Two Invitations to Dinner

The ninth chapter of Proverbs is built around two meals. In the first six verses, Wisdom has built her house with seven pillars, prepared her meat, mixed her wine, and set her table. She sends her servants out and calls from the highest point in the city: let all who are simple come to my house. Come, eat my food and drink the wine I have mixed. Leave your simple ways and you will live.

In the last six verses, Folly is introduced. She is loud, undisciplined, and without knowledge. She sits at the door of her house, also at the highest point in the city, and calls out to the very same people with almost the same words: let all who are simple come in here. Then she adds her sales pitch. Stolen water is sweet, and food eaten in secret is delicious.

The parallel is exact and the difference is total. Wisdom has done the work. She built, she prepared, she mixed, she set the table, she sent out messengers. Folly has done nothing. She has no meal of her own to offer; her whole appeal is that what she gives is stolen and secret. And the chapter ends by telling us what her guests do not know: the dead are there, and her guests are deep in the realm of the dead.

Notice who both women are addressing. Not the wise and not the wicked, but the simple, the undecided, the people who have not yet chosen a road. That is most of us on most days. We are not settled villains or settled saints. We are hearing two invitations and deciding which to answer.

The Gospels pick this scene up. Jesus tells parables about banquets and sends out servants to call people in. He is Wisdom's house made visible, and the meal he sets is himself. Folly still calls from her doorway, still promises that stolen things taste better.

The middle of the chapter, verses 7 through 12, is about how people respond to correction: mockers hate it, the wise love it. That is how you can tell which house you have been eating at. Today, when the two invitations come, and they will, remember which hostess actually cooked.