Antidote to Temptation

Proverbs 27:7 (KJV) The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.

The basic point of this verse resonates.  At the end of a meal, we are less tempted by desert than we would be at the beginning.  We are less inclined to overindulge in sweets when we have overindulged in meat and potatoes.  When we’re hungry, anything tastes good.

This is where the other translations make this a richer understanding.  My first indication of this was looking at the Septuagint, which uses the word “scorn” instead of the KJV’s “loatheth”.  My iPad software is set up right now to run the Septuagint in parallel with the Legacy Standard Bible. In the LSB it has “trample” (947).  When I looked across different translations, I saw that idea of trampling as being echoed, so I looked to the Hebrew a little bit.  There I saw that the basic idea was to step on, or to tread upon, so trampled is probably the best of the translations.

What this told me was that one of the best ways to resist the temptations of life, the sweets or the honeycomb, is to be satiated with the things that God considers righteous and holy.  If I am in a Sunday morning service where we are passionately singing to him “Holy!  Holy!  Holy!”, I find that I have very little inclination to rush off and open a bag of Doritos.  The comparison is foolish, but you get the idea.

So?  Spend some time focusing on the things of God.  I find that meeting with Him in the morning and just thinking about His attributes and the ways in which he has interacted with His chosen people through the ages, gives me a different perspective on my day. Of course, as usual, results may vary.