“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
Growing Dominion, Part 137
“The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender” (Prov. 22:7).
And things fall down when you drop them. This proverb is simply an observation on the way things are. We do not here read whether or not the rich or the lender handles his inevitable position of authority in a godly manner or not. All we learn is that this water does not flow uphill. No water does.
When a righteous man lends, he is to handle the whole thing differently than when an unrighteous man does. And when a righteous rich man is exercising his authority over the poor, there is to be a stark difference between how he does it and how an unrighteous rich man does it. There is a fundamental and profound antithesis here—but it is an ethical divide between two kinds of rich people. It is not between two worlds, one in which the rich rule over the poor, and the other pipe-dream world in which the poor rule over the rich. In this world, things fall down. If the rich are righteous what falls down upon the poor is blessing. If they are unrighteous, we have a proverb about what flows downhill.