Sam. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Bible study tonight on this Thursday. Very glad you're here for our. What have we been going at this? I don't know, 10 years or so. No. 12, 15 maybe. Maybe we're up to 15 years of Thursday night Bible studies. I don't know. It's been fun. Anyway, and glad you're here and we have been. This is our 17th time to come together for the book of Proverbs and we are gonna have a good time with it tonight. No doubt we'll have at least 18 sessions, maybe 19 sessions before we finish up the book of Proverbs, which I don't about you, but it seems to me like we just. Just finished this. I don't know. Yes, I mean just started this yesterday. Right away I'm getting my desk set. Can you tell I wasn't quite ready there. But now I am and glad to have a live studio audience tonight. In addition to Luca, who of course is always here and making things work and keeping me from giving a theological errors. And we've got Juna from Charlotte, Vermont. And we've got Natalie from Katy, Texas. And we've got Rich and Jody from Pensacola, Florida. So glad. Glad everyone's here and room for you in the studio as long as not too many more of you come. It's a small studio, but anyway, welcome to Bible study tonight and it has been a. A fun journey to come along and we will pick up tonight where we left off last week. We finished off chapter 30. And you, you may remember here, let's see. I got a pointer somewhere, but. But I don't know where it is. So I'll use this one right here. You may remember that we last week looked at really was two weeks ago we looked at Proverbs chapter 30, verse one, the words of Ager son of Jeche. Even the prophecy the man spoke unto Ethel, even unto Ethiol and Ukal. Now you can go back two sessions ago and see why I argued that Ager was Samuel and was Solomon. And see, that's why I have Luca in the live studio audience to tell me when you said something that was wrong. But Ager, who is is. Who is Solomon and Ithiel who is Rehoboam. As it had gone all through the book, we've had the discussion of the father giving the instruction to the son. We're going to have a little bit of a change tonight in that we come to Proverbs chapter 31. And these are the words of King Lemuel. But as we'll see. It's not completely his words. He's going to be quoting from his mother. But so let's, let's spend just a moment. Even before we dig into verse one and into the prophecies that are here and the verses that are here, let's dig into who possibly Lemuel might be. And I think that we've got probably, let's go with three possibilities. One is Lemuel is simply a pseudonym. It is Mark Twain rather than Samuel Clements. There is, there is there. You know, if you, if you went back into history, let's say the census records, the United states in the 1800s and you looked for Mark Twain, the particular Mark Twain in the census records, you wouldn't find him. Mark Twain doesn't exist. Mark Twain's not a real person. But he is a real person. His name's Samuel Clemens. Samuel Clements exists. That's his pen name. Okay, so maybe Lemuel is a pen name that is being used here. That's basically what we described in chapter 30 with Hager Limue. Well, by the by the way means either to God or belonging to God. The king belonging to God. It's a possibility. Another possibility is maybe King Lemuel is King Lemuel. And who is King Lemuel? I don't know. He's a king out there somewhere. Probably. I. We would have to say he's a gentile king because we know the Judean kings and it's not, he's not a Judean king. And so we would look to the surrounding nations. Well, we can't find a king Lemuel. But it's been 3,000 years. Surely you know, there's this little kingdom here or there and we forgot about him. But he's probably, let's say if he's a real king, he's a God fearing king. And for whatever reason Solomon or those who compiled the books later decided, hey, you know King Lemuel, his mother gave him this wonderful prophecy and we should put it in. It's really nice. It's a nice poetry. Well, to put it in there and it'll make mothers feel guilty on Mother's Day. Let's do that. Let's put that on there. Maybe the issue is we don't know a king Lemuel. By the way, I forgot to tell the live studio audience to leave the door open tonight. Otherwise it's going to be 750 degrees when we're done tonight. So go ahead and open that up. There we go. Now as we, we Come back to it, you know. You know that I am one that says, if you can take it literally, take it literally. But it's kind of a stretch to take this one literally. We have no record whatsoever of any kind of King Lemuel. That doesn't mean it can't be a literal king. We just would know absolutely nothing about this king, whose mother writes a chapter in our Bible. It's a possibility. Another possibility is a little bit of a mix between this being a pen name and this being a literary figure. You know, he's a Huckleberry Finn. That King Lemuel never existed. He only exists as a literary figure or an allegorical figure. He is the ideal king, or maybe not the ideal king, as we'll see the problem there. And people have taken this approach down through the ages, especially in the Christian community, in the allegorical Christian community, those that come from Origin and the Alexandrian family and the Calvinist and reformers formed and whatnot, that like to do a lot of allegory. You could look at that and take it as that. But then, you know, if he's allegorical, who's his. Who's his mother and what's the prophecy? It becomes a slippery slope. You'd go all over the place. Now, as you can imagine, I am going to go with the first option here. King Lemuel is Solomon and he is the king that belongs to God. He is using this pen name, if you will, the pseudonym, just as he did in the previous figure as he took the name Agar. And we talked about the meaning of that back a couple of sessions ago. He's using this because he's getting into prophecy. He's giving a little bit of, I don't know, shall we say confession here, self confession. There are some things that he's dealing with, and I suspect everybody knows who he's talking about. Maybe even this was a nickname for him that his mother gave him, that we'll look at or consider just briefly in a little bit. But I think it's a. It's a. It's a pen name, it's a pseudonym, It's a theological title. In fact, if we were to look, let's see, I didn't put the passage on here, but in first or Second Samuel. How's that? In first or Second Samuel, Nathan the prophet comes and he calls Solomon Jedidiah. Jedidiah is not his name, and no one else ever calls him Jedidiah, but Nathan comes and calls him Jedidiah, loved of the Lord, the. The one who's beloved of the Lord, if you will. So it's not unusual to come and take these theological names and place them upon either a person or a place. So here I think Solomon is taking it upon himself, which means that I am committed. And we talked about this the very first week. I'm committed to the fact that I'm committed to the proposition. I should say that from chapter one to chapter 31, these are all the words of Solomon. You may remember that all the way back from session one, there were those who said, you know, chapters one through 10 or 14, somewhere in there actually were written by David. And then Solomon picks up later on, and then some of those same people would say, and then Agar has a few words and Lemuel has a few words. And so it's compiled together by various people, I think chapter one, verse one, to chapter 31, verse end. How's that? That these are the words of Solomon under a couple of different pen names. Here it is certainly under King Lemuel. Now, do we have anything to go on? One? Let's. Let's do recognize that Lemuel is not a recognized name anywhere. Okay. So you say, well, Mark Twain is not in the census records, but Mark is a name. Yeah, we understand. Okay. That is. That is a word that you would use for a name. We can't find anything, anybody, anywhere ever named Lemuel. It doesn't seem to be a name. It seems to be more of a title or a description that is given. And so this king that is for God or committed to God or belonging to God, looks like that's not a name, that's a description. Now it's. It's. I didn't look through the modern translations, but I'm almost. I'd put money on it to say they all went. They made it a name, because what else do you do with it? The words of the king who belongs to God, you could say that you could translate it and take care of that and the prophecy that his mother taught him. It's an interpreter's choice to figure out, do I translate this? Do I not translate it? What do I do with it? But here, this non name, we don't know any king there looks like a theological description fits the theology of what we would understand that Solomon is. He's a king belonging to God or. Or Rehoboam or David, whichever Judean king you want to pick, he's a king belonging to God. And I might add, you know, for whatever it's worth, rabbinical tradition is Pretty strong. Almost exclusively rabbinical tradition is these are the words of Solomon. Christian tradition, early Christian tradition took it that way. Later, Christian tradition got into a lot of allegory and. And metaphor and all those kind of things. Literary figures to. To. To do this. So I'm gonna go right off the bat, King Lemuel. How's that? Right off the bat. And what did that take me 12 minutes to go? Right off the bat. There we go. So right off the bat, King Lemuel is Samuel. I know, by the way, that some would say, why didn't you just say he's Samuel? But we really do have to dig through the various issues, try to convince ourselves. Yeah, could, you know, could it be anything else? I think the best argument is it's Samuel. Now Solomon. It's Solomon. I've done that all day long. Lucas caught me on it several times. I had a 60th birthday. You guys are no Jill Biden. Anyway, we move on the words of Solomon, the prophecy that his mother taught him. Now, that gets interesting, because we know who Solomon's mother was. Bathsheba. It looks like we're only going to go through 1 through 9 tonight, but 10 through the rest of the chapter as well. Looks like this is also. This. This is all the same speaker. Now, Lemuel, also known as Solomon, sometimes people call him Samuel, his friends, Solomon. These are the words of Solomon. But he tells us right from the beginning. I'm just quoting my mother. I'm just telling you what my mother said, which. Which then means this would be the only chapter we have written by Bathsheba not written by containing the words of Bathsheba. Almost completely the words of Bathsheba. Now, there's some other places where we have a few things where Bathsheba said this, Bathsheba said that. But here is a chapter, let's go ahead and say, written by her or a chapter containing her words. You know, I suspect that if we were to have a little, I don't know, trivia game, we could put in, you know, what chapter contains all but one verse, contains the words of Bathsheba. My guess is nobody would get it. No, I don't. I don't have a clue. I don't have a clue. But this one here, the prophecy that his mother taught him. And then it begins with the prophecy that Bathsheba taught to Solomon. With that one other thing I want to say. Let's just jump into verse one. So we have the. The. The. The. The words of King Lemuel. I tell you why I do it because Lemuel and Samuel, you know, it just flows, especially when you're brilliant and you have a lot of things on your mind. The words of Solomon that Bathsheba taught him. I want to speak about this word taught right here. It is a word that. That could and sometimes is, in a little literal translation, sometimes is chastised him. In fact, I believe is the Jewish Bible Society, in their translation, they use the word chastised. It's not a word for just general instruction. There's four or five words that can be translated from Hebrew to English as taught. And there's there's the. Again, the sort of casual instruction. There's the. The. The sit and share wisdom kind of teaching. But then there's also, let me teach you a lesson, okay? That kind of taught. And this is that kind of taught. So you can say the prophecy that that time his mama taught him a lesson. She taught him, all right, Chastised him. I think that's the way we have to read this is. It is a prophecy. Same word that's used over here. And that's the same word that's used of, you know, oracles of vision, a divine vision of a understanding, a revelation of the future. So a prophecy that his mother scolded him with. Chastised him with. That's the word. And she then begins in verse two, saying, what, my son? Now, obviously, we don't have the tone of voice, that is when we just have text. And we could be reading the wrong tone in here, as I did that. What, my son? But what other. What other tone do you put? Especially when you've got a word right here, that is to chastise or to discipline. And so when Mama comes in and she says, what, son? You know you're in trouble, right? What, my son? That is the sentence. It's a question. What, my son? You can. You can kind of imagine in her, I don't know, shall we say, anger. In her anger, she is saying, what have you done now? Let's go. What, my son? Question number one. Question number two. What the son of my womb? Question number three. What the son of my vows. I think Mama here, Bathsheba, is very disappointed in her son. She is shocked, she is saddened. And she. She. She can't believe what has taken place. She can't believe what her son has done, or maybe who her son has become. Now, this again, if you take this as Solomon, then his mother is Bathsheba. This tells us that somewhere in Solomon's life, Bathsheba Taught him. Taught him a lesson, a prophetic lesson. Scolded him, chastised him. When did she do this? A couple of things. We might look in timing later, but it looks like this was later in Solomon's life, which means probably that. That Bathsheba must have lived a long time now. Bathsheba could have been much younger than David. And, you know, so he could have been 50, 60, 70 years old when his mother is scolding him. Do you remember? Some of you are too young to remember. Do you remember Lillian Carter? You remember Lillian, don't you? Jimmy Carter's mother? She was. She was, as I remember her, she was kind of a feisty old lady. I actually looked it up today, and I thought, how old was Miss Lillian? Because she looked like maybe 125, something like that, as her son became the president. And she kind of, you know, she'd tell him what to do. I looked it up today. She was 78. Okay. And. And she died at, I don't know, a few years, 83 maybe, or somewhere. Somewhere like that. So Maybe here is Ms. Lillian. She is 70, 80, maybe even into her 90s. And Bathsheba, who has lived a long and adventurous life. She has seen the good, bad and the ugly of the kingdom, both from David, pre king and before king, and then into Solomon. And she sees, of course, her son, Rehoboam, if, assuming it's this long. And she begins. She. She then is shocked and disappointed at what has taken place. And so. Excuse me. So she. She says this. What now? Inquiring minds want to know, don't they? What is it she's upset with? Maybe we can surmise what she's upset with by what she's going to talk with. You can look ahead to verse three, right there. Give not thy strength to women. She's going to talk about wine, women and the oppressed. So maybe she sees something that says, wow, you are not the king you're supposed to be. What in the world have you done? I think that this is something that takes place later in Solomon's life. And we can. We could go through a number of places in scripture to try to put, you know, when this. When this takes place. But later. Later in his life. I'll show you that in just a moment. By the way, let me add one more thing here. Rabbinical tradition gets pretty specific here. As a matter of fact, I believe I did not look this up, but I saw the reference to it. I believe that the rabbinical tradition of what solemn what. What Bathsheba is upset about right here is included in the apocryphal Book of Judith. Now, I've not studied the Book of Judith. I, I know much more about, say, the Book of Maccabees, the first two books of Maccabees than I do, or the Book of Enoch, some of these others. Judith is not an area I'm an expert in. I just saw a reference to it. Okay, so. But anyway, in. In the Book of Judith, there is a. A story that says, if I got the story correct, that Solomon married the daughter of the pharaoh. We know that to be true. I'll show you in a moment. He married the daughter of the pharaoh. And then that on the day of the temple dedication, he and his Egyptian bride, she was a new bride at the time. She brought in the night before. She brought in music, women, wine, everything. And that it was a. Let's just call it a night of debauchery. And that he, the next morning overslept and that the dedication of the temple was late because he wasn't there, and that the keys to the temple were under his pillow. Okay, it sounds a little contrived, and maybe it is. I'm just telling you what the tradition is, whether it's that or something more general than quite so specific. She's upset with him. Here, I think we can read that. And, and again, especially when we know that Tot is scolding. She's upset with him. She can't believe it. Something big has definitely happened that seems to be a little bit the straw that breaks the camel's back. Now. With that, she goes in and begins to give the prophecy. Now, the prophecy here, especially in the first nine verses, which is all we're going to look at tonight, seems be descriptive of who Solomon has become. But maybe it is because it says up here that it is a prophecy. Maybe it is not only descriptive and describing what is happening today is not prophecy. So if this is just describing him today, yeah, doesn't seem to be prophecy, but maybe what he has become is prophetic of who Rehoboam is going to be and maybe even prophetic of where this kingdom is going to go. Perhaps you could say giving your strength away and not using your senses and not being, when you get down to verse, verse eight, not being the voice of the oppressed. That's who the Judean kingdom was going to be. And then you can pick up in verse nine, excuse me, in verse ten, which we will next week, and say, hey, but this is who she could be. Or maybe even who she ultimately will be is this virtuous woman. So I think we do have to read these in a prophetic sense again, mainly because verse one tells us this is prophecy. So in describing Solomon, she's prophesying the future for the Judean kingdom. This goes along with what we had In Ecclesiastes, chapter 3, verses 13 and 14, I believe it was, with the kind of cycle of time that goes about. And she can be, in a descriptive way right here actually describing something that prophetically is going to be fulfilled, even though right then it's a historical, historical event or a description of history. Okay, so we, we come now and she begins to, it looks like, describe who he's become. Give not thy strength unto women, nor thy ways to that which destroyeth kings. She starts out specifically, and then she gets more broad here. The, the, you know, the things which destroy kings. It's all she says about that. She's going to speak. Well, in verse three, it actually goes all by itself. She is going to speak to. Or we're going to focus. We're going to speak to women. She speaks to women. And the things which destroy kings, now those seem to be connected a little bit, but would not necessarily have to. I think what you've got here is that, that Solomon, as you know, eventually gave his strength to women, a bunch of them. By the way, you could change the E to an A there as well to a woman where, where, you know, a woman's got the ring in your, in your snout and dragging you along. Don't do that. She says king. And definitely don't do that to 700 of them where they are leading you and guiding you. And this is Mama speaking. She, she sees, she knows, she understands, she's got some wisdom there. Now let's talk about his wives here just a little bit and go to First Kings, chapter three. And it tells us here of his first bride. Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh, the king of Egypt and took Pharaoh's daughter. We mentioned this earlier in tradition. Scripture doesn't mention that particular tradition. But he took Pharaoh's daughter and brought her unto the city of David. Excuse me. There we go. Brought her into the city of David until he had made an end of building his own house. End of the house of the Lord, the temple and the wall of Jerusalem roundabout. Okay, so before the temple comes, he, he, he took this Egyptian bride. Now it goes on to say only the people sacrificed in high places because there was no house built under the name of the Lord until those days. We always take that Negatively. And we had a time or two in the Book of Proverbs where we looked at high places. Should we take that negatively or not negatively. We, we always take this as, as pagan worship, but I'm not, I don't really think it is here. The people sacrificed, you know, where they could because they didn't have a temple, but they're sacrificing to the Lord. It's not, hey, let's be pagans until we get a temple built and then we'll decide to be good Jews. So he's married to an Egyptian bride. The people are sacrificing a little here and there, which you're really not supposed to do. They're doing it, and it says, and Solomon loved the Lord. Okay, he's got a foreign bride, one of them at this point. But he loves the Lord. He is walking in the statutes of David. His father only says he sacrificed and burnt incense in high places. Now, this wouldn't work if this particular phrase, right there, if that particular phrase meant paganism. This is a weird verse. Solomon loved the Lord. He walked in the statutes of David. He. He worshiped pagan gods. Just that one little thing. Well, that undoes everything that's said at the beginning. So I think we have to take this only right here and say what we've got is, hey, Solomon loved the Lord. He walked in the statutes of David. His father, which is, is the Torah. He walked in. In the Torah. He did mess up in one thing. That is, he worshiped the Lord in a place you were not supposed to. From the beginning. The, the sacrifices were to be brought to the tabernacle. He didn't bring them to the tabernacle. He took them to various altars that they had built the high places. Okay, that's how Solomon got started. But I wanted you to note here, First Kings, chapter three, that it is a, it's. It's a, it's a slow start to give. Give not thy strength to women. But she's introduced. Oh, by the way, this is the same passage right here where they're sacrificing in high places. And here's Solomon. The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there. It was a great high place. Thousand burnt offerings did Solomon offer upon the altar. I'm going to say he's offering them not to pagan gods, but to Yahweh. Because the very next verse it says, in Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night and said, what do you want? What would you like? I'll give you Anything. And that's where he. He asked for wisdom. Now, this is early on in his kingdom. God seems to be pleased with him. There's a couple of things, you know, maybe shouldn't have done, shouldn't have gone there. God seems to be pleased, but it sure looks like he's starting to give his strength away to women, to the things that destroyeth kings. Almost. A little bit here, a little bit there, and he begins to give it away. Now that's First Kings, chapter three. Let's go to First Kings, chapter 11. And it tells us, but King Solomon loved many strange women. Don't. Don't fall in love with strange women. Strange. Foreign is what it's talking about. Now he's got many that he loved, together with the daughter of the Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Edenites, Zidonians, the Hittites of the nations, concerning which the Lord said unto the children of Israel, you should not go to them, neither shall they come to you. Surely they will turn you away from your heart after their gods. And Solomon, clave unto these he love. Ah, take those words right there. Solomon, clave unto these he loved. Give not thy strength unto women. I don't even think he knows he's been had. But he's been had, okay? Boy, has he been had. And he had 700 wives, princesses, 300 concubines. And there it is. First Kings 11. Three his wives turned away his heart. That was the problem here. Women. He loved them. Tells us right there, he loved them all. 700 of them. He loved them and the 300 concubines, too. But he gave his strength to them. The strength of the king needed to go somewhere else. He gave it away. Wise Mama Bathsheba, she sees this, and whatever took place, she's like, what? Maybe she just now realizes you got 700 wives. What? And. And so she. She speaks to him about that. Now, will this be prophetic of the kingdom? I think you could find a lot of places to say. You know, one of the problems of the kingdom was that it indeed, from Solomon's Day beyond the people, did indeed give their strength away. They gave it to foreign wives, foreign women, to the things that destroy kings. It became prophetic of the future kings and became prophetic of the nation of Israel. Okay, now let's go on four through seven is what we've got in the. The next segment here. And he goes on. She goes on. Excuse me. To say, it's not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for Kings to drink wine, nor for princes, strong drink. Now, I am not going to sound very Baptist here. I don't really think he says kings are never supposed to drink wine. You certainly could take it that way. But there's so much in the Torah that really does require the drinking of wine. So I think we have to interpret this to say to drink too much wine to get drunk. That is not for kings nor for princes, leaders to take strong drink, temperance. Be careful here. This can also take away. You know, the king was to be strong. The king was to be in charge, not give his strength to women, not give away his reasoning ability, his. His logic ability, his strong mind. So don't get. Don't get drunk. It's not for you. And. And she gives a warning lest they drink and forget the law. Now, of course, you probably know that if we had translated that he. Excuse me, transliterated that Hebrew word instead of translated, it would be lest they drink and forget the Torah. That's what he's not supposed to do. And you take too much wine and too much strong drink, you will forget the Torah. You know, eventually you, You, You. You can't speak it, but forget it in terms of. Walk away from it, make little of it. It's not. Not what you're. You're after. And, and the king is especially in a civic sense. He is the civic Torah leader. So lest they forget the Torah and pervert the judgment of any of the afflicted, okay, the afflicted come to the king. They need him to be sober. So, hey, king, stay sober. You never know when they're going to come, and, and, you know, need your judgment. Then he says in verse six, give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish. Now, obviously, they didn't have medicines like we have today. And here it very clearly is saying, you know, you got someone on their deathbed, give them some strong drink. I saw this on a Western movie once. It's exactly what they did. And, you know, call out the whiskey. Here, take. Take this. Chew on the cork. Is that one. I don't know. Well, that's a bullet they stuck in their mouth, right? Okay. Is that what y' all did in the army? Don't answer the question. So the one who is dying, comfort them a little bit with what you can with the strong drink. Now, I want to come right back to that and put all this together and wine. Go ahead. And give wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Okay. So discouraged that, you know, this sounds like a country song or something, doesn't it so discouraged that, hey, you know, pull a seat on up to the bar and tell the bartender and have. Have a drink here of whiskey, whatever it is, that's who it belongs to. Now, this is. This is not saying, hey, let me tell you the appropriate time and place to drink. If you've got a heavy heart, go get drunk. If you are dying, go get drunk. That's not. It's not what it's saying. What it is saying, Bathsheba is saying is, Solomon, you're the king. You're not dying on your deathbed. You're not supposed to be, oh, woe is me, man. Everything is bad. Pull it together and be the king. It's what he. What Mama wants him to do. And we. We don't know. We know, of course, he gave his strength to women. We don't know about Solomon. And drink. There's this. There's no historical record, I guess you should say in the scriptures. That tells us whether he, you know, had too much to drink. This is probably a pretty good idea, that maybe towards the end of his life, he's still the king, but he's starting to get a heavy heart. He's, you know, maybe he's even starting to die, and he's. He's given up his kingly duties to women. It's a strong drink. And she says, shame on you. You're not. You're not supposed to be, you know, a weakling. You're supposed to be strong. So let. Let the weaklings have that. You can't have it. Once again, I think we could say, hey, this is prophetic of where Israel was going to be, you know, dying and having heavy hearts. Nothing but, you know, just. Just drink. So that dying person or having hearts, let him drink and forget his poverty and remember his misery no more. Okay? Maybe that's the best they can do. No way I'm ever gonna fix this. What she is saying again is not a commendation to, you know, if you're poor and you just need to forget your miseries, go get drunk. I don't think Bathsheba is teaching that. She's teaching Solomon, you're not poor and you can fix your miseries. You are the king. Get away from the bottle, pull it together and go be kingly. She's. She's teaching him. So it's a little bit. I don't know, a little bit sarcasm here, perhaps you would say as she comes and basically says, let the poor people drink. Let the miserable people drink. But you're not poor, nor Miserable. You're the king after all. Don't do it. Okay. Israel, prophetic of. Israel, prophetic of the Judean kingdom and, and certainly the kings. Then in verses 8 and 9, she goes to the third thing that is given in her teaching him. She says, open thy mouth. Just in case you didn't get that verse eight and verse nine, open thy mouth. I kind of see it as Solomon has done something horrible and he looks in the mirror and he says, how in the world did you come to become this man? How in the world did I end up giving my strength to all these women? And now I can't get control of myself or my kingdom. The thing is falling apart. And so I have given myself over to wine and strong drink. And I, who am supposed to be the one that brings about law and order, I am just a bumbling drunken idiot. And I'm sitting here saying nothing. And his mother comes and says, get out there and give a speech like a king supposed to. Open your mouth and do this. I'm going to translate or interpret, I guess. Open thy mouth to this. Be the king. That's what you gotta be, Solomon. Be the king all the way until your dying day. Be the king. Open thy mouth. And the covenantal king was especially the, the guardian of the oppressed. It, I, I suspect it's true in, in our world today as well. But certainly in the ancient kingdoms in the ancient day, if the king was not on the side of the dumb and those appointed to destruction, nobody was. Those were tough societies for, for the underdog and, and the, the Middle east as we've talked about before, both then and now, very much an honor based culture, very much a power based culture. You put those two things together, honor and power. That what, that's what runs the Middle East. I understand that Iran, Iran today, or Israel today has attacked Iran in some way or another. I saw it just before the program. I don't know nothing about it, but I can tell you that they had to do it. The reason they had to do it is because if they didn't do it, they would look weak. And there is one thing that will not survive in the Middle east, both in Solomon's Day and today, and that is weakness. Weakness is not allowed to survive. It's a power culture. Now she reminds Solomon, you know what? There is one job of the covenant based king and that is in this honor and power culture, watch out for the person who has no honor or no power. You make sure they don't get trampled. You make sure that they are treated properly as part of the kingdom and part of the family and part of the covenant. So she says, open thy mouth again. Get out there and be the king. Pull your strength back together, get your sobriety back together and be the king. Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction. I know of course that you know that dumb here means the mute, those who cannot speak up, they're appointed to destruction. Probably not rightly so. Stand in, stand in the gap for them. You fix it. You can stop this Solomon. But Rehoboam, for example, to take this, this is descriptive, but it's a prophecy. Descriptive of Solomon, prophetic, of those who are to come, Judean kings who are to come, and Rehoboam, and, and go all the way through, basically of those kings of Judah. They weren't going to open their mouth. They were going to sit and get fat and rich off the government and lead not, not lead not stand for the poor and the oppressed or the dumb that are appointed to destruction. And so verse nine, the last one, we'll look at tonight. Open thy mouth, judge righteously, plead the cause of the poor and needy. Looks like back in verse two, what my son, he's done something that was not recorded for history, for us anyway, that shocked even his mother. And then she steps back and describes how in the world did you ever get to this place? You start giving your strength to women and the things that takes away the strength of the kings. Then you got sad and you and, and depressed and you started wallowing in your self pity with your wine and your strong drink and you quit doing the very thing the king was supposed to do. And that description becomes a prophecy. Now we'll look at next week back here in verse, verse 3. Give not thy strength to women, the strange women, as the book of Proverbs calls her. The strange woman, Lady Folly, we have called her throughout. Solomon knows about this because somewhere and it wasn't until the end of his life, as we've seen till the end of his life, that hey, then, now that I got 700 wives, I find out I've given my strength to them. And then what we're going to see next week when we get into verse 10 is who can find a virtuous woman? We're going to look next week and see who this virtuous woman is and how that this is prophecy. And then that will probably conclude our study of Proverbs. I say probably because. Because I may want to give a final session an Overview, a review on it and see what we've we've learned along the way in a fun journey that we've had. Hey, I would love to say hello tonight. That concludes our Bible study. I want to say have a word of prayer in just a moment. At the end, I want to say hel to you and if you need to cut out right now, you can. But I would love to give a couple of announcements and one is I'm just going to walk right over here and grab this. I have got right here a sample systematic Theology, a Biblical Literalist approach book I'm writing and systematic theology. Systematic theology is just to take the basic doctrines of the Christian faith and say, okay, what's our plan? What's our understanding? Let's see. I don't have the table of contents in here. I only have the first chapter. A Biblical Literalist approach. The first chapter is bibliology. It is what we believe about the Bible, the doctrine of Scripture. And we talk about inspiration, preservation, right Division, the nature of scripture, the purpose, purpose of scripture, the inspiration of scripture, the inerrancy and preservation of scripture, the authority of Scripture. You'll be able to get a sample of what that is going to be. This is what I'm going to be teaching in Branson this year. That's why I bring all that up. To say we would love to have you in Branson to join us. Go to randywhiteministries.org Branson or randywhiteministries.org and click the Events button. You can learn about that. If you would like one of these free sample books, you just let me know. Send me an email randy randywhite ministries.org get one in the mail to you and it'll be yours whether you come to the conference or not. You'll be able to read it and say, hey, wow, I think this is the best thing ever written. I think when the book comes out, I'll buy it. But of course, if you go to Branson, you won't have to buy the book. It will be given to you as part of it. So check, check all that out. If you don't already have one, I would love to send one to you. And then I would love to see you this Sunday. 9:45 and 10:45 have both of our broadcasts this Sunday and back again for Ask the Theologian on Monday. The summer schedule is no Friday, Ask the Theologian. So we'll take that off tomorrow. Now let me say hello to you and those of you who have given a little Chat always good to see you. In addition to those here in the live studio audience, we've got Jim and Piedmont, South Carolina, thanks for being with us here. Good evening. And to Everett and the Taos from the Taos Theological Seminary show low Arizona campus. Thanks for being here. Everett, Debbie, Marilyn and Roger, good to see you in Wabasha, Minnesota. Hope you're doing well tonight. And Teresa and Jack in Houston, Texas, thanks for being here. Deb, good to see you over in Arkansas. Hope all is well there. And let me see here, Mike, Smithville, Missouri, thanks for being here. Herb and Sherry, Lafayette, Louisiana, God bless you. Nicholas and Bolingbrook, Illinois, thank you. Phil and and dream a good evening. Good to see you. From Lexington, Kentucky, Debbie and Darryl, good to see you. Crystal Springs, Mississippi. And Luca, good to see you from Taos. Toby in Duncan, Oklahoma, thanks. Always here with us. Jennifer, good evening from Charlotte, Vermont. I know how to say it now because your daughter's right here and doing a good work for us. We appreciate that. Allen in Portland, good to see you this evening. Thank you very much. And hey, about that, Nicholas. Yeah. You've been with us pretty much all the way. I started February 2013. It was probably that's probably pretty close to the beginning when we started these Thursday night Bible studies. I should go back and check sometime. Ed, Nancy and Lisa and the right dividing dog for us. Good to see you. And Pueblo West, Colorado. Lisa's now in Pueblo west instead of Carbondale. We're glad you're here. Carol, good to see you. I suppose Roger might be there with you in Fresno, California. God bless. Mark, good to see you. Pastor Mark Bayes in Blue, Oklahoma. And there's Pastor Jeff in oh, you're from Pueblo, Colorado tonight, Jeff, did you go out a night on the town or something normally from Trinidad and oh, watching my daughter play volleyball. Okay, I got it. And I hope you watched live and kept the volume up loud so everyone around could hear the Bible study. There you go. And I'm straining to see what that says. But Jenna, good to see you tonight. Calgary, Alberta, you and your husband Josh and your three children always talk about two boys and leave out the poor girl. My bad. I know her name too. It starts with an M. And her brothers Wesley and Samuel. But glad all of you are here with us tonight and anyone else not logged in on. Many who will join us later online. Thanks for being part of our study tonight. It is a pleasure to have you and appreciate you very much. And thanks for clicking the donate button every now and then in the summer months. We appreciate that helps keep us going and is the only way we keep going actually. And we appreciate it. Let me lead us in a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, thanks for Bible study tonight. Thanks for helping us to, to look, maybe dig in and consider some words that we haven't seen quite in this manner, though we've read them before, to see that it is the words of Bathsheba, if we're interpreting this correctly and descriptive of Solomon, but prophetic of that which is to come and about to lead into perhaps the most famous part of proverbs in chapter 31. We pray that what we've done thus far has been done correctly. And we pray that as we finish it out, we would do that correctly as well and get whatever mistakes we make, get those right or forget about them. And that that which we got right, we would remember and apply into our worldview and our understanding of the Book of Proverbs. And pray that by coming to understand the Book of Proverbs much better as we have in these 17 weeks, that we would be able to guide others as well in the future as we run across those who are reading Proverbs and having a hard time understanding what, what. What it means and what is there to give them some, some. Some wisdom and some understanding through all that. Thank you for your watch care over us each who have joined us tonight and each Thursday night, pray your richest blessings upon them around this great big electronic table in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you ladies and gentlemen. I do appreciate having you here and it is a blessing and again would be happy to have you join us at Ask the Theologian Monday through Thursday in the summer months, normally Monday through Friday. And you all take care and we'll see you soon.