Do not say "tomorrow"

Where we are

Proverbs makes only two appearances in the weekday lectionary, both this week — a handful of days for the Bible's entire wisdom-sentence tradition. Today's selection is a run of prohibitions from the first collection, small as coins and just as circulated.

What happens

"Refuse no one the good on which he has a claim when it is in your power to do it for him. Say not to your neighbor, 'Go, come back tomorrow, and I will give it to you,' when you can give at once. Plot no evil against your neighbor, against one who lives at peace with you. Quarrel not with a man without cause, with one who has done you no harm. Envy not the lawless man and choose none of his ways: to Yahweh the perverse one is an abomination, but with the upright is his friendship. The curse of Yahweh is on the house of the wicked, but the dwelling of the just he blesses. When dealing with the arrogant, he is stern, but to the humble he shows kindness."

What to notice

The first prohibition defines a category worth keeping: al-timna tov mi-be'alav — do not withhold good from its owners — where the "owner" is the person who needs it and the withholder merely has it in hand. The good in your power already belongs, morally, to the one with the claim on it; keeping it is not neutrality but a form of theft the statute books cannot reach. Wisdom legislates where law cannot.

And the second prohibition targets the respectable version: lekh va-shuv — "go, and come back; tomorrow I will give" — ve-yesh ittakh, and it is with you, right now. Not refusal: deferral — the delay that costs the giver nothing and the asker another day. Proverbs treats "tomorrow" as a moral act in itself, distinct from "no," and in some ways worse, because it wears generosity's clothes while performing refusal's function. The proverb's realism is exact: most good withheld in the world is withheld exactly this way — approved, intended, and scheduled.

The closing couplet gives the section its theology: la-anavim yitten chen — to the lowly he gives grace — the verse both James and Peter quote (Theos opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble). The section's small ethics and its large theology are one claim: Theos is a giver who does not defer, and his friendship — sod, his intimate counsel — is with the straight.