Restores My Soul

Historical Context

These sayings come from the oldest layer of the collection, the stretch from chapter 10 through 22 headed “the proverbs of Solomon.” Tradition places them in his court in the tenth century BC. He held the throne forty years over a kingdom still whole, and he spent them building: a temple, a palace, fortified towns, a fleet. Tyre sent the timber. Egypt sent a daughter as a wife and an alliance with her.

Somebody had to pay for all of it. The work ran on forced labor and heavy taxes, and the load fell hardest on the northern tribes. Resentment built there for most of his reign, under a king the rest of the world came to see as the wisest man alive.

It came due the week he died. The northerners asked his son Rehoboam to lighten the burden. He refused them, and ten tribes walked out. They took as their king a man named Jeroboam, the foreman Solomon himself had promoted to run the labor gangs.

Reflection

Anyone who has lived a few decades can check this proverb against their own life. The plan you made and the life you actually got rarely match. The difference was usually not your doing.

That gap can leave a person bitter. The proverb offers a way out of it. If God is the one setting the steps, then the parts you did not choose were not accidents, and they were not someone interfering with a life that was going fine without them.

So plan. Plan carefully enough to act on it. Then hold it loosely, so a change of direction does not feel like losing. Years from now, the road you did not pick may be the one you are glad you walked.