Tiny Devotional for Wednesday, 07-12-2023

A great good morning to all my friends and neighbors in Internet Land! And to family members who have dropped by, if you don’t have grandkids with you, you BETTER have a good excuse.

Better is he who is lightly esteemed and has a servant
Than he who honors himself and lacks bread.
Proverbs 12:9, NASB

The word translated as ‘servant’ is  עֶבֶד (ebed),  and it means ‘slave,’ not ‘hired man’; the word for ‘hireling’ is שָׂכִיר  (śāḵîr). Completely different words for completely different things.

I don’t know any slave owners, and I’m striving against launching into a tirade against the institution of slavery; more than half of my family had enslaved ancestors, so it’s personal. HOWEVER: the abomination that we instituted in what became the US is quite different than the form practiced among the Hebrews. For more information, do a word search in a digital Bible for ‘slave + free’.  

When I’m able to detach a bit from my revulsion, I see a verse about the value of work and humility; that message is also consistent with the rest of the chapter.

It is implicit in the statement ‘has a servant’ that the lightly esteemed person is capable of supporting the servant. That’s a pretty big deal, particularly since it appears that starvation-level poverty was the reason for the enslavement in the first place. 

Because I’m tired of chasing and documenting Hebrew, I’m not discussing how ‘of low esteem’ might also mean ‘humble;’ but:

It’s better to be humble and be able to support someone else, than to be boastful and not be able to feed yourself. 

And that’s my bottom line. I’ve been at this task for HOURS, and I just can’t write any more. 

Peace be on your household.