The labour of the righteous tendeth to life: the fruit of the wicked to sin.
The saying stands among the poetic wise sayings written chiefly by Solomon, belonging with Proverbs 8 to 11, and calls the reader to examine whether he has the beginning of wisdom in life. It sets forth Jehovah as creator and governor of the universe and disposer of human destinies, rewarding piety with life and punishing evil. It serves as a practical rule of moral and religious duty for everyday life, for family, neighbor, friend, and faithful service to God.
The teaching is twofold in outcome: the labor, work, and living of the righteous tends toward life, while the fruit, gain, product, and course of the wicked tends toward sin, which leads to death opposite to life. Righteousness is living in harmony with the normal healthful law of being, God's law which comprehends all righteousness, while sin is transgression of that law. Transgression brings disease whose legitimate, inevitable tendency and end is death. God's law, when kept in its proper way and held in the heart, sustains life through God's life in it. The law itself is ordained for life, but sin perverts it so that its power is turned toward death.
Righteousness and life are inseparable, for righteousness is life. If man had continued to obey God and all had always been righteous, no one would have died. Those who receive immortal life will live forever in conformity to righteousness. The work of the righteous is like sowing seed that bears life-giving fruit and ends in everlasting life and immortality in God's kingdom. Though the path may involve self-denial, opposition, reproach, and loss, faith sees beyond those trials. Honest work itself is beneficial and life-directing. The fruit of the wicked is identified as idleness, as in Sodom.
The saying stands among the poetic wise sayings written chiefly by Solomon, belonging with Proverbs 8 to 11, and calls the reader to examine whether he has the beginning of wisdom in life. It sets forth Jehovah as creator and governor of the universe and disposer of human destinies, rewarding piety with life and punishing evil. It serves as a practical rule of moral and religious duty for everyday life, for family, neighbor, friend, and faithful service to God.
The teaching is twofold in outcome: the labor, work, and living of the righteous tends toward life, while the fruit, gain, product, and course of the wicked tends toward sin, which leads to death opposite to life. Righteousness is living in harmony with the normal healthful law of being, God's law which comprehends all righteousness, while sin is transgression of that law. Transgression brings disease whose legitimate, inevitable tendency and end is death. God's law, when kept in its proper way and held in the heart, sustains life through God's life in it. The law itself is ordained for life, but sin perverts it so that its power is turned toward death.
Righteousness and life are inseparable, for righteousness is life. If man had continued to obey God and all had always been righteous, no one would have died. Those who receive immortal life will live forever in conformity to righteousness. The work of the righteous is like sowing seed that bears life-giving fruit and ends in everlasting life and immortality in God's kingdom. Though the path may involve self-denial, opposition, reproach, and loss, faith sees beyond those trials. Honest work itself is beneficial and life-directing. The fruit of the wicked is identified as idleness, as in Sodom.