in me right now. The house has been quiet while my son and his brood are off on some SCA weekend gathering. The temperatures have been such that we leave the windows open day and night and really enjoy the fresh air moving through. Most years it’s not like that very often nor for very long here in Central Oklahoma. We typically have serious tornadoes about this time of year, but it’s been surprisingly cool with no massive hot and moist air fronts charging up from the Gulf to stir up storms.

Still, I can’t seem to shake this sense that summer will be rough for a lot of folks. I can’t estimate what other kinds of turmoil might be coming, but I was altogether serious about my warning that we might be facing some serious ugly crap on the Internet. Even if it’s not much to you personally, you’d be surprised how much of our business and government activity now is utterly dependent on the Internet working properly. It’s as if something is whispering in my ear that I should enjoy this vacation, because my computer ministry will explode later.

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Psalm 48

Posted on May 2, 2015 by ehurst

The third in the praise trilogy, we have now the emphasis on Zion. We’ve seen God as Protector, as King, and now His earthly capital reflects His glory.

Depending on the particular translation, there is reference to Mount Zaphon or simply the North. Scholars say it is the modern Mount Aqraa, standing near the Mediterranean Sea in far southern Turkey, near the border with Syria. In this context, the reference is not so much a place or a direction, but a symbol of the ancient mythological mountain of the gods. It looms large in Ugaritic legends as the place the gods gathered. In Hebrew thinking, whatever gods might gather there were subject to Jehovah.

We can but guess what ancient Jerusalem looked like when this was written, but we do know the place was expanding quickly under David. It served as a prominent landmark and quickly drew traffic as the royal city of what was then the strongest kingdom in that part of the world. Should we imagine this was published anytime after Solomon built the Temple, that would have been a striking image from a great distance. There is no literal comparison with the topography of Mount Zaphon, but Zion was a magnet for people passing through, not to mention a proud symbol of the Hebrew people. If you are going to seek out an earthly manifestation of the divine, this is the right place.

Thus, we are treated to Hebrew hyperbole about kings assembling only to be stunned and cowed by what they see. Come and see the mighty fortress and throne of our God whose feats are world renowned! It was only just that people at the far reaches of known lands would worship Him. You would naturally expect the residents to be proud and happy in the shadow of their God.

So the psalmist invites everyone to see the sights, to view it from every angle. Then come inside and inspect the protective features. Go and take to the farthest lands stories of this mighty throne of the Lord of all Creation.

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Computer Pastor Message

Posted on May 1, 2015 by ehurst

This is a really good time to make sure you have backups of all your important files. In fact, it’s not a bad idea to back up the whole system every week if you can afford the external storage space.

Here’s some background: It’s more than a question of good practices in general, and it’s not about silly conspiracy theories. Snowden is not the only leaker out there. We have at least a half-dozen who are releasing information about NSA and friends and how their activities threaten computer use, among other things. Perhaps you are aware that the allied spying services already have several ways to crack your computer regardless of the operating system. And they are always crafting new attacks.

This is on top of several ways to simply infect the hardware itself. It’s called “firmware” which is a term that covers all the programming code that manufacturers put in things like disk drives and motherboards. If your hardware has any kind of snoopware, you may never know. Every time the hardware gets power, the subverted hardware code goes into action before the operating system even wakes up. Most of the time, your backups don’t pick up firmware, so your backups are generally safe from that.

Still, you may have heard that some of the targeted viruses those agencies created (like Stuxnet) did manage to slip out of the target systems and spread to other unintended victims. That’s part of how they were discovered by anti-virus researchers. They know how to take this stuff apart, but they aren’t the only ones who can do this. What if someone with no government agency connection re-engineers one of these things for some other purpose? This has happened at least once.

Researchers who can generally be trusted to tell the truth are actually worried right now. Several of them are chatting amongst themselves about evidence that, whether government or criminal, someone is about to try something new. At least three spying agencies have let slip they would very much like to force every computer user on the planet to keep a backdoor open just for them. Every time they suggest we do something like this for them, they have always gone behind our backs and done something similar without any particular legal authority to do so. We have reason to believe they are already trying to foist their spyware on every computer in the world.

Given that they’ve been snooping on our phones that way for years and lying about it, we can be sure that this by itself is no particular threat. That is, if you understand how the Internet and digital communications work, you know that broad-based encryption schemes never did work properly. You are a fool if you even pretend you can keep anything private once it enters a digital format. Privacy was never really possible, so get over that.

The real threat is complete loss of control and loss of data. Most of that data represents a lot of invested time and resources. Then there’s the purely sentimental stuff like baby shots from ten years ago. Digital artwork, anyone? If you don’t have backups, it can hurt. Some of this spying software is, or can easily be made, the kind of thing that erases your data.

Of course, more sinister are the grander notions they have of taking absolute control over networking itself. The likes of the NSA will do anything and everything to have unlimited access, and their friends in other agencies will be glad to interfere if they don’t like what you are doing. There are factors in the nature of the Internet protocols that limit their interference, but if they can gain that control at the level of your computer itself, they will not hesitate. At some point, these targeted tools will become ubiquitous as soon as they imagine they have the means to monitor all that traffic through management software. I can assure you that they already own the hardware for that kind of management, and they have direct access to the Internet backbone.

I’m not going to make wild promises that one operating system is better than another at resisting this stuff. You already know they use Linux and BSD themselves for security reasons, along with some OSes you’ve never heard of, but most of their work is in a Unix-like environment. You and I don’t have their paranoid expertise in taking full advantage of the security options possible with Unix. Still, my point is not to sell you Linux; you use what makes you comfortable and gets the work done. They can crack Linux, too (though it’s not nearly so easy as with Windows). Most of us have no defense.

Whatever it is they plan can easily go wrong for you and I. That’s the real problem. They aren’t gods and they have made huge mistakes before. You cannot trust their motives nor their competence. All the more so with those more aggressive about “law enforcement” (it never was what you have been told it was) — they seldom have the well-rounded technology expertise because they don’t care about protecting anyone. They care only about getting the control they want, and they are stupid enough to destroy the Internet in the process.

Stop and think about this: Your average big-department police “computer expert” doesn’t understand well enough to use even common free tools like Hiren’s Bootdisk — something I use all the time in my computer ministry (download it here). I’m just a duffer, someone who probably wouldn’t qualify to work in an actual computer business. I can’t count how often I’ve seen direct evidence that the best and brightest of most police departments knows less than I do. And by direct experience I can tell you that the average FBI agent knows only what their superiors tell them. Most of them are frightfully incompetent, and they have the authority to destroy your life. Really smart people don’t go into government service.

The danger is not what they are trying to do, but what is all too likely to happen instead.

Addenda: Two pertinent comments found on Slashdot that I’ll summarize.

First — Giving the “good guys” a key does not prevent someone in the agency from abusing it or losing it to outsiders. The good guys are not good enough, even should we assume they ever were good guys.

Second — Sometimes the pure profit motive is in our favor. The whole freaking world knows the spying agencies are a threat, and if the vendors don’t fight back by refusing to create that backdoor, the world will move to another supplier. Somebody somewhere who doesn’t like government and has better credibility will tell on them.

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Proverbs 10

Posted on April 30, 2015 by ehurst

We begin with an early collection of proverbs Solomon heard or spoke himself. Scripture text is in italics.

1. A wise son makes a glad father; but a foolish son is the sorrow of his mother. Whatever sorrows life might bring, children that tend to operate in moral wisdom can make life bearable for their parents. Children who turn out to be self-indulgent jerks make a mother want to hide her face public.

2. Treasures of wickedness profit nothing; but righteousness delivers from death. Whatever immoral living buys you isn’t worth having. It opens entry ways for demonic presence. Even if there is a significant time lag in the results, don’t be fooled. Pay the price for moral living and avoid the traps.

3. The LORD will not allow the soul of the righteous to go hungry; but He casts away the desire of the wicked. In Hebrew thought, the “soul” carried a different meaning than Western clinical assumptions. It symbolized the entire experience of life in this world. Embracing Jehovah’s revelation offers the best life possible simply because it is the key to understanding how His moral character is woven into all things. Those who ignore His revelation will find themselves ignored, in the sense that they become background noise and mere scenery as His hand works in history. Whatever priorities the wicked have won’t register with God.

4. He who deals with a lazy hand becomes poor; but the hand of the hard worker makes rich. The Hebrew word translated “lazy” here implies deceit and moral laxity. This isn’t a capitalist maxim because it’s all about morals, not money. Those who ignore the moral meaning of their actions will never have enough, but whatever the righteous gain will seem like a mountain of blessings.

5. He who gathers in summer is a wise son; but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who causes shame. We see here a common figure of speech that shows up in Jesus’ comment about “white unto harvest” — keep your eyes open to divine opportunities. Don’t be fooled by what your mere senses tell you, but keep track of the moral order built into Creation. Gird yourself to exert your best efforts when the time comes.

6. Blessings are on the head of the just; but violence covers the mouth of the wicked. This is a play on the Hebrew concept of covering. It weaves together the sense of sins removed from God’s sight so that He withholds wrath, along with proper submission to divine authority, as well as those He appoints as human authority. It’s also a symbol of wealth, power and authority of your own as you operate under God’s revelation. You would conspicuously display God’s favor and blessings as your “covering.” Thus, even the chatter of the morally indigent would ooze with threats to God’s provision for life.

7. The memory of the just is blessed; but the name of the wicked shall rot. This has nothing to do with official propaganda and our modern social orthodoxy. In the minds of God’s faithful people, someone who strives to walk in God’s divine justice will be remembered fondly. Regardless of human accomplishments, anyone who couldn’t be bothered with moral character would be remembered with distaste, if remembered at all.

8. The wise in heart will receive commandments; but a babbling fool shall fall. Keep in mind that Hebrew culture presumes the heart is the seat of moral discernment, a higher form of awareness than the brain. Thus, a willful commitment to God’s moral character means one would listen. But it’s a play on words; it also means God will most certainly take time to communicate with that kind of person, and promote them in His divine service. Such people were marked by reticence and contemplation. Someone who can’t wait to spill the contents of every thought that crosses their minds won’t have time to listen to God and He will give them enough rope to hang themselves.

9. He who walks uprightly walks surely; but he who twists his ways shall be known. Typical of Hebrew proverbs, this is loaded with puns. It’s a play on the image of a man hiking on a path. One who chooses to walk in moral justice will exhibit a strong stride. If he is noticed at all, others will admire him, but he draws no attention to himself. Someone lacking in moral orientation will tend to wander off course and become notorious for getting in the way, for showing up at the worst time and place, etc.

10. He who winks the eye causes sorrow; but a babbling fool shall fall. A variation on wording seen previously, we see that context is everything in Hebrew language. This points out two kinds of evil. The first is intentionally ambiguous — either a narrowed squinting of eyes in someone plotting evil or someone using subtle signals to a secret confederate. Either way, they cause everyone else trouble, but the point is the secrecy of their evil plans. At the other extreme is someone who causes trouble largely to himself because he never bothers to keep anything private. Secrecy is generally immoral, but privacy is not.

11. The mouth of a righteous one is a well of life; but violence covers the mouth of the wicked. Listen to what people say, and observe the moral results. A righteous person is known for making life better because the things they say elicit a more vivid moral clarity. They always have a cool drink for the thirsty soul. It won’t matter much what a wicked person says, because their whole orientation is morally destructive.

12. Hatred stirs up fights, but love covers all sins. Another example of common figures of speech, including the concept of moral covering. Identifying people as your enemies will awaken constant warfare. Giving people space to fail, even to the point of shrugging off their expressed hatred for you, will keep conflicts asleep under the covers. Here we see an explicit promotion of social stability.

13. In the lips of him who has understanding, wisdom is found; but a rod is for the back of him who is without understanding. We have a typical Hebrew pun here. The word for “lips” is ambiguous, meaning a part of the facial anatomy, but also the sharp boundary between, say, water and land, or even a linguistic boundary between nations. Wisdom is expected from a man who discerns moral boundaries (“understanding”) and his words tend to reflect that clarity. However, an empty heart (“without understanding”) fills the whole being of a fool with ambiguity (“rod” as in branching) and he deserves frequent beatings with a rod.

14. Wise ones store up knowledge; but the mouth of the foolish is near ruin. How do you invest your life? Moral wisdom causes you to gather and hold truth, instead of chasing mere material wealth. Again, this implies reticence and contemplation, versus the moral idiot who can’t shut up as he pursues mere fleshly comfort and is never far from losing what little his life is worth.

15. The rich man’s wealth is his strong city; the ruin of the poor is their poverty. Paralleling the previous verse, this is more subtle than it appears. In what do you trust? Whether in literal or some figurative meaning, make the most of what you have. Count your blessings, because if you see yourself as deprived, life isn’t worth living.

16. The labor of the righteous tends to life; the fruit of the wicked tends to sin. The word “tend” is not in the Hebrew and the ambiguity is intentional. The word translated “labor” implies the wages of such labor. This is as much about moral accounting as anything else. Righteousness is work and its wages purchase a life worth living, while wickedness grows wildly like poisonous fruit that slowly kills you.

17. He who keeps instruction is in the way of life; but he who refuses reproof goes astray. Much of the imagery is lost in translation. One who builds a protective hedge around the hard lessons of life learned by bad consequences will walk in God’s shadow. When you abandon those lessons and refuse to learn from them, you can’t help but wander in moral wilderness, where you can fall off a cliff or be robbed, or eaten by wild beasts.

18. He who hides hatred with lying lips, and he who speaks a slander, is a fool. If someone is honest in labeling you an enemy, it gives you a chance to seek ways to keep the peace. Someone who seeks to hide their enmity has no interest in keeping the peace. Sooner or later, they’ll stir up trouble by what they say about their perceived enemies. This is tied to the folly of imagining that it’s your duty to enforce your personal truth on others, versus the wisdom of “live and let live.”

19. In the multitude of words, sin is not lacking; but he who holds back his lips is wise. This has nothing to do with a teaching or storytelling. Rather, it refers to how one behaves in social settings. Hebrew language lent itself to expansive ideas expressed through minimal words. The idea was not to nail down precise meanings, but quite the opposite — to encourage contemplation and reflection. Thus, real men of wisdom managed to say a lot with few words. People who rattled on endlessly were usually up to no good. This is actually a proverb encouraging proverbs.

20. The tongue of the just is as choice silver; the heart of the wicked is worth little. Almost on the same theme as the previous verse, we have more Hebrew puns. The word translated “tongue” is also a figure of speech for flames as one might see in a foundry, as well as an ingot of metal. Having defined justice as consistency with God’s moral character, we should expect even the words of the just to be as precious as silver in covenant life. Again, Hebrew culture saw the heart as the seat of the will and moral discernment, so a moral reprobate can’t offer much because his figurative heart is inactive. If you tore his literal heart from his chest, would he miss it?

21. The lips of the righteous feed many; but fools die for lack of wisdom. A little dry humor in this one. The righteous is the image of a bird feeding nestlings. A fool wouldn’t recognize life-giving truth if it bit him.

22. The blessing of the LORD itself makes rich, and He adds no sorrow with it. This reminds us not to blame God for our fallen condition. Whatever God grants us is always in our best interests, and whatever is in our best interest always comes from God. His revelation and the blessings bundled with it are our only hope in this life. Blame your fallen nature for any sorrow you experience.

23. To work out evil devices is as laughter to a fool; so wisdom is to a man of understanding. Most Westerners miss the point on this one. What amuses you betrays your moral sensibilities, but this isn’t about a mere sense of humor. This points at where you invest your energies. There is such a thing as harmless a practical joke, but if you can’t empathize with the victim, your prank is harmful and hateful. Contrast this with someone who is amused by investing his energies in striving to understand God’s moral character.

24. What the wicked fears shall come upon him; but the desire of the righteous shall be granted. Again, cultural subtlety lost in translation comes into play here. This illustrates what we see in the Eden narrative, that Adam and Eve were no longer willing to meet with God in the Garden after their sin. We shall all face God at the time of His choosing. If we cower from His holiness, His wrath will find us. If we long to see His mercy and grace, He will show us His loving Fatherly face.

25. As the storm passes, so the wicked is no more; but the righteous is an everlasting foundation. The context is not secular life in general, but life under the Covenant. For inscrutable reasons, God may grant a season of sorrow allowing the wicked to hold power. However, within a covenant life, such will pass briefly. Those who seek God’s moral character will establish a presence that outlasts their own span of life.

26. Like vinegar to the teeth, and like smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to those who send him. This has a dual message. Don’t trust someone who can’t be bothered to care about your wishes. By the same token, don’t be a self-centered jerk or you might find yourself out of a job.

27. The fear of the LORD prolongs days; but the years of the wicked shall be shortened. Again, the context is within the Covenant. However, you should recognize the subjective element that does matter in moral reckoning. When you embrace God’s revelation and His Lordship as if He were your feudal master, however much life He grants seems plenty. The concept of longevity also indicates fullness in other senses. On the other hand, if you are trying to game the system for your appetites, you’ll always believe you were short-changed.

28. The hope of the righteous is gladness; but the hope of the wicked shall perish. Essentially this is a restatement of the previous verse, with another play on words. The righteous patiently awaits, sight unseen, what he believes God will grant, persisting in hope for joy. The wicked is reasonably certain he’ll get what he wants by his scheming, but it will wander off and die.

29. The way of the LORD is strength to the upright; but ruin is to the workers of iniquity. The translation misses something. If your habitual path is a life adhering to God’s revelation, that life itself is a mighty fortress. If you give yourself to any other moral system, your life will be a moral shambles, like the dusty rubble of a crushed castle.

30. The righteous shall never be moved; and the wicked shall not live in the earth. This restates the previous verse. Righteous moral orientation makes your life stable, but moral indolence leaves you rootless.

31. The mouth of the just brings forth wisdom; but the perverse tongue shall be cut out. We have here another case of double intention. People should seek wise men of moral strength; speak wisely and people will listen. Don’t tolerate someone who prattles folly; blather like an idiot and no one will take you seriously.

32. The lips of the righteous know what is pleasing; but the mouth of the wicked what is contrary. Yet again, this parallels the previous verse. Here, what is “pleasing” pleases God, and by implication should please the Covenant People. You can detect wickedness by talk that perverts revelation.

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Proverbs: Section 2

Posted on April 29, 2015 by ehurst

Section 2 — Chapters 10-29

In this section we will generally quote the proverbs verbatim, followed by an explanation. The Scripture text will taken be Green’s Modern King James Version (MKJV).

Let’s take a moment to review a critical concept: A constant source of sorrow for God was the very human tendency to so focus on basic physical appetites that they made no effort to understand the deeper demands of the Covenant. Even in a culture steeped in mysticism such as the Hebrew, standing in the midst of a whole range of civilizations built on mysticism, there would always be those who lived in their bellies.

The image of wisdom is not simply pragmatism, but of a deep commitment to divine justice. It required a willingness to sacrifice some personal comfort for the sake of conforming with a cosmic moral fabric. It also made ample room for multiple levels of reasoning, with conflicting demands, to arrive at a contextual conclusion as the best manifestation of justice. Very few people of that world could imagine our modern Western preference for linear reasoning and concrete solutions. The very best answer in holy living was often not at all pragmatic as we might view it.

Further, our society tends to disparage the one most important factor in the blessings of God: communal living in extended family households. Even with all the raucous petty disputes typical of Middle Eastern family life, this was a form of social stability we can’t easily understand. Yet this is very much what God had in mind when He made people. Thus, we could summarize the ultimate sign of God’s favor is social stability, and the ultimate evil is anything that threatens it.

Don’t read Western reasoning into these short epigrams. They presume the ultimate good is making God smile, that life cannot be better than His moral favor, regardless what that might mean in practical terms.

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