# 483 The Proverbs – ‘A manual for living’ (MSG). Proverbs 30:15-16. Never satisfied!

I guess you may have heard the quote:

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”  

It is attributed to John Lydgate, a 15^th century monk and poet, although linked to others such as Abraham Lincoln.

But it’s not only humans that are hard to please and seem to never be satisfied. Agur has some interesting things to say on this topic, for example:

¹⁵ “The leech has two daughters.
    ‘Give! Give!’ they cry.

“There are three things that are never satisfied,
    four that never say, ‘Enough!’:
¹⁶ the grave, the barren womb,
    land, which is never satisfied with water,
    and fire, which never says, ‘Enough!’

Have you ever experienced having a leech on your skin and realizing that you were the victim of this little blood-sucking parasite? Not a pleasant experience, particularly if you are waiting for it to be satisfied before it decides to move on. Obviously, most people are not so patient and for good reason – this small “segmented worm” will keep sucking it seems for as long as you let it. The Proverb suggests that this is a family characteristic, i.e. “As the leech sucks blood voraciously, so its offspring are insatiable…a metaphor for the fact that greed breeds greed.” (# 53)

Then comes what is called the “numerical form” also found in Proverbs 6:16-19, when the author says There are three things that … four that…  On this occasion it is things that are never satisfied… never say, ‘Enough!  Things in life that are unsatiable!

The first he mentions is the grave. The second is the barren womb. The third is land, which is never satisfied with water. Then the last is fire.

Most people can identify with one or more of these “unsatiable” examples. I notice the older I get, the more funerals I attend, and I’m very sure this will continue until it is finally time for mine. The second is very different and I guess, only someone who has longed for a child and been unable to fall pregnant can really appreciate this. The third is very applicable for farmers and others who work the land, particularly in relatively dry climates like in Australia. Then the third is again an issue in climates like we have here in Australia where bush fires can devastate hundreds of square kilometres and whole towns in a very short time, particularly in the summertime.

So, what exactly is Agur’s message? I’m not sure, to be honest, except maybe to paint a word picture of the sad reality of life in a broken world, which devoid of a right relationship with God, can never satisfy.

In our day the word that comes to mind is ‘addiction!’ People worldwide are addicted to something which leads them down a path of deep dissatisfaction and often to a self- destructive lifestyle. Like the leech, the source of the addiction cries out ‘Give, Give.’ And these addictions can be a simple as the way we use our screens – phones, computers, TVs – which involves excessive times on, for example, social media, gaming, movie watching, etc. Then of course it can be much more sinister addictions such as use of illicit drugs, alcohol, pornography, sex, money, gambling, power, popularity, success and sadly, the list goes on! It seems that we human beings, in our emptiness, endeavour to fill the void (which only God can fill) with anything that gives us some ‘pleasurable relief’, even very temporarily, from the deep dissatisfaction within us.

One of the most challenging verses that I read during a time when I was troubled by an addiction, was in Jeremiah 2. The context is that the people of Israel had basically forsaken all the blessings of being the people of God and fallen into gross idolatry. It reads:

“Therefore I bring charges against you again,”
declares the Lord…
    ¹¹ Has a nation ever changed its gods?
    (Yet they are not gods at all.)
But my people have exchanged their glorious God
    for worthless idols.
¹² Be appalled at this, you heavens,
    and shudder with great horror,”
declares the Lord.
¹³ “My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
    the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
    broken cisterns that cannot hold water.  (Jeremiah 2:9, 11-13)  

 Addictions (which basically can be equated to an idol) take over from the true worship and right relationship with our Creator. He alone is the one who can provide us with life giving living water, and yet we turn instead to polluted, brackish water held in a leaky container that bit by bit destroys us.

Jesus gave us the answer when he said to a Samaritan woman by a well:

“Everyone who drinks this [well] water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  (John 4:13)

And later in Jerusalem:

³⁷ On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. ³⁸ Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”  (John 7:37-38) Is it time to remove that “leech” that cries out “Give, Give”, whatever it may be? Turn to Jesus, commit your life to him afresh, cry out to him for help and receive his spring of water welling up to eternal life, which John explains to us as follows: By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. (v. 39)