A Ruler Without Understanding

Amen. We're going to be looking at another proverb this afternoon. Please turn your Bibles to Proverbs 28. We'll begin reading this in a moment, but before we do, I will mention that frequently when I preach, I'll use either very few extra supporting texts beyond the Scripture and the preaching.

Sometimes I'll use quite a lot. This time I'm using so many that I felt that I would just print them out to you and give them to you so that even if you do want to follow along in your Bible, you'll have a good record of which verses we touch, since a lot of them are pretty powerful and people don't consider them that much necessarily.

If I could get Deacon Ford to come help me hand these out. All right. Thanks. All right. And while those are being passed out, I'll also say that political theology has been a kind of backburner thing for me for about eight years now, and I still have a lot of things that I'd like to get sorted out, so this is still a work ongoing for me to understand everything the Bible says about political theology.

But the whole point of this passage is the importance of understanding, so hopefully I can give you a little bit of the fire that I've got to try to understand better God's call for rulers. All right.

I'll give this one more second, and then when you have Proverbs 28, verse 16, please stand for the reading of God's Word. A ruler who lacks understanding is a cruel oppressor, but he who hates unjust gain will prolong his days.

You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your Word. We ask that you would open our eyes to understand it more fully today, and I pray that you would give us a zeal for the things that we should be zealous for, in Jesus' name, amen.

Understanding Justice, Rights, and Oppression

All right, so like I said, this has been a backburner project for me for some time to understand political theology, to understand the importance of ruling in both the civil sphere and other spheres as well, and this is something that I felt I really wanted to address after having watched the debate a couple of weeks ago.

This verse came to mind very strongly. I don't mean that as a joke. I think that anybody watching, whatever your political party is, could look at that and see that this verse is applicable. A ruler without understanding is a cruel oppressor, and it is important for us to understand the duty of rulers in order that we can be good rulers ourselves as well as hold rulers accountable.

So it's important that we both understand justice and that we love justice. This is what a ruler needs to do. He needs to understand justice and he needs to love justice. And so, simply put, what is justice?

And let me call to mind why I'm talking about justice. Be he who hates unjust gain. You know, those two are placed in parallel. It doesn't seem…a lot of the Proverbs are like this. They're hard to understand the parallels.

A ruler who lacks understanding is a cruel oppressor, but he who hates unjust gain? Why is understanding and unjust gain set at odds as though those are opposites? You would think it'd be a ruler without understanding, a ruler with understanding.

Okay, the understanding is of justice. Okay, that's how this is relevant. The understanding is of justice. So what is justice? Justice and righteousness are strongly correlated in Scripture. In the New Testament, it's actually the same word for justice and the same word for righteousness.

You look in the Old Testament, you can find lots of passages where it talks about righteous and justice. You cannot find as many of those in the New Testament because it's harder to express given that those are the same word.

So justice is simply an upholding of rights, an upholding of obligations. Now what are rights? Rights are things that are owed to people. Now when I was younger and out of a sincere submission to God, I thought that rights were a fiction.

I thought that if someone thinks that they have rights and they claim to have rights, what they're saying is basically, I have reason to complain to God when things don't go my way. And I recognize that there's nothing that God could take away from me where I would have room to say that that wasn't right of Him to do.

And so I thought that rights are just a fiction that people come up with to grasp on to some kind of fairness that doesn't exist. Oh, that's not the case. God has established obligations. He has established obligations between man and man, and He's even established obligations from Himself to people.

So consider some of these verses, just looking at the first few here. The Bible speaks of property rights. Jeremiah 5, 28 says, they've grown fat and sleek. They know no bounds and deeds of evil. They judge not with justice the cause of the fatherless to make it prosper.

And they do not defend the rights of the needy. So this is speaking of evil rulers, evil rulers not defending the rights of the needy. What are the rights of the needy? Well, they are typically property rights is what we are talking about.

You know, the Eighth Commandment, thou shalt not steal, that's coming from somewhere, right? If it is wrong to take something from someone else, you know, property is a real thing. God made mankind with dominion over the creatures, that dominion implies that ownership is a real thing.

You know, there's some real substance to that when God established the world. Bible talks about marital rights also. Exodus 21, 10 says, if he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights.

In the Old Testament, there's also the right of the firstborn, also known as primogeniture. That's why I wrote it that way there. The right of the firstborn. Deuteronomy 21, 17, but he shall acknowledge the firstborn, the son of the unloved, by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the firstfruits of his strength.

The right of the firstborn is his. And also there are rights for ministers, it speaks in 1 Corinthians 9, 11 through 12. We have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you?

If others share this rightful claim on you, do we not even more? And so the Bible speaks in terms of rights for ministers to be supported in the work of ministry. Now all those are rights between man and man that God has established.

But God, by means of covenant, has even established obligations from Himself to man. Even though He's high and doesn't, by nature, owe us anything, He has, by covenant, established it so that He does owe things.

John 1, 12, but to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God. You know, if you go to Jesus Christ, if you come to Him in trust, God can't say, well, I'm not going to, you know, I don't owe you to make you a son, my son, right?

He has, by covenant, established it so that if you come to Him through faith in Jesus Christ, this is a right of yours. First John 1, 9. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

You wonder, why does it say that God is just to forgive sins? He doesn't owe forgiveness for anything. He doesn't owe anybody forgiveness. But once again, by means of covenant, He has established it so that if we do confess our sins, He must make good on His Word and forgive us.

Revelation 22, 14, blessed are those who wash their robes so that they may have the right to the tree of life, that they may enter the city by the gates. Speaking once again of the rights of the saints, they have a right to the tree of life.

Now the one who…now these rights can be not upheld, and that is called oppression. When you do not uphold rights, you oppress. That can either be directly by taking someone's rights away, by violating them positively and transgressing them, or by simply negatively, by not upholding them as you have been called to do in whatever position that you find yourself in.

So this oppression in the Old Testament, it's very…the word used for oppress is associated with words for crush. It's very similar to our word in English, where oppress doesn't literally mean depress, but it's pretty similar, and you use it in the same way, where if you're oppressing something, you're squashing it down so that it can't move, right?

This word in Scripture is talked about oppressors crushing things, right? They crush, they press down so they can't move, so they don't have freedom. Now this is important for any kind of ruler. If you are a parent, if you are a father, if you're an employer, all kinds of situations that you can find yourself in, you have some status as a ruler.

You might think, oh, this is just for, you know, kings or something like that. No, even in lesser roles of authority, this applies. Even for pastors, this applies, that a ruler without understanding is a cruel oppressor.

But it is especially the case…it is especially the case for the civil government, because the civil government, not only, like everyone else, should not take rights away from others, but they have been called in a special way to uphold rights by punishing those who violate rights.

Genesis 9 -6 establishes this authority of government. It says, So if there's bloodshed, it's right that there would be one to execute justice, to bring about retributive justice. Romans 13 speaks of this as well, but it's important to understand the context of what's happening there in Romans 13.

Romans 12, right before that, talks about vengeance, right? When we're talking about retributive justice, we're talking about vengeance. It's not right for individuals to go get vengeance for themselves.

You know, vigilante justice is not something prescribed in Scripture. But…and so it says in Romans 12 -19,. And then so, what are you supposed to do as you wait on the Lord? Romans 13 talks about the importance of honoring the civil magistrate, honoring those who rule.

Why? Because he is a servant for God's good, to do this work of vengeance. So this is especially important for the civil government because they don't uphold rights in just the same ways that any other position of authority does, but it is their task to bring the sword of vengeance down when someone does not uphold rights as they ought.

So it is important for us to understand, for us to understand justice, to understand rights. Now that understanding is not the kind of understanding that may first come into your mind. Okay, a lot of times when people think about understanding their role, they think, okay, a good, for example, you know, a good president is going to be one who understands all different kinds of political situations and things like that.

They're going to be really savvy about economics and all kinds of things. What is more important than any of that is just to understand justice itself. So the kind of understanding here, yes, there is all kinds of understanding that can be helpful for a ruler, but the primary form of understanding is to understand justice.

Like let's say I'm someone who is a very good financial manager. I'm really good at investing. I see that, you know, my friend over here is not that good with his money. And so I think, you know, it's going to be in his best interest.

I know what's best here. I'm going to take his money from him, invest it for him, and I'll keep it for 10 years and give it back to him when it's all ready to go. Now, this is something that might actually be all things considered for his good in the end, you know, at least if you tolerate this thought experiment for one second, right?

Perhaps it could be the case that, oh, this would end up in his financial best interest. That does not make it right. That does not make it just, okay? So my understanding of financial things does not equip me to be a good ruler and not an oppressor, okay?

So that's not the kind of understanding we are talking about here. We're talking about a much deeper kind of understanding, an understanding of justice itself. And all these other practical kinds of understanding build on top of that foundation of simply understanding what is the role, what is owed in this circumstance.

So how can you even begin to give what is owed if you don't know what is owed? Let me give you several examples where that is the case with the civil government. Last year, I think it was last year, Sebastian and I got hit in a car wreck.

And more recently, you know, they're going through the court system, everything with all this. And what is the penalty that this man has to pay? Well, he has to do some community service. And why? So that he doesn't—because they don't want to discourage him too much because they are trying to rehabilitate him.

Okay, this is the government not exercising the sword, not bringing about vengeance. It is the government wielding a scalpel, trying to correct and trying to fix. This is not justice, this is not understanding what is owed.

Very similarly, we had situations, you know, three or four years ago with COVID where a lot of things got shut down. There's a lot of understanding there, right? A lot of understanding about how epidemics work, a lot of understanding about diseases, not an understanding about worship, okay, and the rights of people to gather to worship.

Let me give you another one. Okay, if we have a right to property, the Bible speaks about property rights. If the Eighth Commandment is a real thing, then that means that that property should not be taken without cause or even investigated without cause.

The Founding Fathers of this country decided that they would formalize that with the Fourth Amendment about unreasonable search and seizure. Okay, now the TSA, every time you want to travel anywhere of great distance where you have to take a plane, what do they do?

They violate this by going through your things, okay? And this is not—a lot of people are real happy about this because they think, okay, the understanding of a ruler should be, okay, he should understand geopolitical situations, he should understand what kind of things threats are, you know, he should understand what's going to make people safest and put this into effect.

But if you are doing it by violating rights, then is it really an upholding of justice? And every TSA agent goes and they swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, to uphold that Fourth Amendment, and then they go and they do a job, which whole design is to violate that one, right?

I've often half-joked that we should make tracks that are designed to fit around the water bottle about this, about violating your oath, and then put it in the bag, and then when they find it, they look at the water bottle and they get the track.

One more, one more, at the debate, very frequently there were questions about different programs. Proverbs 29 .7 says, a righteous man knows the rights of the poor and a wicked man does not understand such knowledge.

A lot of times it will focus on the rights of the poor because that's most often where they end up getting violated. However, it also says in Leviticus 19 .15, you shall do no injustice in court, you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness you shall judge your neighbor.

Okay, so there shouldn't be partiality to the poor or the great, okay? This is not, justice is due to both, not just to the poor. And just because something might be good to give to the poor does not mean it is right to take it from the rich to give it to the poor, okay?

Robin Hood is not a good situation. You consider Naboth's Vineyard and Ahab, when he took Naboth's Vineyard, okay, he's king. A lot of people think, okay, well the king has a right to taxes, yes, he has a right to what is owed to him for exercising that sword, but not just so, not beyond that.

And Ahab did wrong when he took Naboth's Vineyard, if you're familiar with this story in the Bible. Ahab took Naboth's Vineyard and this was something unjust, this was something wrong. And in that debate, so many of the questions were basically of the form, here is a particular program that a lot of people rely on that takes wealth from some people and redistributes to others and has nothing to do with the exercise of the sword for vengeance.

What are you going to do, sir, to make sure that this system of injustice is upheld and perpetuated? Right, the whole nature of the question is without understanding, and the whole foundation is operating on the wrong kind of understanding, right?

The understanding being, okay, what's going to be pragmatically best for society and not what is just? That question is not asked as it should be asked. And consider how this understanding is important in marriage too.

Understanding Rights in Marriage, Parenting, and Ministry

It says in 1 Peter 3, 7, likewise husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

Okay, so husbands are supposed to dwell with their wives in an understanding way. A husband is a ruler of his home. He needs understanding or else he will be a cruel oppressor. Now there's another verse that talks about marital rights.

First Corinthians 7, 3 through 4 says, the husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does.

Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Now there's a lot of situations in marriages where sex is withheld, wrongly not understanding that this is a right of spouses, but how many times is it also the case where the husband thinks, because of a lack of understanding, that because he is the ruler of the home, he has authority to decide whether or not his body will be hers so that she could have children, right?

And so she wants children, he does not want children, he doesn't understand her rights and so he's an oppressor by refusing, thinking that this is his realm of authority when it is actually her right.

If his body belongs to her, it is her right. And then parents, Proverbs 13, 24, whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him. So certainly parents can be abusers of their children, but at the same time if you do not understand that it is owed to your children, the rod, ultimately you are the oppressor, not in the traditional sense of thinking of an oppressor who, you know, is keeping someone from doing something in particular, but rather in cultivating in them, because of not giving them what is owed, all kinds of evil desires.

You know, we had a whole sermon on that this morning, so I won't go too much into that, but if you consider this, how often do people think, okay, well, God is just sometimes and he's merciful other times, and so I'll be just sometimes and merciful other times, and that's the kind of grace that God wants me to have.

This verse says, if you spare the rod, whoever spares the rod hates his son, if there's any time that your son or daughter is disobedient and they are of the age where it would be right to use the rod, and you spare the rod, and you're doing it maybe arbitrarily, thinking that's gracious, that's capriciousness, okay, that's not graciousness.

It is owed to your children. It's not a last resort either. A lot of people think this is what happens when something's really gone wrong. It's not a last resort. This is the means God has given for correcting children.

And then ministers. Now, how many ministers understand their own right to be supportive, but don't understand the right that others have to the gospel in terms of them owing it to give it freely? Micah 3 .11 says, its heads give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets practice divination for money, yet they lean on the Lord and say, is not the Lord in the midst of us?

No disaster shall come upon us. Okay, its heads, those are its rulers, give judgment for bribe. All right, that's bribery right there. That's oppression. That's real clear. It puts priests teaching religious things for a price in the same category.

And this is common today, right? You want access to my good and faithful teaching to the Word of God? Well, once you give me 9 .99 on Kindle, you can have it. Right? This is just very common. And the kind of understanding that we are to have is for everyone except for—so when the pastor rules, the pastor is declaring the Word of God and he's telling you what God has spoken in His Word, and if he does that wrongly, he's oppressing our conscience with wrong commands and things like that.

Apart from that, almost all of these things that a ruler is supposed to be doing or is owing is something that is embedded in creation itself. It's something that's written on the heart. It is something that's available in nature.

You can have just rulers in pagan lands. You can have good parents in pagan lands. However, in order to fully understand justice, you really do need to go to God's Word, especially because sin suppresses that truth, it is important to go to His Word in order to clarify.

Psalm 119 .99 says, I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditations. Proverbs 28 .5 says, Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the Lord understand it completely.

And how wrong is it then if we who claim to seek the Lord, if we who are professing Christians seeking the Lord, understand justice less than those who have similar roles and do not seek the Lord? You know, so many parents who claim to seek the Lord or even do, you know, in some real sense seek the Lord, withholding the rod from their children while pagan parents are giving it.

How many couples refuse to give each other sex who are professing Christians, who are supposed to understand justice, who are supposed to understand rights, and pagan couples are not withholding? Right?

How many governors in lands with false religions like Roman Catholicism have no room for abortion on the books that it's considered murder, and yet in our own country we have people who profess the name of Christ and who even seem to have somewhat credible testimonies, not only making all kinds of adjustments to allow for it not to be murder in certain cases, or it's not murder when the woman does it, or it's not murder at this time, and they do so.

Why? Not necessarily because they disagree with any of us about what abortion is, but because of out of some kind of pragmatism about what's going to be most effective in our society rather than just asking themselves, what is just?

What is justice? What do I owe in this circumstance? And so we are people who should be learning about our role. Almost certainly you are in some place of authority or will have some place of authority at some point.

You should take the time to understand it. Okay, if you're a father, take the time to understand being a father. If you're an employer, take the time to understand how you should be treating your employees.

If you are about to go into civil government, definitely take time to understand justice more broadly. Take the time to understand these things. You know, I was a parent for four years before I read a book on parenting, and the reason that was was because I had, my parents were good parents.

I was raised pretty well. I thought that I understood things pretty well. I read my first book on parenting, You Know, Shepherding a Child's Heart, and I realized there was a lot in there that I had not considered, and I was being negligent about my role. as a ruler.

And so I wish I had done that sooner. You know, someone who wants to drive a forklift doesn't say, oh, well, this looks like fun. I'll figure it out eventually as I'm doing it. You know, they realize that's something you've got to learn before you knock everything down and hurt people.

And so it's important also to keep your rulers accountable. You know, this happens in our country primarily through voting. If you don't understand what justice is, okay, how are you going to hold rulers accountable?

You're going to instead vote for someone on the same kind of pragmatism that others are evaluating them on. You need to understand justice well in order to vote well. And the same applies for other things.

You know, women, if you want to marry a good husband, you have to know what a good husband is, right? And if you're already married and you want to hold your husband accountable and respectfully correct, you know, or offer correction, then you need to know what a husband is supposed to be.

And the same thing for children. You know, children, if you see your father acting impatiently or wrongly, if you respectfully tell him, Dad, can I speak to you for a minute? And you go and you talk to him, you might be surprised at how receptive they are.

And it is right for people to hold their rulers accountable. Same thing for pastors. Same thing for me. And so it's not only important to understand justice. It is important to love justice. It continues on this verse.

Loving Justice, Rejecting Bribes, and Counting the Cost

It says, but he who hates unjust gain will prolong his days. So what's the opposite of hating? Okay, it's the opposite of understanding is not understanding. Opposite of hating is loving. You're supposed to love justice.

You're supposed to hate unjustice. Okay, it's not enough just to know what justice is. You have to love it. You know, Judas knew what he was doing was wrong when he took the bribe. He knew what he was doing was wrong, but he did not love justice enough.

Pilate knew what he was doing was wrong, but he did not love justice enough. You know, he goes, what is truth? And just washes his hands because there's an understanding, but there's no love. There's no love for the things of God, no zeal for justice.

And if you do not love justice, you will be inclined to take bribes. Now, these bribes may be, they may be financial bribes. You know, there is a, there was that case not too long ago here in Santa Clara County where the, where the sheriff was only giving a concealed carry permits to those who would donate to her, to her campaign fund.

Okay, so that was a pretty big scandal when that happened. But bribes happen in all sorts of other ways too. Every time in California, you know, we're, we're a democracy in a lot of ways compared to other states because we get to vote on the laws themselves, right?

When you get that balance sheet and you see all the, all the different props and it says, okay, we're going to tax boat owners and use that for parks. And you say, well, I'm not a boat owner. I go to parks.

And you decide that, oh yeah, and you have no idea what they're already taxing boat owners, right? You have no idea. And you, and you say yes, because you think parks are better than boats. What are you doing?

You are inclined to take a bribe if you are not seriously thinking about what justice is and what right and wrong is. I bet, I bet almost every one of us in here have looked at that ballot sheet at a time of, you know, if we've been in California long enough, at a time with less understanding, voting that way, just thinking very pragmatically.

Oh yeah, I like this thing more than that thing. You know, not thinking about what justice is. What is justice? What is truth? Don't ask it like Pilate did. Ask it like a man who really cares. And so we should cultivate zeal.

We should cultivate a fear of the Lord, a disdain for, not a disdain, a, the Bible uses the word despising to talk about a low valuing, a low valuing of men and money and a high valuing of God. Hebrews 13, five through six says, Keep your life free from the love of money and be content with what you have.

For he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. So we can confidently say, the Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me? Now, if you develop that kind of fear of God and a lack of fear from man, you're going to be considered unreasonable.

People see a zeal for justice usually as being unreasonable and they see dispassion. You know, if you're dispassionate about things, oh, that's being very reasonable. Now there's some truth to that, that people get, you know, pretty manic about things and they're not being reasonable.

But get ready to get mislabeled if you develop a zeal for, a zeal for justice. I used to not care at all about anything politics, and it's still the case. When you talk about real deep things about how, how various things in civil government or, or international situations work, it's just not my main interest, not my wheelhouse.

But since I discovered how much the Bible has to say about justice and caring about justice, I've developed a real zeal for that. And it is, it is something that people are inclined to see as irrational.

Take, for example, you go to the abortion clinic with us on Tuesdays and you hold the signs and you call it to women, you know, eagerly to repent, to turn to Jesus Christ that will help you. What do people do?

They treat you as unreasonable. Oh, this guy cares about this thing? Man, he is being unreasonable. The reasonable thing is to not care, right? And this is, this is how we're frequently treated. You know, one guy this last time walked by and said, shame, like shame on you.

Shame on you for, what, for standing up for the oppressed? No, shame on him for, for standing against the oppressed. And what is the, what is the reward? It says that they will prolong their days. The one who hates unjust gain will prolong his days.

Now, this is just generally true. If you follow the Lord's commands, your days will be prolonged. Those who do not follow his commands will suffer the consequences. There are various consequences you will experience in this life.

And this is contrary to what most people think when they take unjust gain. They think, oh, when I take unjust gain, when I do things that are unjust, I will preserve my life. I will make my life more prosperous.

I'll do these things. What this is telling you is counterintuitive. It's saying you have to, you have to push out the natural thoughts and see with eyes of faith that it's going to work the opposite of the way that you think.

And those who take unjust gain will have their days cut short. They will be cut short. Now, you might wonder, well, how is it that there are so many unjust people in the world who live so long, if that's true?

Well, keep in mind this, this is primarily talking in old, old covenant terms. It says in Deuteronomy 440, therefore, you shall keep his statutes and his commandments, which I command you today, that it may go well with you and your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land the Lord your God is giving you for all time.

So what is prolonging your days talking about? It's talking about living in the land, all right? And the New Testament interpretation of how we should understand that promised land promised to them as it applies to us, the promised land the scripture speaks of for us is a heavenly city, a greater one, right?

And it is the case that you will not be able to live long in that city. You will not live at all in that city should you follow the ways of evil. What is due to the oppressor, the one who crushes, the one who presses, is crushing itself.

The Bible speaks of justice frequently in a very poetic, you know, you do this thing, you get it right back. It's like Newtonian physics, equal and opposite reaction. It says in Psalm 72, 4, may he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the children of the needy, and crush the oppressor, right?

Crush the one who crushes. This is what is due to the oppressor. And so you and your role, whatever it may be, husband, mother, pastor for me, whatever kinds of authority situations that you have found yourself in, if you have not upheld these things, what hope is there?

You see how deep the understanding has to go, how much you may think that you're understanding because you're pragmatic, but really there's a deeper understanding that's only had in a real walking with the Lord to fully understand what God is doing.

What hope is there for you? The hope is found in Jesus Christ. He is the one who has perfectly upheld justice. Isaiah 11, 2 describes him as the ruler who has understanding. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

This is talking about him as the great king, as the ruler who sits on the throne. He has the spirit of wisdom and understanding, and he hates bribes. He hates unjust gain. Consider how Satan tempted him.

I won't bother reading this verse right now, but Satan tempted him to take all the kingdom of the world in a means that God had not ordained for him, and he chose not. He hated unjust gain. And what was the penalty that he faced?

The penalty that he faced, that he bore, is exactly that one that is due to the one who oppresses, to the one who crushes others, is he himself was crushed. He was oppressed by those who considered themselves wise rulers and oppressed him.

He was oppressed by—he was—the penalty that he took was at the hands of those who took unjust bribes, right, like Judas. Okay, so the very penalty that is due to the oppressor is the penalty that Jesus himself was facing in place of those who trust in him.

This is he himself. That same word that we—that came up in Psalm 72, it says, crush the oppressor, dakah. That's the same word used here in Isaiah 53 .10. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him.

He has put him to grief. When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring. He shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. So what is—what did Jesus suffer?

Jesus suffered the penalty due to an oppressor. He himself is crushed, and he's crushed in the place of all of us who, in our own situations of authority, have not used that authority as we have ought and denied the rights due to others.

And so what can you do? What can you do if you do not have understanding? You know this later on in the Proverbs, just a couple chapters later. It describes one who lacks understanding and his recognition that he lacks understanding.