Scales of Blessing

Proverbs 11:1, Shevat 11, and the Scales of Blessing

“A false balance is an abomination to YHWH, but a just weight is His delight.”

Proverbs 11:1 sounds like simple market advice, but when we hold it up to Shevat 11, Day 5 of Creation, the 5th menorah lamp of Strength and Authority, and the 5th Feast of Trumpets, it becomes a searching question: how are the hidden scales of my life set—and which lamp is lighting them?

When Blessing Depends on Honest Scales

On Day 5, YHWH filled the seas and skies with life and spoke the first explicit blessing over creation, charging the creatures to be fruitful and multiply. Blessing here is not vague positivity. It is measured empowerment: life given in right proportion, in the right realm, for the right purpose.

Proverbs 11:1 brings that same logic into the marketplace and the heart. A “false balance” is not an innocent miscalculation. The Hebrew image is “scales of deceit”—weights and measures designed to tilt reality in someone’s favor. The “just weight” is an accurate stone that tells the truth. When our internal and external scales are true, blessing can flow.

When they are rigged, blessing is blocked at the root.

Think of your daily life as a series of weighings:

• Weighing time: how much attention you give to work, family, rest, and prayer.

• Weighing people: how you value the poor, the inconvenient, the unprofitable.

• Weighing truth: how you handle facts when honesty costs you something.

Wherever the scales are honest, you are standing in the stream of Day‑5 blessing—life ordered by YHWH’s reality, not your own spin. Wherever the scales are deceptive, you may gain in the moment, but you are quietly closing the door to the very abundance you long for.

The 5th Menorah lamp of the Righteous: Gevurah Guards the Scales

The lamp for this 5th position is Strength and Authority—Gevurah. Gevurah is not brute force; it is disciplined power under covenant. It is the strength to do what is right when it would be easier to bend the rules.

Proverbs 11:1 shows Gevurah at work around the scales. The righteous person does not use their position to shave a little off the top. They refuse to treat other people’s trust as an exploitable resource. Gevurah stands beside the balance and says, “No further. We will not call this weight ‘full’ when it is not. We will not call this price ‘fair’ when it is not.”

This is a quiet kind of authority. It rarely makes headlines.

It looks like:

• A business owner who refuses to manipulate contracts or hide fees.

• A leader who weighs their own motives before weighing others’ mistakes.

• A friend who tells the uncomfortable truth instead of flattering for advantage.

Under this lamp, your life becomes a place where others can safely be weighed—where the measures are clear, consistent, and trustworthy. YHWH looks at such a person and, in the language of the proverb, “delights.”

The 5th Menorah lamp of the Wicked: When Lies Become Hardware

Opposite that stands the menorah lamp of the wicked: “a false witness who breathes out lies.” That phrase describes more than a single slanderous moment. It is a whole way of being where the breath itself carries distortion.

In Proverbs 11:1, those lies become hardware. The false witness doesn’t only speak; they build systems that lie. The scales are crooked. The documents are skewed. The numbers are massaged. People encounter the “balance” and walk away with the wrong measure of their labor, their worth, their options.

It is possible to live under this lamp without ever stepping into a courtroom. We do it when we:

• Exaggerate our stories so that we always come out looking better.

• “Round” in our favor on taxes, hours worked, or debts owed.

• Tilt conversations so that others are always to blame and we are always the victim.

Every time we do that, we turn our tongue and our tools into false balances. We become walking abominations to a God who delights in truth.

Shevat 11: Hidden Weighings Before the Fruit Appears

Shevat is the month of hidden movement. On the surface, trees still look bare, but sap is beginning to rise. The new year of trees reminds us that decisions are being made underground—decisions that will show up months later in fruit, or the lack of it.

Shevat 11 invites us to look at the “underground” scales of the heart. How do you quietly weigh:

• The value of another person’s time compared to your own?

• The seriousness of your promises compared to your preferences?

• The weight of YHWH’s word compared to the weight of your feelings?

Before anything blossoms in public, those hidden measurements are already shaping what kind of fruit will appear. Under the righteous lamp, Shevat is a time to let YHWH adjust your inner weights—to confess where you have been light on truth and heavy on self‑interest, and to ask Him to reset the scale.

The Trumpet That Audits the Scales

Finally, the 5th Feast of the LORD is the feast of Trumpets that blows into this proverb like a shofar blast in a quiet marketplace. Yom Teruah/Rosh Hashanah opens the season of judgment and repentance. It proclaims YHWH as King who opens the books and examines the deeds of His people.

Imagine the trumpet sounding over the stalls where balances sit on every table. The blast says, “Auditor is here.” Hidden misweights are brought into the light. Bags of “special stones” used to cheat are dumped out before the Judge. Books that once looked balanced are found to be cooked.

For those who have let Gevurah guard their scales, that trumpet is not terror but vindication. It says, “Your quiet integrity was seen. Your refusal to cheat was not wasted.”

For those under the wicked lamp, the trumpet is exposure. It announces that the very tools they trusted—false balances, clever spin, systemic deceit—are now evidence against them.

Yom Teruah calls us to repentance while there is still time to reset the scales. It invites us to bring our ledgers, our relationships, and our inner calculations before YHWH and say, “Weigh this. Show me where I have tilted the balance, so that I can make it right.”

Living as a Lamp of True Measure

Proverbs 11:1, read through Shevat 11, Day 5, Gevurah, and the Feast of Trumpets, gives us a simple but piercing question:

Am I a place of true measure, or a cleverly disguised false balance?

To live under the menorah lamp of the righteous is to let YHWH’s blessing and authority flow through honest scales—at work, at home, in speech, and in the secret thoughts where we first decide what things and people are “worth.”

As Shevat’s hidden sap rises and the trumpet of judgment draws nearer, this is the moment to stand beside your own scales and invite YHWH’s delight:

“Reset my measures. Make my weights true. Let my life be a lamp of Gevurah that tells the truth, so that Your blessing can flow through every transaction of my days.”