Reward

DEVOTION

PROVERBS

REWARD

Prov 26:10

10 Like an archer who wounds at random is he who hires a fool or any passer-by.

NIV

This one is very confusing due to the translation of the original text. The Hebrew text reads, great whirl all rewards fool and rewards passer by. Some of the translations have added this idea about the archer, some have left it out. Some assume the great means God and have added his name in their translations. This translation give the verse a negative connotation, others who add God because of the word great make it sound more positive as God rewards both the fool and the transgressor, passer by, but transgressor makes it sound like sinner. Then God would reward both the fool and the sinner which seems wrong on so many levels. Although we could see this as hell being a reward for the work of evil being done by both the fool and the sinner. The word translated reward means to hire oneself out, or to earn wages, thus the reward of sin is death, if the great is to mean God. It does seem that most of our scholars of old agree to a degree about the Hebrew word “Rab” meaning the great or master, and to mean God. A form of that word is used in Job and it means archer, and thus this and other translations use that term in the place of great. Some see this word archer as a bad man who give everyone pain (wounds at random) because he hires the fool and the sinner to expand his evil plots. The ideas are all over the place on this proverb and it is difficult for us laymen to gainer a truth we can apply to our lives. Yet if we are to take God at his word and trust that the Spirit leads us into all truth we should be able to understand this without all the confusion among the old scholar’s wisdom. The idea that God does reward everyone according to their deeds makes the most sense on surface or simplest level. This would be applying Occam’s razor, the theory that when there are two explanations of an occurrence the simpler is usually the best. Another way of saying it is the more assumptions we have to make the more unlikely is the explanation. So then we should not assume or add words to the text making it more than what it means, at least according to Occam. Then we are left with the idea that someone great pays wages to everyone alike. If we place this among all other scriptures we would have to conclude the idea that God rewards everyone according to their works. Let us just live with that for it is the simpler explanation of this saying, although we are considering the great as being God, yet the whole of scripture is about God. So then let us know without a doubt that we will receive a reward for our doing the work of God, and we know the work of God is believing in the one he sent, Jesus. So the believing in Jesus gets us the reward of eternal life, and the reward of the fool is the second death. Let us leave it at that, we all get a reward.