Proverbs3chapter 3

"Honour the LORD with thy firstfruits" describes a specific act. When the barley came in, the first sheaf went to the sanctuary before the household ate any of it, and the same rule ran through grain, wine, oil, and the firstborn of the flock. Giving first, before you knew how the rest of the harvest would turn out, was an act of nerve as much as of piety.

The "barns filled with plenty" and "presses bursting out with new wine" are the two halves of the year's payoff. Grain was stored in plastered pits and jars; grapes were trodden in a rock-cut basin that drained through a channel into a lower vat, where the juice fermented. Rock-cut presses like these still sit in the hills of Judah by the hundreds.

"Bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart" borrows from two real habits. People wore small pouches and amulets on a cord at the throat, and scribes wrote on wax-coated or plastered writing boards. The father is saying: wear this the way you wear jewellery, and write it where it cannot be wiped off.

The warnings against striking hands in a pledge belong to Israel's credit system. There were no banks. A loan was guaranteed by a third man clapping hands on the deal, and if the borrower defaulted, the guarantor could lose his cloak, his field, and finally his freedom to debt slavery.