Proverbs 10:1

The proverbs of Solomon,.... This title is repeated from Proverbs 1:1; and very properly stands here; since here begin those pithy sentences of Solomon, which bear the name of proverbs; the preceding

The proverbs of Solomon. A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother. Here begins the second part of the whole book, and extends to the close of Pro 24:1-34.

CHAPTER 10 From this chapter to the five and twentieth, are sundry observations of moral virtues, and their contrary vices, with excellent rules for the government of our conversation. The proverbs of Solomon, properly so called; for the foregoing chapters, though they had this title in the beginning of them, yet in truth were only a preface or preparation to them, containing a general exhortation to the study and exercise of wisdom, to stir up the minds of men to the greater attention and regard to all its precepts, whereof some here follow; of which in general these things are fit to be observed, to help us in the understanding of them: 1. That these sentences are generally distinct and independent, having no coherence one with another, as many other parts of Scripture have. 2. That such sentences being very short, as their nature requires, more is understood in them than is expressed, and the causes are commonly to be gathered from the effects, and the effects from the causes, and one opposite from another, as we shall see. 3. That they are delivered by way of comparison and opposition, which for the most part is between virtue and vice, but sometimes is between two virtues, or two vices. A wise son, i.e. prudent, and especially virtuous and godly, as this word is commonly meant in this book, and in many other scriptures. A glad father; and a glad mother too; for both parents are to be understood in both branches, as is evident from the nature of the thing, which affects both of them, and from parallel places, as 30:17, although one only be expressed in each branch, for the greater elegancy. The heaviness of his mother; the occasion of her great sorrow, which is decently ascribed to the mothers rather than to the fathers, because their passions are most vehement, and make deepest impression in them.

Proverbs 10:1 The proverbs of Solomon. A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish son [is] the heaviness of his mother.Ver. 1. The Proverbs.] Properly so called. See Proverbs 1:1. For the nine former chapters are a kind of common places, or continued discourses premised as a preface to these ensuing wise and grave sentences, tending much to the information of the mind and reformation of the manners, and containing things profitable for all sorts of people. They are not unfitly compared by a divine to a bag full of sweet and fragrant spices, which shuffled or shaken together, or taken single, yield a sweet odour; or to stars in the firmament, each in itself glorious and independent of another, yet all receive their light from the sun. A wise son maketh a glad father.] Children are certain cares, but uncertain comforts. Every son should be an Abner, that is, his father’ s light; and every daughter an Abigail, her father’ s joy. Eve promised herself much in her Cain, and David did the like in his Absalom. Sed, fallitur augurio spes bona saepe suo, - they were both deceived. Samuel succeeds Eli in his cross, as well as his place, though not in his sin; and had cause enough to call his untoward children, as Augustus did, tres vomicas, tria carcinomata, - so many ulcerous sores, mattery imposthumes. Virtue is not as lands, inheritable. All that is traduced with the seed is either evil, or not good. Let parents labour to mend by education what they have marred by propagation; and when they have done all, pray "God persuade Japhet," lest else they be put to wish one day, as Augustus did, Oh that I had never married, or never had children! And let children cheer up their parents, as Joseph, Samuel, and Solomon did; and as Epaminondas, who was wont to say, Se longe maximum suarum laudum fructum capere quod earum spectatores haberet parentes, - that he joyed in nothing more than that his parents were yet alive, to take comfort in his brave achievements; for otherwise God will take them in hand, as he did Abimelech, to whom he "rendered the wickedness done to his father"; and as he did Absalom, whom he trussed up in the height of his rebellious practices with his own immediate hand; or else he will punish them in and by their posterity, which shall either be none (Proverbs 20:20, compared with 2 Samuel 14:7), or worse than none; as he who, when his aggrieved father complained that never man had so undutiful a child as he had, Yes, said his son (with less grace than truth), my grandfather had. The heaviness of his mother.] The mother is mentioned (though the father haply as heavy) first, as most faulted if her children miscarry; next, as most slighted by them; and lastly, as most impatient of such an affliction. Rebekah was weary of her life by reason of the daughters of Heth brought in to her by Esau.

X.3. A OF 375 VERSES ON VARIOUS , MARKED BY A NEW HEADING (Proverbs 10:1 to Proverbs 22:16). (1) The proverbs of Solomon.—The new title and different style of composition mark a new collection of proverbs. (See above, in the Introduction.) Each verse is distinct and complete in itself; but the collector appears to have endeavoured to throw together such as touched on the same subject. For instance, Proverbs 10:4-5, show why one man fails and another succeeds; Proverbs 10:6-7, how blessings and curses follow different persons. But the connection is sometimes so slight as to be difficult to catch.

CHAPTER X It is impossible to give summaries of such chapters as these, where almost every verse contains a separate subject. Our common version not being able to exhibit the contents as usual, simply says, "From this chapter to the five and twentieth are sundry observations upon moral virtues, and their opposite vices." In general the wise man states in this chapter the difference between the wise and the foolish, the righteous and the wicked, the diligent and the idle. He speaks also of love and hatred, of the good and the evil tongue, or of the slanderer and the peace-maker. NOTES ON CHAP. X. Verse 1. The proverbs of Solomon] Some ancient MSS. of the Vulgate have Proverbiorum liber secundus, "The second book of the Proverbs." The preceding nine chapters can only be considered as an introduction, if indeed they may be said to make even a part, of the proverbs of Solomon, which appear to commence only at the tenth chapter. A wise son maketh a glad father] The parallels in this and several of the succeeding chapters are those which Bishop Lowth calls the antithetic; when two lines correspond with each other by an opposition of terms and sentiments; when the second is contrasted with the first; sometimes in expression, sometimes in sense only. Accordingly the degrees of antithesis are various; from an exact contraposition of word to word, through a whole sentence, down to a general disparity, with something of a contrariety in the two propositions, as: - A wise son rejoiceth in his father. But a foolish son is the grief of his mother. Where every word has its opposite; for the terms father and mother are, as the logicians say, relatively opposite.

1. heaviness] or sorrow, as the same somewhat uncommon word is rendered in Proverbs 17:21. It is perhaps significant that the first proverb deals with so fundamental a relation of human society.

See the Introduction.