Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Proverbs 11:27-31
The Righteous Seek What Is Good, Flourish Because They have True Life, Producing Its Fruit, And Will Be Recompensed on Earth. The Unrighteous Search After What Is Bad, Trust in Riches, Are Brought Low, And Also Receive Their Due Recompense (Proverbs 11:27).
The ‘the one who --' of Proverbs 11:26 now spurs a series of ‘the one who --' statements (in translation). ‘The one who diligently seeks good' (Proverbs 11:27 a), ‘the one who searches after evil' (Proverbs 11:27 b), ‘the one who trusts in his riches' (Proverbs 11:28) and ‘the one who troubles his own house' (Proverbs 11:29), followed by a secondary ‘the one who is wise captures hearts'. Thus there are two positives and three negatives in chiastic form We could put them together and note that the one who diligently seeks good captures hearts, and the one who searches after evil and trusts in his riches troubles his own house. Both sentiments are true. Seeking good has positive benefits, searching after evil and trusting in riches has negative consequences.
These verses are presented chiastically:
A He who diligently seeks good, seeks favour, but he who searches after evil, it will come to him (Proverbs 11:27).
B He who trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will flourish like the green leaf (Proverbs 11:28).
C He who troubles his own house will inherit the wind (Proverbs 11:29 a).
C And the foolish will be servant to the wise of heart (Proverbs 11:29 b).
B The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who is wise captures hearts (nephesh - men's inner man) (Proverbs 11:30).
A Behold, the righteous will be recompensed in the earth, how much more the wicked and the sinner!' (Proverbs 11:31)
Note that in A the diligent doer of good seek favour, while the searcher after evil finds evil, and in the parallel the righteous will be recompensed, as will the doer of evil. In B the righteous flourish like a green leaf, and in the parallel the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life. Centrally in C the one who troubles his own house inherits nothing, and in the parallel he becomes a servant.
The contrasts here all connect with each other. On the one hand the righteous, the wise, diligently seek what is good (wholesome and morally right), they do not trust in riches but flourish because they have abundant life, they enjoy prosperity (they hire bondsmen), they bring blessing to everyone (their fruit is a tree of life), and they will be recompensed on the earth. In contrast are the unrighteous, the unwise, who search after evil (what is unwholesome and morally wrong), they trust in riches rather than YHWH, they bring down trouble on their own house, and lose what they have and themselves become bondservants, and they receive their due recompense.
‘He who diligently seeks good, seeks favour,
But he who searches after evil, it will come to him.'
This proverb can be compared with Proverbs 11:23, ‘the desire of the righteous is only good, but the expectation of the wicked is wrath'. But here the desire has turned into action, he not only desires ‘only good' (in contrast with those whose motives are dubious), but diligently seeks ‘good', a good which has more reference to positive public good (compare Proverbs 3:27), for he is seeking the welfare of others in contrast with the one who seeks to harm others. Furthermore he here obtains a benefit, the favour of YHWH. The idea of the latter is not that he is diligently seeking good in order to obtain favour, but that by diligently seeking good he is, as an unsought consequence, seeking favour. God is such that his seeking good necessarily means that he is seeking favour with God. He is bringing himself under His good pleasure.
In contrast the one who searches after evil, looking for evil things to do (compare Proverbs 1:16) will discover that evil comes to him. Instead of receiving the favour of God he will come under His approbation, and in some way suffer accordingly. His name will rot (Proverbs 10:7), he will fall (Proverbs 10:8; Proverbs 10:10; Proverbs 11:5), he will experience his worst fears (Proverbs 10:24), calamity will come on him and he will be no more (Proverbs 10:25), his expectation will perish (Proverbs 10:28), he will be destroyed (Proverbs 11:3), he will die (Proverbs 11:19), he will experience wrath (Proverbs 11:23).
‘He who trusts in his riches will fall,
But the righteous will flourish like the green leaf.'
Here the one who trusts in riches is paralleled with the one who searches after evil (Proverbs 11:27) and the one who troubles his own house (Proverbs 11:29). Part of his search after evil (wrongdoing, what is not good and wholesome) is in order to build up illicit riches (illicit because he is contrasted with the righteous). Compare Proverbs 1:11. And like the one who searches after wrongdoing he will fall by his own wickedness (Proverbs 3:5). The context may suggest that, unlike the green leaf, he falls as an autumn leaf that has crinkled and died. Or the reference might be to the fall of him and his house (Proverbs 11:29), or to falling by the sword, or to a building collapsing, or to falling to one's death from a mountain pathway.
Like so many he thought that if he could become rich his position would be secure. But he was sadly wrong. And by his activities in search of riches he has troubled his own house. His own family will be involved in the consequences of what he has done (compare Proverbs 11:17).
In contrast the righteous will flourish like the green leaf, the leaf which is attached to the tree and receives full life from it. They will remain a vital and life-producing part of the fruitbearing tree which is true Israel (compare Jeremiah 11:16). And they will do this because they heed the word of God, ‘His leaf will not wither and whatever he does will prosper' (Psalms 1:3).
(Whilst leaves are never elsewhere said to fall (naphal), but rather to wither (nabal) there is a reference to ‘falling' figs in Nahum 3:12 (naphal); compare also Revelation 6:13. Elsewhere falling leaves and falling figs are both described in terms of nabal (Isaiah 34:4). So the two can be used synonymously. Thus there is nothing unlikely in the idea of this signifying leaves falling. Whilst normally leaves are said to wither and die, the emphasis here is not on the leaf withering, but on it losing connection with the its source of life (the tree)).
‘He who troubles his own house will inherit the wind,
And the foolish will be servant to the wise of heart.'
The one who ‘troubles his own house', by searching after evil (Proverbs 11:27) or trusting falsely in riches rather than in YHWH (Proverbs 11:28), will inherit absolutely nothing. To inherit the wind is to inherit what is insubstantial and disappears as quickly as it comes. It is to inherit nothing substantial. To ‘trouble' is ‘to bring down disasters on'. Ahab claimed that Elijah was a troubler of Israel in consequence of the drought, and Elijah replied that it was rather he who had troubled Israel (1 Kings 18:17).
In those days, when men sank into dire poverty, the only way in which they could survive was by selling themselves into bondage. Thus as a consequence of disasters they could lose their wealth and descend from being landowners to bondsmen. That is the picture here. They (the fools, the unrighteous) have, with their false wisdom, lost everything and have become the servants of others (the wise, the righteous), those truly wise of heart, whose house is, of course, untroubled.
‘The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life,
And he who is wise captures hearts (nephesh -the breath, the inner man).'
The crowning blessing of the righteous is that they become a blessing to others. Their fruit is a tree of life, a lifegiving tree. By their lives, the ‘natural' product of their walking in wisdom with God, they are a source of life and wellbeing to others. Through their wisely lived lives they win the hearts of men. We translate ‘hearts' because that gives the sense. It does not strictly mean ‘winning souls' in an evangelistic sense, although that is undoubtedly one of its outcomes. If we would ‘win men's souls' we must first win men's hearts. Nephesh indicates the inner man, the ‘breath of life'. Jesus may well have been taking up this thought when He said to His disciples, ‘from now on you will catch men' (Luke 5:10).
The reference to the tree of life indicates that God's purpose for the spiritually wise, who follow God's wisdom, is that they will play their part in restoring what has been lost by the fall. And they do it by attracting others to God's way of wisdom. It is part of the process of restoration. We too are to be a tree of life to men and women as we attract men to Christ by the beauty of our lives, and of course by proclaiming His wisdom.
‘Behold, the righteous will be recompensed in the earth,
How much more the wicked and the sinner!'
The subsection ends with an assurance that all will be recompensed, whether for good or ill, because of what they reveal themselves to be. The righteous are not recompensed because somehow they have deserved a reward for their goodness. They are recompensed because having responded to God and His goodness and His wisdom, He has made them good. It is because they have ‘found favour' (Proverbs 11:27). It is because their trust is in Him rather than in uncertain riches (implied in Proverbs 11:28; compare Proverbs 3:5). It is because their lives have become fruitful (Proverbs 11:30). God will therefore respond by giving them wholesome lives, prosperity and a life to come (Proverbs 3:16).
There may, however, also be included here the idea that even the righteous man falls short and requires chastening. See for example Proverbs 3:11. This would explain even more fully the ‘how much more'. If the righteous man has to be chastened, how much more will punishment fall on the unrighteous. This verse is cited from LXX in 1 Peter 4:18, ‘if the righteous scarcely be saved, where will the ungodly and sinner appear?'
In contrast the wicked and sinner will also be recompensed, and the details of that recompense have been out lined above, ending inevitably in death. It is even more certain that the unrighteous will receive their due recompense, for that is rooted in the very moral fabric of creation. To deliberately partake of evil is to come under sentence of death. Life is God's gift, but death is man's deserts.