Poetic Justice

Pro 20:17  Bread gained by deceit is sweet to a man, but afterward his mouth will be full of gravel. 

Disney has made many movies that feature the villain getting what is coming to them.  I doubt we will see one of their movies where the villain wins in the end.  These movies strike at a deep-seated value of our culture, a sense of justice, that evil doesn’t win.   We especially like seeing the bad guy get what is coming to him in a most poetic way.    

In Prov 20:17 Solomon paints a picture for us of an exchange that occurs between the miller and the baker.  It was common commerce among two businessmen in the village.  In the exchange of goods and services, fair trade is to be expected among professionals.   The miller brings the milled flour the baker orders and in exchange the miller received payment and barter in the form of bread. 

In this particular instance we find that the miller has decided that he will try to pull one over on the baker.  It is a slight deception on his part.  The issue seems to stem from quality control.  The milling process produces various grades of flour, from the very finest down to a very coarse.  These various grades are produced by altering the speed and pressure of the grinding wheels.  Naturally the very finest grade would need multiple grinds at slower speed and higher pressure.  The wear on the grinding wheels causes them to break down and bits of stone are added to the flour.  Or it could be from a bad batch of grain that wasn’t sifted properly and bits of stone are added to the flour.  Regardless, there is a quality control issue that occurred at the millers. 

The miller is aware of the issue, but what can he do about it once it is discovered?  It is a slow, difficult process to remove all of the bits of stone from large quantities of flour.   So, he decides to deceive the baker and sell him the flour and let him deal with sifting the gravel out.  Thus, we see the force of the proverb.  The deception of the miller becomes painfully aware to the baker.  His workload has increased because he has to sift and verify the quality of each scoop of flour he places in the knead trough.   

When the miller receives some of the bread the baker owes him in payment, he makes an unpleasant discovery.  The bread certainly tasted good on the tongue.  But when chewing he discovers that his deception did not go unnoticed.  The baker included all of the stone bits from sifting the flour and included them into the miller’s ‘special’ bread.   He gets not only a few bits, but all the stones from the whole delivery, a mouth full of gravel. 

Do you think the miller got what was coming to him?  Most of us would relish watching the miller take that first bite.  Hopefully he didn’t lose any teeth in the process.  But if he did, who was to be blamed?  His deception was costly.  His reputation was placed in jeopardy and the quality of his work will be questioned for a long time to come.   He will be fortunate if it doesn’t put him out of business.  He was short sighted with the consequences of his deception.  We often are as well.  

We all like to see the bad guy get what’s coming to him except when we play the part of the bad guy.  Sure, my deception is not as bad as your deception.  We play that game with ourselves.  We tell ourselves that we didn’t have a choice or that there won’t be any consequences to face. Perhaps we even convince ourselves that we are the good guy in our scenario. It really doesn’t matter how we convince ourselves, the question we need to consider is how will we handle ourselves when our deception is found out. When justice is served upon us are we willing to eat our gravely bread? It’s poetic justice that is the hardest to stomach. How will you respond when you get what is coming to you?