The Right Use of a Wrong World: On Gifts and Bribes Text: Proverbs 21:14
Introduction: Navigating a Crooked World
The book of Proverbs is intensely practical. It is not a collection of abstract platitudes for clean-room environments. It is a field manual for godly living in a world that is decidedly not a clean room. It is a fallen world, a messy world, a world full of friction, folly, and fallen men. And in this world, we are called to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. This requires a rugged, real-world wisdom, not a fragile, pietistic naivete.
Our text today forces us to confront this reality head-on. It speaks of gifts and bribes, of anger and wrath. These are not topics for the faint of heart, and our modern evangelical sensibilities can sometimes be a bit delicate when confronted with the raw pragmatism of Solomon. We like our ethics to be neat and tidy, with bright lines and no difficult distinctions. But the world is not always neat and tidy, and Scripture gives us wisdom for the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be.
We live in a time that despises distinctions. Our age wants to flatten everything. It wants to say that a gift and a bribe are the same thing if they both involve money changing hands. It wants to say that all authority is corrupt, and that any attempt to navigate that corruption is itself a compromise. But the Bible is a book of distinctions. It is the Word of a God who creates by separating light from darkness, and land from sea. Wisdom is the art of making righteous distinctions, and this proverb demands that we make some very important ones.
So we must ask the question: What is this proverb teaching us? Is it giving us permission to engage in shady dealings? Is it a cynical observation about how the world works? Or is it giving us a piece of shrewd, godly wisdom for dealing with the consequences of the fall? As with all of Scripture, the answer is that it is equipping the saints for the work of dominion, which must be carried out in a world that is still at war with its rightful King.
The Text
A gift in secret subdues anger,
And a bribe in the bosom, strong wrath.
(Proverbs 21:14 LSB)
The Observation of Reality
At its most basic level, this proverb is simply making an observation about human nature. It is telling us how things work in a fallen world. Anger, even strong wrath, can often be pacified by a material incentive. A gift, given discreetly, can cool the jets of an angry man. A reward, tucked away "in the bosom," can turn away even fierce wrath. This is not a cynical statement; it is a realistic one. Man is not a disembodied spirit. We are creatures of flesh and blood, and we are affected by material realities.
The word for "gift" is mattan, and the word for "bribe" is shochad. While shochad is almost always used in a negative sense elsewhere in Scripture, describing the perversion of justice, the structure of this proverb is a parallel. It is describing a functional reality. The secrecy is key to both clauses. "In secret" and "in the bosom" both point to discretion. Why? Because public gifts can be seen as attempts at manipulation or public humiliation. A secret gift allows the angry party to save face. It allows him to change his course of action without appearing to have been bought. The secrecy is what makes it effective at pacifying his anger, rather than inflaming his pride.
This is simply how people are wired. We see this principle at work in everyday life. A husband brings home flowers for his wife after an argument. A company sends a gift basket to an unhappy customer. These are not necessarily nefarious bribes; they are acknowledgments of a grievance and tokens of goodwill intended to soothe ruffled feathers. The proverb simply states the principle in a more potent and high-stakes context.
The Necessary Distinctions
Now, because this is the Word of God and not just a page from a cynical self-help book, we must go deeper. Is this proverb prescriptive? Is it telling us to go out and start bribing people? Here is where wisdom, the art of making distinctions, is paramount.
First, we must distinguish between taking a bribe and giving one. Scripture is absolutely, unequivocally clear that taking a bribe to pervert justice is a heinous sin. "You shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the clear-sighted and subverts the cause of the just" (Exodus 23:8). A man in a position of authority, a judge, a ruler, a pastor, has a duty to render impartial judgment based on righteousness, not on who has lined his pockets. To take a bribe is to sell justice. It is to declare that righteousness is for sale, which is a damnable lie. A believer in a position of authority must do his duty, period, without being swayed by any external inducement.
But what about giving a bribe? Or, to use the proverb's language, what about giving a secret gift to pacify wrath? Here we must make a second distinction: the distinction between bribing someone to do evil, and bribing someone to do what is right. It would always be a sin to pay a judge to condemn an innocent man. That is suborning wickedness. But what if you are in a corrupt system, dealing with a crooked official who will not do his righteous duty without his palm being greased? What if you are stuck at a border crossing in a third-world country, and the official will not let you pass with your perfectly legal goods unless you give him a "gift"?
In such a scenario, you are not persuading him to do wrong. You are persuading him to do right. You are pacifying his greedy, wrathful heart in order to get him to fulfill the duty he should have been performing all along. You are, in effect, paying a tax on his corruption. This proverb seems to acknowledge that such situations exist, and that a secret gift is a tool that can be used to navigate them. It is not ideal. It is a lamentable consequence of the fall. But it is a reality, and this proverb gives us wisdom for it.
The Limits of Pragmatism
However, we must immediately apply a third distinction, which is a practical one. Just because something may be permissible in a tight spot does not mean it is a wise course of action to pursue as a general rule. This is not a business model.
If you become known as the man who is always willing to "grease the skids," you will find that the skids are always in need of greasing. You become an easy mark. You are, in fact, helping to perpetuate the very system of corruption that is causing the problem. You are feeding the beast. Therefore, while this proverb allows for the possibility of such a gift in a specific circumstance to pacify an immediate and unjust wrath, the broader wisdom of Scripture would tell us to avoid such situations whenever possible.
The Christian's first resort should be to appeal to justice, to truth, and to righteousness. We should seek to build societies where justice is not for sale. We should work and pray for reformation, so that officials do their duty out of fear of God, not for the love of money. This proverb is a tool for survival in Babylon; it is not a blueprint for building the New Jerusalem.
The Gospel Analogy
As with everything in the Old Testament, we must ultimately run this proverb up the flagpole to see how it salutes the cross of Jesus Christ. And when we do, we see a glorious parallel. We were enemies of God. We were filled with wrath and hostility toward Him. Romans tells us that the mind set on the flesh is hostile to God (Romans 8:7). We were children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3).
And what did God do? He did not stand aloof, demanding that we fix ourselves before He would deal with us. He sent a gift. He sent His only Son. And this gift was given, in a sense, in secret. It was veiled in flesh. The mystery of the gospel was hidden for ages (Colossians 1:26). And this gift was placed in the "bosom" of the earth for three days.
This unspeakable gift of His Son was what pacified the righteous wrath of God against our sin. Jesus, through His atoning sacrifice, absorbed the full measure of God's strong wrath. But here is the glorious inversion. A human bribe is given to a corrupt official to persuade him to do right. But God is not corrupt. He is perfectly just. And His gift was not given to persuade Himself to set aside His justice. No, the gift of His Son was given to satisfy His justice. It was the ultimate payment, the perfect sacrifice, that allowed God to be both "just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:26).
God did not overlook our sin; He judged it fully in the person of His Son. The gift He gave was the price that His own righteousness demanded. And through this gift, His wrath is subdued, and we who were His enemies are reconciled to Him. We are brought into His family, not because we bribed Him, but because He lavished upon us the riches of His grace, purchased by the blood of His Son.
Therefore, when we find ourselves in a crooked world, dealing with angry and corrupt men, we should remember this. We act with wisdom and shrewdness, yes. But we do so as representatives of a God who overcame the ultimate hostility, not by compromising His righteousness, but by satisfying it through the greatest gift ever given. Our goal is not merely to pacify the wrath of men for our own convenience, but to live in such a way that we point them to the only gift that can save them from the wrath to come.