“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
Growing Dominion, Part 84
“Much food is in the tillage of the poor: but there is that is destroyed for want of judgment” (Prov. 13:23).
The point of this proverb is that the poor frequently have far more wealth available to them than they know how to utilize. There is a lot of food in their fields, but much of it is simply thrown away because of a lack of discernment or judgment. Another way of framing this is to say that knowledge is a form of wealth. Appropriate knowledge, practical knowledge, constitutes a greater form of wealth than random, disconnected knowledge, the kind of knowledge that might equip you for doing well in a game of Jeopardy.
Often fields are poorly cultivated because the hearts and minds of the farmers are poorly cultivated. One of the reasons why many Third World countries suffer in grinding poverty is simply this: the people at large do not know that their methods (of agriculture, economics, taxation, etc.) are simply counterproductive. Education is no savior, but when the people are saved, one of the artifacts saved along with them is their process of educating their children. And when wisdom comes to a people, it must also come to this aspect of their lives.