Proverbs 17:22-24

A cheerful heart is real medicine — it heals the whole man, while a crushed spirit dries him up from the marrow out. But be careful what kind of merry heart is meant. Not the loud mirth of fools, which Scripture calls madness; the merry heart that heals is the heart at peace with God — every other calm of soul is just an opiate that wears off. The deepest dose of this medicine is the merry heart of forgiveness: when the Lord told the paralyzed man "thy sins be forgiven thee," that healed him below the level his restored legs ever reached. If I am a pardoned sinner, what earthly trouble can finally sink me? Two cautions keep this verse honest. Joy is medicine, not food — a man's character cannot grow solid on merriment as its main diet, any more than a wild donkey could grow fat snuffing the wind; mirth is the soft bedding that receives heavy cares which would otherwise crush you, taken after the day's real work. And the broken spirit is to be pitied, never scolded: temperament and even bodily health press on the heart, and much that we are quick to censure in a brother, better knowledge would teach us to pity. (Above all, never try to cheer a dying soul by diverting it from Christ — to pull a sufferer's eyes off Jesus in his last hours, with a novel or a distraction, is the unkindest thing one human can do to another.)

The companion to verse 8, now from the corrupt judge's side. He slips the bribe "out of the bosom" — hidden in the fold of the robe, a deal done under four eyes, kept from any witness — precisely because even a corrupt world is ashamed of this sin. But the transaction that hides from man is wide open to God. Judas's money-bag was drawn with two strings, silk and silver — favor and reward — and they pull a man's justice crooked every time. The safest rule is the old judge's who refused every gift, however innocent-looking, on principle: abstain from all appearance of evil.

Wisdom stands right in front of the understanding man — fixed before his face like the center everything points to. The fool's eyes, meanwhile, are roaming "to the ends of the earth," hunting far away for what is near at hand: the word is nigh him, in his mouth and in his heart (Deuteronomy 30:14), and he scans the horizon and misses it. The Pharisees did exactly this — searched everywhere for light except the moral Sun shining in their own midst. And the rebuke reaches our own prayers: how often, instead of looking unto Jesus right in front of us, are our eyes off in the ends of the earth?