In the book of Proverbs there is a strong relationship between ethics and sanctions. Most of the Proverbs were written by the son of David, Solomon. In Proverbs, the first nine chapters have an introduction. This is not seen in any other book in the entire Bible. In the introductions of Proverbs it is extremely clear that Solomon is talking and giving instruction to his son. An example of one of these introductions is Proverbs 1:1-6,

The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel:

for gaining wisdom and instruction;
    for understanding words of insight;
for receiving instruction in prudent behavior,
    doing what is right and just and fair;
for giving prudence to those who are simple,
    knowledge and discretion to the young—
let the wise listen and add to their learning,
    and let the discerning get guidance—
for understanding proverbs and parables,
    the sayings and riddles of the wise.

In Proverbs wisdom is described as a female. An example for this is Proverbs 8:1-6,

Does not wisdom call out?
    Does not understanding raise her voice?
At the highest point along the way,
    where the paths meet, she takes her stand;
beside the gate leading into the city,
    at the entrance, she cries aloud:
“To you, O people, I call out;
    I raise my voice to all mankind.
You who are simple, gain prudence;
    you who are foolish, set your hearts on it.
Listen, for I have trustworthy things to say;
    I open my lips to speak what is right.

Wickedness is also described as a female. In Proverbs 5:1-6,

My son, pay attention to my wisdom,
    turn your ear to my words of insight,
that you may maintain discretion
    and your lips may preserve knowledge.
For the lips of the adulterous woman drip honey,
    and her speech is smoother than oil;
but in the end she is bitter as gall,
    sharp as a double-edged sword.
Her feet go down to death;
    her steps lead straight to the grave.
She gives no thought to the way of life;
    her paths wander aimlessly, but she does not know it.

In Proverbs wickedness is defined as the “strange woman”. Solomon is teaching his son not to go down the path of wickedness. He tells his son a story of a man who was walking on a road then a woman (wickedness) came out to meet him. She tells him that she wants him and she entices him to follow her back to her house. He follows because of what she said and when they get to her house she kills him. You can find this story in Proverbs 7.

My favorite verses in the Bible are in Proverbs. It is Proverbs 6:6-8,

Go to the ant, you sluggard;
    consider its ways and be wise!
It has no commander,
    no overseer or ruler,
yet it stores its provisions in summer
    and gathers its food at harvest.

These verses talk about not being lazy.

The relationship between ethics and sanctions is very significant in Proverbs. It is also very powerful.

According to Wikipedia, optimism is ” an attitude reflecting a belief or hope that the outcome of some specific endeavor, or outcomes in general, will be positive, favorable, and desirable.” So optimism is basically a hopeful mode that you are in when there is little hope about something that you are hopeful about. There are actually ten psalms about hope. One is Psalms 34:17-20:

When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears,
and rescues them from all their troubles.

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted,
and saves the crushed in spirit.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
but the Lord rescues them from them all.

He keeps all their bones;
not one of them will be broken.

One more is Psalms 121:1-2;7-8:

I raise my eyes toward the mountains.
From whence shall come my help?

My help comes from the Lord,
the maker of heaven and earth…

The Lord will guard you from all evil;
He will guard your soul.

The Lord will guard your coming and going
both now and forever.

Some of the reasons offered in the Psalms for long-term optimism are when David is asking God for help from his enemies. In Psalms 59:

1  Deliver me from my enemies, O my God;

protect me from those who rise up against me;

 2  deliver me from those who work evil,

and save me from bloodthirsty men.

 3  For behold, they lie in wait for my life;

fierce men stir up strife against me.

For no transgression or sin of mine, O Lord,

 4  for no fault of mine, they run and make ready.

Awake, come to meet me, and see!

 5  You, Lord God of hosts, are God of Israel.

Rouse yourself to punish all the nations;

spare none of those who treacherously plot evil. Selah

 6  Each evening they come back,

howling like dogs

and prowling about the city.

 7  There they are, bellowing with their mouths

with swords in their lips—

for “Who,” they think, “will hear us?”

 8  But you, O Lord, laugh at them;

you hold all the nations in derision.

 9  O my Strength, I will watch for you,

for you, O God, are my fortress.

 10  My God in his steadfast love will meet me;

God will let me look in triumph on my enemies.

 11  Kill them not, lest my people forget;

make them totter by your power and bring them down,

O Lord, our shield!

 12  For the sin of their mouths, the words of their lips,

let them be trapped in their pride.

For the cursing and lies that they utter,

 13  consume them in wrath;

consume them till they are no more,

that they may know that God rules over Jacob

to the ends of the earth. Selah

 14  Each evening they come back,

howling like dogs

and prowling about the city.

 15  They wander about for food

and growl if they do not get their fill.

 16  But I will sing of your strength;

I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning.

For you have been to me a fortress

and a refuge in the day of my distress.

 17  O my Strength, I will sing praises to you,

for you, O God, are my fortress,

the God who shows me steadfast love.

In Psalms by David, you can see that in most of them David is asking God for protection. In some David is asking God for forgiveness. And in many of them, you can see that David is very optimistic in a lot of them.

 Psalms is a book located in the Bible. It is the longest book in the Bible and it also has the longest and shortest chapters in the Bible. Psalms is entirely made out of one-hundred and fifty songs and praises. Most of the songs and praises in Psalms were written by the famous King David (the one who killed Goliath). Many Psalms were turned into hymns that we use today. Although Psalms is fun to read and look at, you really need to focus on it and pay attention to it to actually understand Psalms and figure out what it means. Many people think of the Psalms as a group of poetic phrases for entertainment or to read just for fun or something to read to sooth them, but that is not just the only reasons of Psalms. This book gives us an extremely important poetic concept between human beings and God.

 An obvious theme in Psalms is God blessing and protecting the righteous and Godly and God hating and disliking the unrighteous and ungodly. Because of the obedience, Godliness, and faith of man God inflicted extremely good sanctions on Godly men. He protected them from all evil. However, God cursed the wicked and ungodly men because of their unwillingness to serve and follow God. If you read the Psalms then you will see that the Psalms has multiple chapters mainly based on that one theme.

The Psalms (as you may have guessed) are not historical writings. They are meant for an entirely different purpose. If you think about it, it is like the Psalms is written directly to you, which of course I think it is. David wrote a lot of these Psalms and he even put some of his own songs in Psalms and he even filled his Psalms with knowledge and wisdom and he even made them meaningful in many different ways. The Psalms can also help us physically and mentally, as in, it can sooth us, it can teach us to grow as Godly men, it can help lead us in the right direction spiritually, and it can even help us with our walk with God. My favorite Psalms, Psalms 23, goes like this:

1 The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing. 
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, 
3 he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. 
4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley,I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. 
5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 
6 Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.
Psalms is a very good book from the Bible and it is one of my favorites. If you have not read it yet than I encourage you to read it.

The of importance of ethics and sanctions in the story of Noah and the Flood is very important. Genesis 6:5-8 says:

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

This passage says that there was a ton of wickedness on the face of the Earth. There was so much wickedness in the world that God actually regretted creating man. There was no one that served God any more! That is, except for Noah and his family.  Noah, his wife, their three sons, and their wives, were the only people in the entire world that still served God. That is the main reason God decided to destroy the Earth and save only Noah and his family. Genesis 6:1-4 says:

When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend witha] humans forever, for they are mortalb]; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

Another reason that Noah and his family were saved could be the fact that Noah and his family were not Nephilim (Creatures that were created by an angel marrying a human girl. In the story of David and Goliath, Goliath is a giant, not a human. This could be proof that Goliath and his ancestors were Nephilim). Genesis 6:11-22 says:

11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. 14 So make yourself an ark of cypressc] wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high.d] 16 Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubite] high all around.f] Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. 17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. 19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. 21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”

22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

This is proof that God cared about Noah and his family. More proof is him keeping his promise to send the Flood and save them. Some more is him placing the rainbow in the sky. The rainbow was actually a promise from God meaning that he will never Flood the entire Earth again, and he has never broken it, and he never will!

The element of hierarchy in Genesis 1-3 is very complicated so I will try my best to explain every little detail. Lets start at the beginning. In Genesis 1 God created everything from day one to day six. However, God was not happy, so he said in Genesis 1:26-28,

26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

27 So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

God created man. In the hierarchy, God would be in command and Adam (the man he created) is below him because God created him. In Genesis 2:20-25,

20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

But for Adamg] no suitable helper was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribsh] and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the ribi] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

23 The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones
    and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
    for she was taken out of man.”

24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

25 Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Woman named Eve is in the same level of hierarchy as Adam because they are both human and they are both of one flesh. In Genesis 3:1-7,

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

The serpent, we do not know what level of hierarchy it is until Genesis 3:14-15,

14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock
    and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
    and you will eat dust
    all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
    between you and the woman,
    and between your offspringj] and hers;
he will crushk] your head,
    and you will strike his heel.”

The serpent is below man and woman. My dad made an advent book called An Advent For The Cosmos. That book explains this essay but on a whole new scale! I recommend it as a must read book.