The Divine Fact-Checker: God's Eyes on Truth Text: Proverbs 22:12
Introduction: The War Over the Dictionary
We live in an age that is drowning in words, and consequently, is dying of thirst for truth. Our culture is a veritable Niagara of information, opinions, hot takes, and propaganda, all flowing from the fundamental assumption that man is the measure of all things. If man is the measure, then man gets to define what is true, what is false, what is just, and what is treacherous. The modern project is an attempt to seize control of the dictionary, believing that if we can control the words, we can control reality. But this is like a toddler thinking he can control the sun by scribbling on the windowpane with a crayon.
The book of Proverbs is not interested in our postmodern games. It operates on a fundamentally different presupposition, which is that God is the measure of all things. God defines reality. His Word is the ultimate dictionary, and His character is the ultimate standard. Therefore, all human words, all human systems of knowledge, are weighed and measured against His standard. There is no neutral ground, no Switzerland in this conflict. Every fact, every word, every thought is either submitted to the lordship of Jesus Christ, or it is in active rebellion against Him.
This brings us to our text in Proverbs 22. This proverb is a compact statement on divine epistemology. It tells us how God relates to the world of information, a world of knowledge and of words. It draws a sharp, clean line between two opposing forces: the Lord's active preservation of true knowledge, and His active demolition of treacherous speech. This is not a passive observation on God's part. He is not a celestial librarian, quietly cataloging true and false statements. He is an active, engaged, sovereign King. His eyes are not passive sensors; they are instruments of His active rule. He guards, and He subverts. He builds up, and He tears down. This verse is a profound comfort to the righteous and a stark warning to the wicked.
The Text
The eyes of Yahweh guard knowledge,
But He subverts the words of the treacherous one.
(Proverbs 22:12)
God's Watchful Providence Over Truth
Let us take the first clause:
"The eyes of Yahweh guard knowledge..." (Proverbs 22:12a)
The "eyes of Yahweh" is a common biblical metaphor for God's omniscience and His active, providential oversight of the world. His gaze is not the detached stare of a security camera. His seeing is a form of doing. When God looks upon something, He is actively engaged with it. And what is it that His eyes are guarding? The text says "knowledge."
Now, this is a foundational claim about the nature of reality. Knowledge, true knowledge, is not a free-floating abstraction. It is not something that autonomous man discovers on his own, building his little towers of intellectual Babel. All true knowledge is grounded in the character and mind of God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (Prov. 1:7). This means that any pursuit of knowledge that does not begin with submission to God is, from the outset, a fool's errand. It is an attempt to count without numbers, to build without gravity.
Because knowledge is grounded in God, He takes a proprietary interest in it. He guards it. He preserves it. Think of what this means. In a world awash with lies, God ensures that true knowledge does not perish from the earth. He guarded the Scriptures through millennia of persecution and sloppy penmanship. He preserves the testimony of the natural world, which screams of His glory, even when men stuff their fingers in their ears (Rom. 1:20). He ensures that the gospel, the ultimate knowledge of salvation in Christ, will endure until the end of the age, despite every effort of hell to stamp it out.
This guarding of knowledge is a great encouragement to the believer. When you speak the truth, you are not alone. The eyes of the Lord are upon that truth. When you teach your children the catechism, when you share the gospel with your neighbor, when you stand for what is right in the public square, you are handling something that God Himself is actively preserving. Your words are not lost in the wind; they are aligned with the guarded reality of the cosmos. The truth is resilient because its guardian is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth.
God's Active War Against Deceit
The second clause presents the antithesis, the other side of God's activity in the world of words.
"But He subverts the words of the treacherous one." (Proverbs 22:12b)
Here we see the polemical, combative nature of God's rule. He is not neutral. He takes sides. While He guards knowledge, He actively "subverts" the words of the treacherous. The word for subvert means to overturn, to frustrate, to pervert. God is in the business of tripping up liars. He is dedicated to the project of making the plans of the deceitful backfire.
Who is this "treacherous one?" The Hebrew word speaks of faithlessness, of betraying a trust or a covenant. The treacherous man is one who operates on a foundation of falsehood. He lives by the lie that he is his own god, that his words can create his own reality. He uses speech not to describe reality, but to manipulate it for his own gain. He is the smooth-talking politician, the flattering adulterer, the prosperity preacher, the academic who deconstructs all truth except his own tenure. He is anyone who builds his life and makes his arguments on anti-Christian presuppositions.
And God actively works against him. God ensures that a worldview built on lies will ultimately collapse. He subverts their words. How does He do this? He does it by building reality in such a way that lies always, eventually, run aground on the hard shores of how things actually are. You can declare that gravity is a social construct, but if you step off a cliff, you will be subverted. You can insist that two plus two equals five, but your accounting will be subverted. You can build a society on sexual anarchy and the abolition of the family, but that society will be subverted by its own internal rot.
We see this principle throughout Scripture. Haman builds a gallows for Mordecai and is hanged on it himself. The enemies of Daniel have him thrown into the lions' den, and they and their families end up as lion food. The builders of Babel want to make a name for themselves, and God subverts their speech and scatters them. God delights in taking the clever words of the treacherous and turning them into a tangled, self-refuting mess. He makes their own tongues fall upon them (Psalm 64:8). This is why the unbelieving world is so incoherent. It has to borrow from the Christian worldview (in its calls for justice, love, and reason) in order to argue against it. God has hardwired the universe in such a way that to argue against Him, you must first sit on His lap.
Conclusion: The Logos and the Lie
This proverb, like all of Scripture, ultimately points us to Christ. Jesus Christ is the Logos, the Word of God made flesh (John 1:1, 14). He is the perfect embodiment of the knowledge that God guards. In Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3). He is the Truth. To know Him is to know the central fact of the universe.
Conversely, Satan is the ultimate treacherous one. He is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44). His entire program, from the garden to the present day, is to subvert the Word of God with the treacherous words of rebellion: "Did God really say?" The history of the world is the history of the conflict between the Word and the lie.
The cross is the ultimate expression of Proverbs 22:12. At the cross, it appeared that the words of the treacherous had won. The lies of the Sanhedrin, the political maneuvering of Pilate, the betrayal of Judas, all seemed to triumph. The Word was silenced and buried in a tomb. But God was guarding His knowledge. And on the third day, He subverted the entire program of hell. He overturned the lie of death with the reality of resurrection. He took the most treacherous act in history and turned it into the fountain of salvation for the world.
Therefore, we must align ourselves, our lives, and our words with the knowledge that God guards. We must build our lives on the rock of His revealed truth in Scripture. Do not be intimidated by the confident-sounding words of the treacherous. Their systems are built on sand, and God is actively working to bring about a high tide. Their words are destined for subversion. But the one who trusts in Christ, the one who speaks His truth, is allied with the Guardian of all reality. His eyes are on you, and He will preserve His truth, and you in it, for all eternity.