Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Proverbs 137. The proverb today is "A house divided
against itself cannot stand. Okay. Let's take a look at the note here.
The meaning of this proverb is literal. In order for a family, a society or a
country to succeed, it must stay united and not let petty , you know small
quarrels or arguments bring them down. It is also used in reference to traitors as
well because if you get traitors within your country that's another way they
could bring you down. So you have to stay united. You have to stay you know,
together at least fighting for the same goal or the same purpose. Okay. Let's
continue. The origin of this proverb comes directly from the New Testament of
the Bible. it is mentioned in Mark 3:25 Luke 11 17 and Matthew 12 25 . Remember
they were four of , four of the, of the Apostles wrote stories about Jesus. You
know about their experiences with Jesus and so the four were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John. But these three actually mentioned this paraphrasing pretty much what Jesus
said. And he said pretty much the same sort of idea. All right. All right. This
proverb is also connected to the phrase united we stand, divided we fall. And
that's very big in US and US history. We say United. So we often use it like
nowadays you know in case we ever had to fight against another country or
something like that. But it goes all the way back to the you know. The founding
fathers. This was a very important principle. Okay. We can also say origins
of this can also be found in Aesop's fables. 'The four oxen and the lion" and
"The bundle of sticks. " So AESOP didn't actually say house divided but he did
stress the idea that you know, United you stand divided
you fall. In the four oxen and the lion.... these oxen of course because they work
together they all had their horns out and they all stood together like in a
circle. They were able to keep the lion away because it was hard for him to
attack without you know, being near one of the oxen horns. But then the oxen of
course started to argue and they had quarrels and then later on the lion was
able to pick them off one by one. So that, that also brings up this idea. The second
one is "The bundle of sticks. " Oh this is a father who has sons and you know, he
has I guess like a kingdom or something. And you know he was worried about
quarrels of his sons fighting. You know they may ... their fights may lose
everything. So and he tried to teach him this sort
of a moral and by you know showing them you know, if you take one stick and you
just snap it you could break it very easily. But if you put like four or five
sticks together and you try to break it is very very difficult. It is much
stronger. So he's also stressing that poorly. United we stand divided we fall.
Were much stronger together. If we could be together. All right.
So but let's go back to this part though. even the founding fathers promoted and
understood this principle. This dates back to John Dickson's pre-revolutionary
"The Liberty song. " Yeah. The founding fathers knew they were
standing up against England which was the most powerful country in the world
and you couldn't really physically defeat England. But their founding
fathers knew they knew how they worked. They knew that if they could separate
them, they would probably lose. Only if all the founding fathers stood together.
if they weren't any traitors or anyone that went against it. You know, they would
be much stronger. So that's, that was the idea also you know united we stand
divided we fall. And remember a lot of founding fathers too were also a lot of
them are very religious. They, they took a lot of ideas from the Bible and other
places as well and many other previous government.
And we also see it in American history even at Lincoln's time Abraham Lincoln
gave a speech centered on the house divided analogy in regard to a universal
decision about slavery. As well because remember half the country was against
slavery and the other half you know, still had slaves at that time. And he was
saying you know, there's a point where you know if you still continue to stay arguing
about this point it will break up the country. That was the idea. So that sort
of analogy. So this proverb goes very much to it. A house divided against
itself cannot stand. Which leads directly to united we stand
divided we fall. Which by the way is even on a lot of American money. We have that
phrase "United we stand divided we fall." Okay. Anyway I hope you got it . I hope it's
clear. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.