Wisdom, Rebuke, and the Deep

The same God meets three men in three ways: Solomon at the altar, the son in his father’s house, and Jonah on the sea. To one He gives leave to ask, to another He gives instruction, and to the third He gives a command. Life stands or falls by how a man receives the word of God. Solomon asked well, not grasping at long life or wealth, but at wisdom for obedience. As Tertullian says, “since, when a choice was left to him, he preferred asking for what he knew to be well-pleasing to God — even wisdom — he further merited the attainment of the riches, which he did not prefer.” The man who seeks first to please God is often trusted with other goods besides; but the man who pays his fare to flee God turns his own wealth into witness against himself.

Proverbs teaches that a wise son hears rebuke, guards his mouth, hates falsehood, and does not deal with riches as a master. Jonah did the opposite: he would not hear, would not obey, and his path downward matched the disorder within. Yet the Lord’s severity was mercy. He hurled the storm not to destroy only, but to turn back the runaway. Irenaeus says, “For as He patiently suffered Jonah to be swallowed by the whale, not that he should be swallowed up and perish altogether, but that, having been cast out again, he might be the more subject to God, and might glorify Him the more who had conferred upon him such an unhoped-for deliverance,”

Therefore, ask for wisdom, receive correction quickly, and do not wait for the deep to teach what a father, a proverb, and a command have already made plain.