proverbs 7

Read Proverbs 7 at Bible Gateway.

My son, keep my words, and treasure my commands within you.
Keep my commands and live, and my law as the apple of your eye.
Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart. Pro 7:1-3

What preserves and protects a strong man from adultery, from being drawn away by an adulterous woman, will also preserve and protect all of us from being drawn away and enticed by sin:

Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Jam 1:13-14

And that thing, is the Law or Torah of God. To have it preserve and protect us, we:

1) Keep the LORD’s Word. “Keep” is the same word used in “Guard your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the wellsprings of life,” Pro 4:23. The Hebrew word means, to keep in, to watch over, to preserve, to hedge about as with thorns, to guard, protect, attend to. The word can be compared to a prison guard — he is not there to keep inmates OUT of the prison; he is there to keep inmates IN the prison. A prison guard does not let one inmate escape from him! So the word picture the Hebrew is painting is, keep and guard the Word of our Father in our hearts with all diligence. Don’t let it escape from us!

2) Treasure the LORD’s commands. “Treasure” is in Hebrew, “to hide, by covering over, by implication to hoard or reserve.” Think of crooks who try to get the most valuable thing there is out of the rich guy’s safe, which is hidden and covered over by a lovely painting, so the crooks have to train and spend all this time and money and technology to get into that safe. That is the value of the LORD’s commands that Proverbs is talking about. When we start treating them as if they were that level of treasure, then we have approached the meaning of this verse.

Moreover, the ark of the covenant also paints this picture, because the tablets of the Ten Commandments were kept inside the ark – they were hidden from view within, the ark representing the heart (and the Holy of Holies representing the inner being of a man). And a separate lid, called a mercy seat, but in Hebrew, that which covers over, covered the ark with the commandments inside.

3) The Torah is the apple of our eye. “Apple of our eye” according to Webster’s is that which is cherished above all else – our most prized possession.

4) Bind them on our fingers. “Bind” in Hebrew means “to tie physically, to gird or confine; and also, to tie mentally, as in a compact, conspiracy, contract; or to tie emotionally, to tie in love, as in a covenant or marriage.” Our fingers – our hands – are the body’s agent of action. The Scriptures speak figuratively of hands when they are speaking of what we do. So to bind the Torah on our fingers, means we do, we act, as the Torah teaches.

When we treasure the LORD’s Word — which includes His commands! — in the way theses Hebrew verbs suggest, then we have preserved them and protected them within our hearts. In turn, they will preserve and protect us from immorality, adultery, flattery, and any other thing that would seek to turn us from the LORD our God, and ensnare us in sin!