Proverbs 14:28

In the multitude of people [is] the king's honour,.... For it is a sign of a good and wise government, of clemency and righteousness being exercised, of liberty and property being enjoyed, of peace,

In the multitude of people is the king's honour: but in the want of people is the destruction of the prince.

Is the king’ s honour, because it is an evidence of his wise and good government. Under honour he here comprehends also strength and safety, (as appears from the opposite clause,) which depend much upon a prince’ s reputation. And honour may be here put for strength, as strength is put for honour or glory, 29:1 96:7.

Proverbs 14:28 In the multitude of people [is] the king’ s honour: but in the want of people [is] the destruction of the prince. Ver. 28. In the multitude of the people is the king’ s honour.] For that is a sign of peace, plenty, prosperity, and just government, as in Solomon’ s days, when "Israel and Judah were many, as the sand which is by the sea in multitude, eating, and drinking, and making merry." And as in Augustus’ s days, when Christ, the Prince of Peace, was born into the world, cuncta atque continua totius generis humani aut pax fuit, aut pactio. Ferdinand III, King of Spain, reigned full thirty-five years, in all which time, nec fames nec pestis fuit in regno suo, saith Lopez, there was neither famine nor pestilence throughout that kingdom. What incredible waste of men hath war lately made in Germany, that stage of war; in Ireland; and here in this kingdom, besides what formerly! In the civil dissensions between the houses of York and Lancaster, were slain eighty princes of the blood royal, and twice as many natives of England as were lost in the two conquests of France. The dissensions between England and Scotland consumed more Christian blood, wrought more spoil and destruction to both kingdoms, and continued longer, than ever quarrel we read of did between any two people of the world. "Be wise now therefore, O ye kings," &c. Tu vero, Herodes sanguinolente, time, as Beza covertly warned Charles IX, author of the French massacre. Many parts of Turkey lie unpeopled, most of the poor being enforced with victuals and other necessaries to follow their great armies in their long expeditions; of whom scarce one of ten ever return home again, there by the way perishing if not by the enemy’ s sword, yet by want of victuals, intemperateness of the air, or immoderate painstaking. Hence the proverb, Wherever the Great Turk sets his foot, there grass grows not any more. Flor. Hist., lib. iv. Gloss. in prolog., part i. Daniel’ s Hist. Camden’ s Elisab., 165. Turkish Hist.

(28) In the multitude of people is the king’s honour.—Not in ambitious wars. In these words speaks the “man of rest” (1 Chronicles 22:9). (Comp. the description of Solomon’s kingdom in the days of his prosperity; 1 Kings 4:20.)

Verse 28. In the multitude of people] It is the interest of every state to promote marriage by every means that is just and prudent; and to discourage, disgrace, and debase celibacy; to render bachelors incapable, after a given age, of all public employments: and to banish nunneries and monasteries from all parts of their dominions;-they have ever, from their invention, contributed more to vice than virtue; and are positively point blank against the law of God.

A protest against the false ideal of national greatness to which Eastern kings, for the most part, have bowed down. Not conquest, or pomp, or gorgeous array, but a happy and numerous people form the true glory of a king.

28. Multitude of people, etc. — More vividly, with Stuart, “The glory of a king is in a multitude of people; but the lack of people is the destruction of a prince.” Compare 2 Samuel 24:14-17.