6 For the Lord gives wisdom;
from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
7 he stores up sound wisdom for the upright;
he is a shield to those who walk in integrity,
8 guarding the paths of justice
and watching over the way of his saints.
9 Then you will understand righteousness and justice
and equity, every good path;
In 1-5 it was the seeking; here it is the finding. It is the Lord that gives wisdom (6), and we are meant to understand from 1-5 that this is the way He gives it. One recalls in this connection the story of Christ's meeting with the Syro-Phenician woman (Matthew 15:21ff). The pattern unfolded in that remarkable story well illustrates the lesson Proverbs is teaching here, for the apparent rebuffs Jesus gave her served but to increase and intensify her determination to gain from Him the blessing she so earnestly sought the more difficult it seemed for her, the more resolutely she pursued her quest, until she came through to a place of such daring faith that nothing could have been denied her. And this was our Lord's intention with her from the beginning. So it is here: the progres- sion unfolded in 1-5 from receiving the word to crying after knowledge, seeking it as for hid treasure has God at work in it from the outset, and it is in this context that He makes Himself known. To have the knowledge of God in this way is to know how to live, and sound wisdom marks our way. In possession of this we find a buckler, we are protected, and righteousness, justice, equity, every good path (9) become the characteristics of our lives, that is to say, an all-round integrity develops in us. This is the meaning here. There is great challenge in this. All too often there can be imbalance in our development: some develop intellectually, while remaining emotionally juvenile, and some develop emotionally but have lazy minds that are not prepared to think, and therefore become intellectual pygmies. Both these states indicate serious imbalance, and represent a sad condition. But 'every good path' becomes the mark of the man who has found divine wisdom: He attains an all-round integrity.