Meditation #2 on the passage Proverbs 3:5-6
5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. 6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. (KJV)
As in the previous post, Trust and Lean Not (1), our focus will be on the middle phrase in the above instruction, and more specifically the words “unto thine own understanding.“
Let’s begin with the word translated “understanding” in the KJV and most other translations. The word stems from “under” and “stand” as in a place where I will make a stand, or claim. The “under” does not convey a spatial relationship, as in “underneath,” but that I am operating within or from a framework that I hold to be trustworthy and, so, a reliable guide for decision-making or reaching judgments. We have related phrases such as “I will take my stand” (sometimes expressed as “I’m prepared to die on this hill”) or, the converse, “you have no standing here” (meaning no right to impose your opinion in some present controversy).
The ancient Greek translation of the OT, the Septuagint (LXX), has the words “epi sos sophia,” where “sophia” is the important word from Greek culture that is here translated “understanding,” and “sos” meaning “you,” and “epi” meaning “upon.” Let’s drill down further.
Sophia (or sophos) was one of the most-important words of the ancient Greek culture, epitomized by the writings and influence of Socrates (ca. 400 B.C.), and his pupil Plato (who did all the writing of Socrates), and in turn his pupil Aristotle, and in a different way by Aristotle’s pupil Alexander the Great who spread such culture far and wide (ca. 320 B.C.). The influence of this chain of people was immense. It is still a widely-held dictum that all of Western Philosophy, to this day, is but a footnote to them (or specifically Plato, i.e. Socrates & Plato). Even in the context of Christian theology, it is said that Augustine ‘baptized’ Plato (hence, Socrates), and Thomas Aquinas likewise Aristotle, where ‘baptize’ means they extracted the truth(s) of God’s creation this ancient wise men discovered and unveiled it more fully, more accurately in the context of God’s acts of creation.
Well, what then was the significance of sophia? Whole libraries could not hold all the words that have been written to answer such question. Essentially, it means this: having sophia provide my full, fixed, apprehension corresponding to some reality, and usually a deep aspect of some particular reality, that we usually characterize as a full understanding. Let us consider perhaps the most-famous Greek allegory, that of Plato’s Cave. But first, let’s think about “caves.”
In the ancient world especially around bodies of water such as the Mediterranean Sea, caves were common, eroded out of limestone rock from rains and underground springs. They were important places of refuge, even long term residences, providing ‘shelter from the storm,’ and a place to protect oneself from marauders, human and animal. In recent times the caves known as the Qumran Caves, located near the Dead Sea in Israel, were found to be the location of massive collections of Hebrew Bible manuscripts dating to the time of the New Testament.
Inside caves, fires provided warmth and light, as well as a place for the cooking of food. So, it was well-known that looking away from fires at cave wall presents shadows on a wall of the cave of whatever between a fire and the wall, including shapes one might make with one’s hand and fingers. The idea of Plato’s Cave arises from this shadow phenomena in the following way. Plato asks us to imagine all of us somehow locked in a line only able to look at a cave wall before us. Behind us, there is some kind of fire that we cannot, or will not, turn to see. Between the fire and our backs is “reality;” one can think of people and things, but it would include an acting out of some kind of sequence of events, none of which do we directly apprehend (because we cannot look back and apprehend it directly). We see only the shadows on the cave wall we are chained to face. In such Platonic Cave, what do we “understand?” Well, it could be something, but it could never be the essence of “reality,” and it is likely to be completely false, though we are likely to believe that our beliefs are “true,” fully corresponding to the “reality” we cannot directly apprehend.
Ah, but all is not lost, because there are philosophers, such as Plato, who unchain themselves, turn and see the reality, or extending the metaphor more fully, walk out of the cave and see all of reality, who can then return to those who for whatever reason remain imprisoned to see only shadows, and explain the true realities. (The very word “philosophy,” is a junction of the Greek word philo, meaning “love,” and sophos, our word here; so “philosophy” means love of sophos).
So, the attainment of sophos was greatly important as a life’s work, and required the tutelage of a teacher / guide, who was commonly known as a sophist. But, still, what does one attain by such sophos? Let’s think of some simple everyday examples. When one transitioned from elementary or middle school to high school, one was dropped into a place that had a different reality than our prior experience. We may remember the hazing or confusion as students early in our first year as we tried to navigate this new world. A similar experience occurs in transitioning to college, or one’s first job, or any new job, or moving to a new city, or taking possession of a new vehicle (bike, car, boat, or as a passenger a subway passage or airplane flight). In each of these contexts we are like the ones chained in the cave who only have perceived the “reality” of such new context in shadows. We will, accordingly, ask for advice, research online, read signage or manuals, up to a point whereby we reach a comprehension, a sophos, that grasps the reality of the new environment / context.
Let’s pull on this a little further. The world is full of “facts.” Learning can be thought of as piling more and facts into one’s head,. Here’s one: the Nile River is the longest river in the world. Is sophos only a huge list of all such “facts?” No, not even close. Were it to be so, then computer storage, or the internet itself, would be the most sophos ‘being’ in existence. Grasping the ultimate reality of, say, the Nile River, entails something much more than knowing a factoid as to its length (which factoid now appears to be false, as it seems, alas, that the Amazon River is actually a little longer than the Nile). The prosperity of the ancient Egyptian people was critically dependent upon their sophos of the Nile, it’s seasonal rises and falls, its currents, its fish and reptilian life, etc., to be able to manage the fertility of the soils inundated by flooding, transportation along the nile, food and life threats by entering the river itself. Grasping full the reality of the Nile River requires many facts, but sophos is about the coherence of them in such correspondence to reality that one can “know” the Nile as one might known one’s alarm clock.
Now, at last, returning to our passage in Prov. 3, we are dealing with a sophia far bigger, far more significant, than the Nile River. In Prov. 3 we are dealing with the ultimate issues of our very lives. Again, let’s think of a parallel. Even a secular parent seeks to have its children gain a sophia of this life that is something beyond what is learned in school, or in one’s work or play. A parent wants their offspring to grasp “life” itself, what it is, how it ‘works,’ what is its essential nature. We think of someone who has reached a comprehensive level of such sophia as mature, a wise ‘old soul.’ And having such possession of sophia is having a great wealth apart from any consideration of money or goods or fame or degrees and honors.
So we have our phrase “lean not” “epi sos sophia” (upon your sophia). What??? After all this, we are being instructed here in Proverbs that our hard-won sophia (in the best of human endeavors) is not to be what we lean (rely) upon? How can this be?
We will consider “lean not” in a subsequent post that will answer this question more completely, but here let us look at the word “epi” (upon) and the particular form of sos sophia. To do that we need to consider a bit of grammar, specifically the dative case (hereafter DAT). DAT is part of speech, namely how words operate in a sentence, that tells us how something should be understood. DAT in Greek is rich in meaning, and plays multiple roles in the language. For our purposes here, we need only to note that the words sos sophia are DAT and, in my view, a particular type of DAT known as an “instrumental” DAT. An instrumental DAT is what it sounds like, namely the words in the DAT are the instrument by which something is done. There are many instrumental DAT examples in both the LXX and the NT. Here’s perhaps the most-significant, and shocking one:
We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one. 1 John 5:19 (NKJV). We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. (NASB).
Both these translations are expressing an instrumental DAT by the shown italicized words, namely: under the sway of (NKJV) and in the power of (NASB). Those words are italicized in their translations to show the reader that they do not occur in the Gr mss. Where then do they come from? They arise, and are an accurate translation, because “the evil one” in the Gr mss in an instrumental DAT. One really needs to pause and think about what God’s Word is saying here. The “whole word” is an instrument (under the sway / in the power of) of Satan! Just imagine yourself standing in the middle of a central intersection of a huge city, looking around you 360 degrees, from the ground (and even below the ground) to the highest point of the skies. It all is, to the extent that it is “the world” as Scripture uses the term, the instrument of God’s (and our) Enemy. That is astounding, shocking, and should cause us to be (humanly speaking) fearful and humble. And it is of course the reason we need to “trust in the Lord with all our heart” as it says here in Prov. 3 and many other parallel expressions of the idea, because we cannot trust in the world and, further, we cannon trust in sos sophia, namely your sophia which in this life naturally tends to reflect the world’s grasp of ultimate reality.
So, here, in this middle phrase of Prov. 3:5-6 we have likewise the instrumental DAT for the key words sos sophia. Further, we have the preposition “epi” before these two words, where epi further stresses the instrumental DAT by the idea of “upon” such sophia of yours.
In our Meditation 1 we looked back to Eve’s seeking to grasp the ultimate reality in the conflict of messages from God and the Serpent regarding the goodness of the fruit from the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil. This may push the language too far, but in the Gr LXX, both the words sos and sophia are in the singular (meaning “you” alone, not ‘you-all’) and they are in the feminine gender. It is commonly taught, that feminine nouns and pronouns should not be viewed as female in any sense, and likewise that masculine nouns (or neuter nouns, which also occur in Gr) do not reflect maleness (or neuter inanimate objects). It is very tempting here to connect the feminine gender form of the word sophia (and necessarily the feminine form of the possessive pronoun “your,” namely sos), to Eve and her reasoning and ultimate choice.
In any case, what is not debatable is that we are being instructed in the text, right in the midst of our being told to trust the Lord and acknowledge Him (words we will turn to in a subsequent posting) that we have an instrument working within us in opposition to such proper trust that is within us, namely our natural sos sophia, the very ‘thing’ upon which we are warned not to lean (rely). In fact, as we will discuss in another posting, leaning on one’s sophia actually prevents one from trusting God. This is a hard reality to accept because we count on, and love deeply, our own sophia. But in the matter of ultimate and eternal reality we in our sophia are like the most-immature, and most-inexperienced teenager one could imagine seeking to impose one’s ultimate grasp of things instead of leaning on God’s own instruction which is often contrary to what we naturally believe to be wise and right.
Ah, humility. It is no random thought that the Scriptures say: “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom (sophia!).” (Prov. 1:7; 9:10; 15:33; Job 28:28; Isaiah 33:6).