Commentary - Proverbs 20:26

Bird's-eye view

This proverb presents a concise and potent job description for the civil magistrate. True and godly governance is not a passive affair, nor is it an exercise in maintaining a bland, neutral peace. Rather, a king who governs with wisdom, which is to say, a king who fears God, has two fundamental judicial duties. First, he must discern and separate. He must distinguish the righteous from the wicked, the productive from the predatory. This is the act of winnowing. Second, having made that separation, he must bring real consequences to bear upon the wicked. He must apply the pressure of the law, crushing their lawless enterprises. This is the work of the threshing wheel. The proverb uses agricultural metaphors to describe the hard, necessary, and sometimes violent work of administering true justice in a fallen world. It is a direct refutation of any sentimental or therapeutic view of civil justice.

Ultimately, this proverb points to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the one truly wise King. He is the one who is even now separating the wheat from the chaff in history, and He is the one who will bring the final, decisive threshing at the end of the age. Earthly rulers are His deacons, and their task is to reflect His justice in a provisional way, creating order and punishing evil so that the righteous might flourish.

Outline

Context In Proverbs

Proverbs consistently links wisdom with justice and leadership. A recurring theme is that a stable throne is established by righteousness (Prov 16:12, 25:5). This particular proverb, 20:26, fits squarely within a section that deals with the king's role in executing judgment (see Prov 20:8). It provides the metaphorical muscle to the principle that a king's gaze scatters evil. It is not a passive glare, but an active process of investigation and punishment. This proverb gives us the "how." How does a king scatter evil? By winnowing and by threshing. It stands as a stark reminder that true leadership requires moral clarity and the courage to act on that clarity for the good of the realm.

Key Issues

The King's Threshing Floor

We live in a sentimental age, an age that has lost its nerve. When it comes to civil justice, we talk in therapeutic terms. We speak of rehabilitation and societal factors, and we treat criminals like unfortunate victims of circumstance. Our justice system is often more concerned with process than with outcomes, and the idea of punishment as a good and necessary thing is considered barbaric by our sophisticated elites. This proverb is a bucket of cold water in the face of all such mushy thinking.

God's word describes justice using robust, agricultural metaphors. A kingdom is like a field. It contains both good grain and worthless chaff, both productive citizens and wicked men who are a drain and a danger to the commonwealth. The job of the wise king is not to pretend the chaff is just "unrealized wheat." His job is to get it off the threshing floor. This requires two distinct actions. First comes separation, and then comes judgment. You must know what you are dealing with, and then you must deal with it. This is the pattern for all godly authority, from a father in his home to a king on his throne.

Verse by Verse Commentary

26 A wise king winnows the wicked,

The proverb begins by qualifying the kind of ruler who can do this work. It must be a wise king. And in the world of Proverbs, wisdom is never just native shrewdness or political savvy. Wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord (Prov 9:10). So, a wise king is one who understands that he is ruling under God and is accountable to God for how he rules. His wisdom is a moral and theological wisdom.

His first action is to winnow the wicked. Winnowing was the process of tossing harvested grain into the air. The heavy, valuable kernels would fall back to the threshing floor, while the light, worthless chaff would be blown away by the wind. The key action here is separation. A wise king must be discerning. He must be able to distinguish between good and evil, between the law-abiding and the lawless. He does this through just laws, fair trials, and careful investigation. He doesn't treat all his subjects the same. He actively separates out the wicked for the purpose of dealing with them. A society that cannot or will not make these kinds of distinctions is a society that is beginning to rot.

And turns the threshing wheel over them.

After the separation comes the punishment. This second clause intensifies the first. Winnowing is a relatively gentle process compared to the threshing wheel. A threshing wheel, or more commonly a threshing sledge, was a heavy wooden frame, often with stones or iron spikes embedded in the bottom. It was dragged by oxen over the grain to crush the stalks and break the husks from the kernels. It was an instrument of intense pressure and force.

This is a picture of retributive justice. The king does not merely separate the wicked and blow them away. He brings the force and weight of the law down upon them. He crushes their evil enterprises. This is what Paul is talking about in Romans 13 when he says the magistrate "does not bear the sword in vain" for he is "an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer." The threshing wheel is the instrument of that wrath. Justice is not a limp-wristed affair. It has teeth. It has weight. A wise king understands that protecting the wheat requires him to crush the weeds.

Application

The applications of this proverb are direct and far-reaching. For the civil magistrate, the lesson is plain. Your primary duty is not to provide services or to ensure everyone feels affirmed. Your primary duty is to be a terror to bad conduct (Rom 13:3). This requires moral clarity to winnow the wicked from the righteous, and it requires judicial courage to turn the threshing wheel of the law over them. Any government that fails in this, that punishes the righteous and subsidizes the wicked, is an abomination to the Lord (Prov 17:15).

For the church, the principle holds in the realm of discipline. Church leaders are to be wise shepherds who winnow. They must distinguish between the repentant and the defiant, between true sheep and wolves in sheep's clothing. And when necessary, they must bring the weight of church discipline to bear, turning the spiritual threshing wheel of excommunication over the unrepentant in order to protect the flock and, Lord willing, to bring the sinner to his senses.

In our homes, fathers are to be wise kings. A father must winnow, distinguishing between childish foolishness and high-handed rebellion in his children. He cannot be passive. He must then bring the "threshing wheel" of loving, firm, biblical discipline to bear where it is needed, crushing disobedience in order to cultivate righteousness.

And for all of us, this proverb should drive us to Christ. He is the one truly wise King. We were all chaff, destined to be blown away. We were all fit for nothing but the pressure of the threshing wheel of God's final judgment. But on the cross, the King Himself was placed on the threshing floor. The full weight of the wrath of God was turned over on Him, so that we who believe in Him might be gathered as precious wheat into the Father's barn.