17-Pro_8:22-36
LECTURE XVII.
"The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth; while as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth: when he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep: when he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men. Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children: for blessed are they that keep my ways. Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not. Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord. But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death." On the principles already explained, I consider the verses which follow to the thirty-first, as a beautiful and impressive amplification of the sentiment of the Psalmist, "O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all," Psalms 104:24.
Verse Proverbs 8:22. "The Lord possessed* me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old." There is no difficulty here. The attribute of infinite wisdom was possessed by Jehovah from everlasting. The "beginning of his way" evidently means the commencement of creation, when he set out in his course of creative and consequently of providential manifestation of his eternal perfections. When this was we cannot tell. We may know the age of our own world, at least according to its present constitution. But when the universe was brought into being, and whether by one omnipotent fiat, or at successive and widely varying periods, it is beyond our power to ascertain. One thing we know, for a certainly revealed fact, that there were angelic creatures in existence previously to the reduction of our globe to order, and to the creation of man upon it. These holy intelligences contemplated the six days’ work of divine wisdom and power in this part of the universe with devout and benevolent transport-"The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." How many other creatures, and of what descriptions-how many other worlds, and how peopled, might have existed before man and his earthly residence, we are unable to affirm.-When men, indeed, begin to talk of its being absurd to suppose the universe so recent as to have been only coeval with our own globe or our own system, they forget themselves. They do not speak considerately nor philosophically. There is no lapse of ages, nor any points of measurement, in eternity. The very same absurdity, therefore, remains, how far back soever you carry your conception of the first exercise of creative power. The intelligent beings who lived a few thousand years after the commencement of creation,-supposing that commencement millions of ages remote,-would have stood in the very same predicament as ourselves: seeing there was then a preceding eternity, as there is now, to the beginning of which we never get any nearer, beginning being as inconsistent with the very idea of eternity, as termination is. Go as far back, therefore, as imagination, or as numbers heaped on numbers, can carry you, there still remains the previous eternity, during which our speculating and presumptuous minds may wonder that divine power had not been put forth. Sooner and later are terms of no meaning in eternity. The unsearchable depths of the divine mind it is not ours to fathom. "Such knowledge is too wonderful for us: it is high; we cannot attain unto it." The probability seems to be, that creation, whensoever it began, was progressive; nay even that it still continues so; that the will of omnipotence gives birth to new worlds, and new systems, and new orders and modes of being, from the exhaustless resources of what the apostle denominates "the manifold wisdom of God."
* Others render created. So the Septuagint, εχτισε, the Chaldee and Syriac. This seems more in harmony with the Hebrew ôáä. The next verse-’" I was set up * from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was," is usually explained of the pre-ordination from eternity of the Second Person in the Trinity to the mediatorial office, to be assumed and sustained by Him, at the needed juncture, in future time. But according to the view Ave take of wisdom as not a person but a personification, the meaning seems rather to be, that infinite wisdom directed all the divine counsels,-all the prospective plans of the Godhead being devised by it from everlasting, with unerring, with infinite skill. We are accustomed to speak of a man consulting Ids understanding, his judgment, his good sense and discretion. In the spirit of the figure employed, God, in like manner, is represented as, in the whole of his purposes and plans, "setting up" infinite wisdom to be consulted in every step.
* Or, I was anointed.
Amplifying still further, and the figure advancing in boldness, Wisdom proceeds-verses Proverbs 8:24-25. "When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth." This is one of the very few passages adduced in support of their doctrine by the advocates of the eternal generation of the Son of God; that is, of his having been the Son of the Father from eternity, according to his divine nature alone-mysteriously and eternally begotten in the essence of Deity. But in the first place, there is evidently a previous question,-the question, namely, whether the Son of God in person be the speaker. Till this has been clearly and fully established, the words ought not to be quoted in evidence. And in my judgment, the considerations assigned in last lecture render this much more than doubtful. On the authority of the Holy Scriptures, I do firmly believe, that in the divine essence there has subsisted from eternity a threefold personal distinction; but how,-according to what mode, this distinction subsists, I do not think the Bible at all informs us. All that has been said and written, about the Father being the Fountain of deity, about the Son as "begotten but not proceeding," and the Holy Spirit as "proceeding but not begotten," has long appeared to me only as showing the eagerness of men to pry into the mysterious beyond the limits of revelation. Such expressions, there is ground to fear, convey no ideas. And yet-as not seldom happens,-the more remote the subject from all human comprehension, the more fiery has been the dogmatism of the different parties, by whom the most hair-splitting niceties of distinction, (distinction often without perceptible difference,) have been maintained and vindicated, as if each of them for himself had succeeded in "finding out God," in "finding out the Almighty unto perfection." Holding firmly the belief I have already stated, I do not believe it to be the doctrine of Scripture that any one of the Divine Three possesses divinity by communication. I am not for divesting our holy religion of any of the mysteries belonging to it, which have clear Bible authority to support them; but I am very hostile to making mysteries beyond what that authority evidently affirms. And I am strongly inclined to think that the doctrine now referred to is more than a mystery-that it is self-contradictory. I am unable to think of communication without the idea of previousness and posteriority, of supremacy and dependence, of inferiority as connected with derivation; nor can I think of such communication, or generation, as eternal, without a feeling of contradiction. It was anxiety to maintain the true, underived, independent divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ, that first led me to doubt the prevalent systematic doctrine about "generation and procession from eternity;" and the more I searched, the more I became convinced, that for the latter, the "eternal procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son," there is not one atom of Scripture evidence-the only text adduced in its support having no relation whatever to any such subject;*1 and that of the former the proofs are far from satisfactory. The proper Deity of the Son of God, eternal, underived, independent, is incomparably better sustained, and the mind freed of all its feelings of impossibility and contradiction, by regarding the title Son Of God as belonging to Christ according to the complex constitution of his mediatorial person, as "God manifest in the flesh,"-a sense quite peculiar to Himself, and of which the Scriptures abound in proofs.*2 *1 The passage alluded to is John 15:26.
*2 For further discussion of this question the reader may consult Lects. 2, 3, and 4, Vol. 2 of Dr. Wardlaw’s "Systematic Theology." When a personification is introduced, and is with any degree of boldness and freedom maintained, we need not be surprised at the appearance, according to the different aspects under which the same thing may be viewed, of incongruity. Divine wisdom, belonging essentially to the nature of God, was from eternity. But as a person she here speaks of herself as "brought forth" previously to the commencement of creation and providence, with obvious reference to the application of her counsels in the purposes and plans of the Godhead. The language of figure is not, of course, to be interpreted literally and strictly. At the period referred to here, creation was not yet actually framed and executed. It was only planned;-the whole being at once, in all its magnificence and in all its minuteness, before the eye of the omniscient Mind, in its almost infinite complexity, extent and variety-yet without the slightest approach to confusion! All there, in one vast and complicated, yet simple idea! The phrase, "the highest part of the dust of the world," is in the margin "the chief part;" and by some the phrase has been explained of man-whom God made of the "dust" of the earth, and who was the "chief" of his works in our world. This seems rather a straining. It does not hold its place naturally in the connexion in which it occurs, when so understood. The terms probably describe the loftiest parts of the "dry land," when it had been separated from the waters, by their retiring, at the Creator’s word, to the beds of their future rest, as the vast and mighty ocean. And, in general, the objects selected appear to be those with which, as emblems, are associated the ideas of the greatest antiquity and the most stable permanence-"the depths;" "the everlasting mountains;" "the perpetual hills."
And, according to verses Proverbs 8:27-30, the same Wisdom that planned, superintended the execution of the whole, "When he prepared the heavens I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth: when he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep: when he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him."
We stop not to inquire whether by "the heavens" we should understand simply the circumambient atmosphere, producing the appearance of the blue concave by which the earth is surrounded-called in the account of the creation, the firmament, and forming the work of "the second day;" or that blue concave, considered as inclusive of the stars, with which it appears to be studded-the starry heavens. From a comparison with other passages, this is probably the meaning;*1 and the work is often connected with wisdom, as one of its most magnificent displays.*2
*1 Psalms 33:6.
*2 Jeremiah 10:12 , Psalms 136:5.
God’s "setting a compass on the face of the deep," seems to refer to His circumscribing the earth when in its fluid state, assigning to it its spherical form, and fixing the laws by which that form should be constantly maintained.-I think it probable that this refers to the earth in the state in which it is described previously to the beginning of the six days’ work, by which it was reduced to order, and fitted for and stocked with inhabitants.* * Genesis 1:1-2.
How was the fluid element held together in the spherical form? The answer is, God "set a compass upon the face of the deep," saying, "This be thy just circumference, O world!" By the power of gravitation, affecting every particle, drawing it to the common centre, the equilibrium was maintained, the globular form effected and kept; which may here be meant by the poetical conception of sweeping a circle from this centre, and defining the spherical limits of the world of waters. It is the same principle of gravity that pervades the universe, retaining all its movements in unerring harmony, without the deviation of a hair’s-breadth, or the error of a second in a millennium!
"When he established the clouds above:"-a most important part of the system; by which, through the medium of the solar influence, and the laws of evaporation, condensation, and gravity combined, the ocean is made to supply the land; and without which wonderful and beautiful arrangement, the world would soon become a desolate wilderness. "Establishing the clouds," seems an incongruous expression, there being nothing lighter or more unstable than these collections of atmospheric vapour. They are the very emblems of instability and evanescence. But it is the law by which the clouds are produced that is established: and that law, like every other, is a proof of "the manifold wisdom of God."* * Comp. Proverbs 3:20.
"When he strengthened the fountains of the deep." This seems to mean, that God so ordered the internal structure of the earth (of which, after the most unremitting efforts of scientific research, reaching necessarily but a short way into the mere crust, we are so extremely ignorant), and the springs and reservoirs on its surface, as to provide a constant supply of waters for the great deep maintaining its regular complement; and, at the same time, preventing its internal reservoirs from bursting their confinement to overflow and deluge the earth.
Connected with this stands verse Proverbs 8:29:-"When he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth." The sea is often, with much sublimity, alluded to in descriptions both of the power and wisdom of God-"Who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling-band for it, and brake up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?" Job 38:8-11.* The ocean in a storm, rolling and tossing its proud waves on high, presents one of the most impressive views of the omnipotence of Him who "measures the waters in the hollow of his hand." And the wonderful operation of that law, by which its swelling waters are restrained within their rocky boundary, (a law which may, perhaps, be most reasonably explained of the ever and everywhere present operation of his immediate and almighty energy,) brings before us both his wisdom and his goodness, preventing them from ever again overflowing the earth. "The waters could not pass his commandment," while he laid his restraining charge upon them; and neither could they resist his commandment, when he gave them an order of judgment against an ungodly world. And now that we have God’s promise that they "shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh," we are as sure as that God "cannot lie," as sure as that there is no power that can counteract omnipotence, that they shall never pass their prescribed limits again.
* See also Psalms 33:7; Psalms 104:9; Jeremiah 5:22.
"He appointed the foundations of the earth," may be explained in two ways, according to the sense in which the word earth is understood. If it means the land as here distinguished from the waters, then it may refer to the appearance presented by the land, when it was separated from the seas-as if it had its basis in the floods from out of which it seemed to arise: as the Psalmist says in similar terms, "He hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods," Psalms 24:2. If again the earth means the globe, the planet itself made for the residence of man and the inferior creatures, then its foundations may mean its centre, towards which all parts of its surface and substance directly gravitate,-all thus resting upon it, and held firmly together by their attraction towards it, as all the superior parts of a building, by the very same principle, when adjusted to the perpendicular by the plumb-line, rest on the foundation on which it is reared.
All these things were done by the power of God; and the power of God, in all its operations, was directed by God’s infinite wisdom; and all the results were a source of satisfaction to the mind of God, as we cannot but conceive the successful putting-forth of His infinite perfections ever to be. Such seems to be the general sentiment of verse Proverbs 8:30-"Then I was by him as one brought up with him; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him." "Wisdom was the constant companion or associate of all God’s plans and all their execution,-inseparable from God in all he purposed and in all he did; and "was daily his delight." I cannot but consider the word daily here, in the connexion in which it occurs, as having immediate reference to the successive days of the world’s creation. As the products of divine power and wisdom successively appeared on each of these days, the almighty and all-wise Creator delighted in the manifestation of his own perfections. Even God’s intelligent creatures have pleasure in putting forth their faculties, and in witnessing their successful results. God’s work is perfect, and His satisfaction correspondingly perfect. And what but this divine satisfaction can be meant when it is said-" God saw every thing that he had made; and behold it was very good?"-and afterwards that "God rested from all his work and was refreshed?" The personification gets still bolder-"rejoicing always before him." Wisdom, by her counsels, when carried into execution, advances the glory of God. And she is, in the figure, strikingly represented as rejoicing or exulting in this; rejoicing in His very presence,-there being nothing in the results of her counsels of which she has any reason to be ashamed. This amounts, in effect, to only a stronger expression of the same sentiment as in the preceding clause,-the satisfaction of Deity in all the products of His united wisdom and power. It corresponds with the brief but beautiful expression of the psalmist, "The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever: the Lord shall rejoice in his works," Psalms 104:31. It is added, as the consummation of Wisdom’s joy:-verse Proverbs 8:31. "Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men." There can be no doubt that Divine Wisdom delighted, more than in all that had preceded it, in the last creative effort of the sixth day- "In man the last, in him the best. His Maker’s image stood confest." In the creation of this wonderful combination of matter and spirit-of matter in its finest and most exquisite mould, and its most beautiful, delicate, complicated and perfect adjustments; and of spirit, ethereal, intelligent, pure, and active, to control all the movements of the wonderful mechanism, in subserviency to the glory of the Maker and the advancement of the happiness of His creation, was a work fitted to impart the highest satisfaction of all to the Infinitely Wise. And when Eden was planted, and fitted up in every way that could render it a suitable habitation for the holy and happy creature, and man was placed in this "habitable part of the earth," the joy of Divine Wisdom might naturally be regarded as perfect. And so it was. Yet, when I recollect how constantly the Bible, in speaking of the manifestation of the wisdom of God in reference to man, points to another work, the work of man’s recovery when fallen, I cannot help regarding the language of this verse as prospective: as intimating joy in anticipation of a still more glorious display of the wisdom and other perfections of God, of which this world was to be the theatre.
Wisdom was displayed in man’s creation; but wisdom was to be magnified still more in man’s redemption. The scheme by which this was to be effected should contain in it a display of wisdom unparalleled in any of the wonders of creative power and skill. It was to be a scheme of mercy to the last, in which all the perfections of the divine character should be shown-shining forth in blessed harmony, all equally glorified, all mutually illustrating each other,-providing for the honour, the unsullied honour of justice in the exercise of mercy; and saving the fallen creature, without the slightest infringement of the rights of Jehovah’s holy government, or the slightest abatement or sacrifice of the claims of His eternally righteous law:-nay more, not merely without infringement of the divine glory, but with such an augmentation of it as should fill eternity with the adoring homage of an intelligent universe. It was, we apprehend, especially on this account that Wisdom delighted here: not indeed with any complacency in the character of fallen man, but with joy in the anticipation of a temple being reared on the ruins of his apostate nature, in which higher notes of praise should sound to God, to the glory of his love and mercy, and justice "and purity, and truth and wisdom and power, than had ascended to him from Eden itself Jehovah as the God of man’s creation was glorious: Jehovah as the God of man’s salvation was to be still more glorious; and the delight of divine Wisdom was to be proportionally more elevated and exquisite.
Let the man of mere natural religion think of this. His thoughts are not in harmony with those of divine wisdom, when he is trying to discover the character of God in man as he now is. The two states in which man furnishes a true testimony to the character of God, are-as he was when created, and as he is when redeemed. The remaining verses of the chapter may be considered as the practical improvement of the preceding statements:-verse Proverbs 8:32. "Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children: for blessed are they that keep my ways."
"Therefore." The word includes much. It associates with it, both what precedes and what follows it. Consider the dignity of Wisdom. Not only does she say, "By me kings reign, and princes decree justice;" but she appears as the directress of all the purposes, and plans, and works, and ways of the infinite God. Consider also the interest which Wisdom expresses in the "sons of men;" her very delight lying in the union of the glory of God with their present and eternal happiness. And consider further, the blessedness of those who do hearken to her counsels:-verses Proverbs 8:34-35. "Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord."-Shall "find life"-life eternal! and "obtain favour of the Lord!" The latter secures the former. "In His favour is life." O what an acquisition-the smile and love of God! Without these, there is, there can be nothing for man that deserves the name of happiness. With these, there can be no misery in time or in eternity. Well might heavenly Wisdom say, "Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children: hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not." Let no tempting Siren voice of the world draw your ear away from the voice of Wisdom. Mark her solemn and touching conclusion-" He that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death."
They that resist her entreaties and warnings, "wrong"-do violence to, "their own souls." They are guilty-ah! how often-of self-destruction! They "love Death!" They wilfully take the sure way of making it their final portion. They wilfully render themselves obnoxious to it; so that were it their great aim they could not more effectually insure it; could not take a more certain road to perdition were they making it the great object of their search to find one!