Proverbs 29:10

 The book of Proverbs gives us a lot of instruction on a lot of different subjects. One subject that can keep us in God’s wisdom is Godly Follower-ship. Who we follow; where we follow; how we follow are all spoken about in Proverbs. Here is one of them about the righteous and the unrighteous:

Proverbs 29:10 (NASV)

Men of bloodshed hate the blameless,

But the upright are concerned for his life.

Proverbs 29:10

Bloodthirsty men hate one who is blameless

and seek the life of the upright. (ESV)

Proverbs 29:10

Bloodthirsty men hate a man of integrity

and seek to kill the upright. (NIV)

One of the most famous stories that illustrates this proverb would be the story of Cain and Abel.  Abel was a righteous man and Cain wicked.  When Cain saw that Abel offered a good sacrifice and his was not accepted by God, he because angry and sought Abel's life.  He kills Abel out of hatred and jealousy.   That is what wicked men do.  They so hate the righteous that they "shame" them; that they seek their destruction.   See 1 John 3:12 for further evidence of this truth.   

1 John 3:12

We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous.

In converse the righteous don't look to hurt or injure the blameless, but to lift them up.   The second line of the above proverb tells us that the upright are "concerned" for the life of the blameless.   The Hebrew word used here for "concerned" is “baqash.”   It means to "seek" to "look out for" the life of the blameless.  Righteous people are not jealous or injured by the blameless.  They are blessed by them.  You can tell what is in the heart of the person by how they treat or feel about the blameless or how they treat the wicked.   

At the end of this chapter of Proverbs, Solomon writes this:

Proverbs 29:27 (ESV)

An unjust man is an abomination to the righteous,

but one whose way is straight is an abomination to the wicked.

There is a tension between the righteous and the unrighteous.  The unrighteous seek to destroy the righteous.   The “unmovable” man in Psalms 15 states it this way:

Psalms 15:4 (ESV)

in whose eyes a vile person is despised,

but who honors those who fear the LORD;

We are taught to love those around us.  But, we must not love their actions or character.   There is no doubt that the tension between those who are righteous and those who are not is real.  How we approach that tension probably reveals which one of those two camps we fall into.