Tiny Devotional for Wednesday, 11-24-2021

A great good morning to all my friends and neighbors in Internet Land! And to family members who have dropped by, let us not conflate turkey with thankfulness.

One who plans to do evil,
People will call a schemer.
Proverbs 24:8, NASB


On first glance, this is sort of bland wisdom. That’s really not like most of the wisdom in Proverbs, which I have found to BITE. So, I went to multiple resources to get a good sense of this verse, starting with the verse in Hebrew, then Google translate, and THEN, I got into the heavy hitters.

My first read:  “if you plot, people call you a plotter.” Even the footnote (I didn’t include it) didn’t add depth.

The Hebrew for this verse is:

 מְחַשֵּׁ֥ב לְהָרֵ֑עַ ל֝֗וֹ בַּֽעַל־מְזִמּ֥וֹת יִקְרָֽאוּ׃

and the English translation for that is a bit richer. Instead of ‘schemer,’ we get ‘master of conspiracies.’ Better, but we aren’t there yet, at least in my opinion.

I wish I could give you a definitive source citation for the next answer, but, alas: TWO foreign languages conspire to confuse: Hebrew, and...HTML! The best I can do for you is point you to “The David Citadel,” WITH THE WARNING that if you google it in English, you will get mostly hits about the hotel in Jerusalem. 

However, I did find their analysis, which I here paraphrase:

Even if not carried out, evil plots will be exposed; you will be disgraced, and named an evil thinker.

And THERE is the bite I was looking for: 
All that is hidden now will be revealed; maybe in this life, maybe at the judgment seat. 

It doesn’t mean we have to like everybody and what they do; just that we shouldn’t work at hating them.

Peace be on your household.

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