Do not speak in the hearing of a fool,
for he will despise the good sense of your words.
Do not move an ancient landmark
or enter the fields of the fatherless,
for their Redeemer is strong;
he will plead their cause against you.Proverbs 23:9-11
The proverb in 9 reminds us of Jesus' words in Matthew 7:6 about casting pearls before swine. It reminds us that there are times when it is much better not to speak, and that it is wrong to continue to speak if we see that a man is trampling on the divine Word. Our Lord's attitude to Herod in Luke 23:9 is a striking example of this. For the thought in 10 see Note on 22:29. The emphasis in 11 echoes 22:22, 23. The word for 'redeemer' is 'goer', which originally means the near kinsman who by law was obliged to come to the rescue of a relative in need (the action of Boaz in the book of Ruth is an illustration of this function). The thought of the fatherless having God as a near kinsman is a very beautiful and comforting one. Once again we have the emphasis on a moral order in the universe and on the idea of strict justice in God's dealings with men who transgress the laws of humanity. It is the fact that men have so substantially lost the vertical dimension in their thinking that they tend to believe that they can commit acts of social injustice with impunity. It is certainly no accident that it is in those times when a thoroughgoing supernaturalism has been recovered in the Church's testimony - bringing the vertical dimension into society - that social justice has been so substantially established, as witness the immense, compassionate social action which was a very real and practical expression of the true Christian Faith in the 19th century. It has become almost a commonplace nowadays to 'knock' the unchristian hypocrisy of the Christian Church of the Victorian era, but it is possible to do this only if one has not read and studied the evidence. The vast extent and scope of social work, touching almost every aspect of human need in the country, and laying the foundations for much of the social welfare we enjoy and take for granted today, was a direct fruit of evangelical faith.