Proverbs 22:28 — Wise Saying #5

READ THIS: Proverbs 22:28, Wise Saying #5

28 Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your ancestors.

WHAT’S THIS MEAN, ANYWAY?

This wise saying makes me blink three times and wonder, "okay...I live in America in the 2000s and we don't really have ancient boundary stones so what could this possibly mean to me...I don't even know what that means in general to begin with?"

Let's start with what it means. Back in the day, they would have these stones that showed where one person's property ended and another person's property began. For the Israelites, there were ancient boundary stones that were put up to separate the different lands between the tribes of Israel. If you wanted more land, technically you could pick up one of the stones and move it. The most anyone could say would be, "huh, I thought that stone was twenty miles south of here, guess not." 

So, here, without any other context really, we are told to not move one of those stones. This is actually a repetition of the law of Moses which enforced that moving such a stone is considered theft. 

What should we do with this information? We can either write it off as something irrelevant OR we could think about what the principle of this verse is!! The principle (aka the underlying moral rule that we should follow) that I see is this: we should not try to sneakily gain advantages in life. Even if no one can catch us, that doesn't mean we should just steal or take short cuts to get a leg up. 

THINK ABOUT IT:

1. What's something that you do that you think to yourself, "well, no one's gonna know, so it's actually okay to do this"?

2. Why is that thing not okay to do? Should you continue doing it?

 

TRY THIS:

Tell someone about that thing you thought of in question 1. It's scary, but it helps us stop doing things that we shouldn't, and it helps us ask forgiveness from God and others!