Pro. 23:29-35
As Solomon was preparing his list of 30 sayings for his son in PV 22-24, he had a goal for him: for him to make good and godly choices. To take the wheel of his own life. For the majority of the first 18 sayings, he advised him on things to avoid and things to prioritize. But as he gets halfway through his list, he begins to turn his attention to who would be “behind the wheel” in his son’s life.
The first 18 sayings were mostly contained in a single verse or couplet. But when he gets to number 19, suddenly, additional attention seems to be demanded. This wasn’t a topic that he could simply breeze over. This seemed to matter in a different way than the others before it. The average Hebrew word count of the other sayings is around 20-25 words in the Masoretic text, while the 19th saying has approximately 66 Hebrew words: nearly three times the other sayings!
While word-count doesn’t necessarily imply importance, it does clearly show that Solomon had a lot to say about the topic. For that reason, it seemed right to me that we would look at this one saying independently of the others and see just what advice was so important that Solomon would spend nearly three times the word-count to share it with him.
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