Proverbs 23 vs.1
When you sit down to dine with a ruler, consider carefully what is before you.
Most of us are common men and women. Therefore we are not accustomed to all the intricacies of manners and behaviors in high courts and palaces, nor do we dine daily on the unusual dainties that we might find at the king’s table.
When King Solomon wrote this, he desired to save the lives of those who may have a once in a lifetime honor to sit at the king’s table while enjoying the benefits. Often those who would sit at the table would make the food their object opposes to the king with whom they were sitting. Thus, they would engage in behavior that was not befitting at a kings table. They might tend to drink in excess, thus losing their inhibitions revealing secrets or saying something offensive or eating in excess causing embarrassment and forgetting that they were sitting in the presence of someone superior to them and cause great harm if they should remember their place.
Let us consider carefully when we sit at the table what is it, we eat, and drink? Does the thing we eat bring with it a sentence of death or life? Have we grown accustomed to eating in excess that we embarrass ourselves? Do we drink without restraint; thus, our behaviors reveal secrets to those who do not hold our best interest in mind? Alternatively, have we left our well- being in the hands of strangers who must come to our aid when we experience the fallout of our lack of restraint.
Do you feel the ill effects of some of the things you eat before you even leave the table? Do you already know how you will feel tomorrow based on what you choose to eat and drink today?
Choose wisely the things you put on your table, and be temperate in all things, lest you find yourself sitting with a hot-headed King, who has taken offense to your behavior, and now has given the decree “off with your head.”
