Proverbs 8:12-16

"I wisdom dwell with prudence." Wisdom and prudence are roommates: wisdom aims at the highest end; prudence picks the most effective means. One without the other limps — plenty of men have right goals and wreck them with foolish methods, and plenty of clever operators execute brilliantly toward garbage. God's wisdom carries both under one roof, and never displayed it more than in the plan of salvation itself — the right end (sinners redeemed), the right means (the cross), the right time ("when the fulness of the time was come," Galatians 4:4).

Verse 13 hands you one of the cleanest definitions in the Bible: "The fear of the LORD is to hate evil." Not to fear consequences — to hate the evil itself. Test yourself with that, because the difference splits the world: to fear retribution is not to hate sin; in most cases it is to love sin with the whole heart, while resenting its bill. If men could be convinced God took sin as lightly as they do, their religious fear would collapse like steam under cold water. The man who fears the LORD has changed sides — he hates what God hates. And when does a sinner become able to hate his sin instead of just dreading its wages? When it's forgiven. It is when sin is forgiven that a man can finally hate it — because then he is on God's side of it, looking back. Notice, too, the first item on Wisdom's own hate list: pride — which makes "a proud disciple of a lowly Saviour" one of the ugliest contradictions a church ever houses.

Verses 15–16 lift the camera to the nations: "By me kings reign." Every government on earth — good, bad, pagan, modern — holds office under the wisdom of God. "The powers that be are ordained of God" (Romans 13:1); every kingdom is one province of the empire of the King of kings. That's not a claim that rulers are wise — history howls otherwise — it's the claim that the institution of rule is His, that rulers govern well exactly in proportion as His wisdom governs them, and that no election, coup, or empire ever moved the throne above all thrones one inch.