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An entrepreneurial manual for boys and young men

Solomon explores God’s framework for faithful living, prosperity

Introduction

By Dr. Gary North

The Book of Proverbs can legitimately be regarded as the original self-help manual. It is a handbook for personal success. No comparable handbook has come down to us from the ancient world.

The section from chapter 10 through chapter 30 offers aphorisms. An aphorism can encapsulate great wisdom in a short, memorable, and memorizable phrase. The Book of Proverbs has lots of them.

There are three major problems with any compilation of aphorisms. First, it is not easy to keep them all in the back of your mind, ready to apply in a specific situation. The decision-maker must select the applicable aphorism and then apply it to a specific set of circumstances. This is not easy. This is why a young man who memorizes Sun Tzu’s Art of War probably will not wind up as a successful general. A few may; most will not. Second, the collected aphorisms may not be consistent with each other. This will lead to inconsistencies in any comprehensive program of applied wisdom. Third, it is not always clear what the overall collection’s integrating conceptual framework is, if there is one.

There is an integrating conceptual framework for the Book of Proverbs: the contrast between the righteous man and the unrighteous man, meaning between the wise man and the fool, between the covenant-keeper and covenant-breaker. This theme is applied to economic issues in well over a hundred proverbs. Some of these proverbs are repeated. In this book, I discuss how the basic theme applies to more than 80 separate proverbs.

There are numerous sub-themes in those proverbs that are devoted to economics. Among these are:

1. The steps to personal success
2. The standards of personal success
3. Success indicators
4. Failure indicators
5. The function of riches
6. The basis of riches
7. The concept of ownership
8. The nature of economic causation
9. The marks of a biblical economy
10. The purposes of inheritance

Each of these themes has several proverbs associated with it. All of these themes are important for devising and implementing a lifelong plan of personal success.

As with all of the books of the Bible, the Book of Proverbs is theocentric. God is central; man is not. “The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will” (Prov. 21:1) The proverbs focus on what God demands from men – holiness – not what men want from God. Yet numerous proverbs appeal openly to personal self-interest. So, the book reflects a fundamental theme in the entire Bible: the consistency between what God wants from men and what men want in this life. “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matt. 6:33).

Economic Theory

The covenantal laws of society are found in the Mosaic law. These are the basis of the Proverbs. The Book of Proverbs encapsulates these laws in a way that we can more easily recall them.

This book makes clear that the society we live in is governed by ethical cause and effect. It is not governed by impersonal natural law. It is not governed by an evolving system of impersonal social laws. It is not governed by impersonal fate or impersonal chance. It is not governed by luck, either personal or impersonal. It is governed by God’s covenants. It is therefore governed by a comprehensive system of biblical law and the sanctions associated with this law.

This leads to a conclusion: there is no value-free economic theory. God is not neutral. His universe is not neutral. Any attempt to interpret the universe, including economic theory, in terms of the doctrine of value-neutrality is an assertion of man’s autonomy – collective mankind as well as the individual. Such an assertion is an act of covenant-breaking.

Conclusion

The Book of Proverbs presents a view of economic causation that is in opposition to all modern academic economic theory, which was a self-conscious attempt to strip God and morality out of economic science.¹ This view insists that God, not man, imputes final economic value to everything. Men impute economic value as image-bearers of God. They do not do this autonomously.

The free market social order first appeared in Western Europe because Western Europe and colonial America were more consistently biblical in their related concepts of law and causation than other societies were in the eighteenth century. Their legal order reflected biblical law’s dual affirmation of private property and personal responsibility.

The Bible is hostile to all forms of socialism and the welfare State. I have spent over three decades proving this, verse by verse. So far, Christian socialists refuse to present detailed exegetical support for their case. They do not respond to me. Meanwhile, socialism has visibly died. Communism is defunct. There was never an intellectually coherent theoretical defense of socialism, and now it has failed visibly. It impoverished those nations that adopted it. Socialism is a dead mule. It was always sterile. It is time to bury the carcase.

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