“WEIGHING HEARTS”
“All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes,
but the LORD weighs the spirit.” (Proverbs 16:2, English Standard Version)
“Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but Yahweh weighs the hearts.” (Proverbs 21:2, Young’s Literal Translation)
Lasine, commenting on Proverbs 21:2 (as well as on other ancient writings), notes that “. . . our evaluations of biblical characters may end up revealing our own ‘nakedness,’ allowing us to weigh ourselves in the balance while still alive.”[1] So, in a profound sense, when we read the Bible, it also reads us.
Well, it is not so much the Bible that weighs us as it is the LORD who weighs us. In the original Hebrew in both 16:2 and 21:2, the verb translated “weighs” is a participle. Often, the Hebrew participle conveys continual action that flows from the character of the one doing the action. So, it would appear that God is always weighing our spirits and hearts.
Perhaps this should warn us against thinking we know our own hearts very well. It should certainly warn us against thinking we know other people very well. Who knows? It might even make us less prone to weigh others or to judge them.
In fact, our weighing of the motives of others might be one of things that God weighs. Like Belshazzar in Daniel 5, we may be “weighed in the balance and found wanting.”
[1] Stuart Lasine, Weighing Hearts: Character, Judgment, and the Ethics of Reading the Bible, Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 568 (New York: T & T Clark, 2012), xii.
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