Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Today we dug back into the wisdom of Solomon, and as usual, he covers a lot of ground,

so I'm just going to touch on a few things that stood out to me or that have the potential to be confusing. Chapter 25 encourages us not to be presumptuous in relationships with others,

and it covers a variety of relationships. First, we shouldn't elevate our level of importance

with others. Wisdom helps us stay low. And in the same way that wisdom doesn't esteem itself, wisdom also

doesn't degrade others or their motives when it doesn't know the whole story. That requires humility

too, and patience. Versus 9 through 10 encourage us in wise behavior when we have a problem with

someone else. The passage reminds us that we should talk about our problems with the person

we have the problem with, not everyone else. That requires humility and patience too. And verse 15

tells us what great power the humble patient tongue can wield. It says, with patience a ruler may be

persuaded and a soft tongue will break a bone.

Patience and humility have a more powerful impact than being forceful and arrogant.

Much of the rest of the proverb offers wisdom on self-control and how that ties into humility.

It urges self-control and everything from how much we eat in verse 16 to how often we visit our neighbor in verse 17. The general theme is that too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Self-control also guides us in seemingly minor areas

like what words we say to a grieving person or how we treat our enemies. In verse 24, we have a

proverb that's similar to two others we've read before. It says,

It is better to live in a corner of the house top than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.

The other verses we read said it's better to live in the desert or that this woman is like a

constant dripping. Solomon had a lot of wives, so he probably had his fair share, or his

unfair share, of quarrelsome wives. He knows

of which he speaks. And again, this passage could be applied to either gender, but Solomon rightly

assumed that most of his readers in that day would be male. Regardless your gender, it takes a lot of

...