Proverbs 1
Butler1. THE proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel :
2. To know wisdom and instruction ; To discern the words of understanding ;
3. To receive instruction in wise dealing, In righteousness and judgment and equity ;
4. To give subtilty to the simple, To the young man knowledge and discretion :
5. That the wise man may hear, and increase in learning ; And that the man of understanding may attain unto sound counsels :
6. To understand a proverb, and a figure ; The words of the wise, and their dark sayings.
7. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge : But the foolish despise wisdom and instruction.
8. My son, hear the instruction of thy father, And forsake not the teaching of thy mother :
9. For they shall be a chaplet of grace unto thy head, And chains about thy neck.
10. My son, if sinners entice thee, Consent thou not.
11. If they say, Come with us, Let us lay wait for blood, Let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause ;
12. Let us swallow them up alive as Sheol, And whole, as those that go down into the pit ;
13. We shall find all precious substance, We shall fill our houses with spoil ;
14. Thou shalt cast thy lot among us ; We will all have one purse :
15. My son, walk not thou in the way with them ; Refrain thy foot from their path :
16. For their feet run to evil, And they make haste to shed blood.
17. For in vain is the net spread, In the eyes of any bird :
18. And these lay wait for their own blood,
I-6. WITH obvious fitness the author begins with a clear statement of his objects—viz., to help the reader to the knowledge of wisdom ; to impart useful instruction ; to give just ideas
They lurk privily for their own lives.
19. So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain ; It taketh away the life of the owners thereof.
20. Wisdom crieth aloud in the street ; She uttereth her voice in the broad places ;
21. She crieth in the chief place of concourse ; At the entering in of the gates, In the city, she uttereth her words :
22. How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity ? And scorners delight them in scorning, And fools hate knowledge ?
23. Turn you at my reproof : Behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you.
24. Because I have called, and ye refused ; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded ;
25. But ye have set at nought all my counsel, And would none of my reproof :
26. I also will laugh in the day of your calamity ; I will mock when your fear cometh ;
27. When your fear cometh as a storm, And your calamity cometh on as a whirlwind ; When distress and anguish come upon you.
28. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer ; They shall seek me diligently, but they shall not find me :
29. For that they hated knowledge, And did not choose the fear of the LORD :
30. They would none of my counsel ; They despised all my reproof :
31. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, And be filled with their own devices.
32. For the backsliding of the simple shall slay them, And the prosperity of fools shall destroy them.
33. But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell securely, And shall be quiet without fear of evil.
of moral rectitude ; to settle grave questions of right and wrong. In v. 4 “subtilty” must not be taken in its bad sense of cunning, craftiness, but in the sense of sharp and clear discrimination and just apprehension—sagacity. The “simple” here, as usually in the writings of Solomon, are the open-hearted and unsuspecting, who are accessible to every social influence, and therefore easily seduced into evil ways. He proceeds to say that every wise man will hear good counsel and will make acquisitions of solid wisdom and of all useful knowledge, so as to understand proverbs and those brief and condensed maxims which require skill for their interpretation. The “dark sayings” of the wise are those deep, abstruse maxims which purposely task the ingenuity of the reader in order to fix their rich thought more deeply in his mind. H. C.
2. To know wisdom. The use of these proverbs is to give true moral and spiritual wisdom and instruction to those that carefully hear and read them. Bishop H.—This book will help us: 1. To form right notions of things, and to possess our minds with clear and distinct ideas of them: that we may know wisdom and instruction; that wisdom which is got by instruction, by Divine revelation: may know both how to speak and act wisely ourselves, and to give instruction to others. 2. To distinguish between truth and falsehood, good and evil; to discern the words of understanding; to apprehend and judge of them, to guard against mistakes, and to accommodate what we are taught to ourselves and our own use. H.
4. The previous verses have described the ends aimed at. This points out the classes for which the book will be found useful. These are mainly two—the simple, literally the “open,” the open-hearted, the minds ready to receive impressions for good or evil, so exposed to the latter that the word for the most part is used as in v. 22, and elsewhere, with a shade of evil attaching to it; and the young—those whose age places them for the most part under the category of the “open,” and who, even if their will be stronger, still need both knowledge and discipline. To these the teacher offers what they most need, the subtlety, which may turn to evil and become as the wisdom of the serpent, but which also takes its place among the highest moral gifts (Matt. 10:16); knowledge of good and evil, the discretion or discernment which sets a man on his guard and keeps him from being duped by false advisers. E. H. P.
To the young man knowledge. Youth is the time to form opinions—or, rather to learn truth. It is meant that you should now, with the honest use of all the power you can command, canvass and decide upon the Babel of varying beliefs around you. No man has any belief but what he wins for himself as the captive of his own spear and his own bow. If we are building on traditional opinion we have really no foundation at all. Unless the word received from others has been verified by ourselves and changed into a part of our own being, we may befool ourselves with creeds and professions to which we fancy that we adhere, but we have no belief whatsoever. You must learn to look with your own eyes, and not through the spectacles of any human guides, authorities, or teachers upon the mystic, awful verities of this strange life, and upon the light that falls on them from the far-off empyrean above. A. M.
Knowledge and practice do mutually promote one another. Knowledge prepares and disposeth for practice, and practice is the best way to perfect knowledge in any kind. More speculation is a very raw and rude thing in comparison of that true and distinct knowledge which is gotten by practice and experience. Knowledge perfected by practice is as much different from mere speculation as the skill of doing a thing is from being told how a thing is to be done. Give me a man that constantly does a thing well, and that shall satisfy me that he knows how to do it. That saying of our blessed Saviour, “If any man will do My will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself,” is a clear determination of this matter—namely, that they understand the will of God best who are most careful to do it. And so likewise the best way to know what God is, is to transcribe His perfections in our lives and actions, to be holy, and just, and good, and merciful as He is. Tillotson.—The highest rational knowledge of God cannot profit without the knowledge of faith. This general and common knowledge of Christ is but a knowing after the flesh, not in the power of His Spirit, and can no more advantage than the Jews knowing Him, or Judas his living with Him, did them or him without believing. In the Scripture, Christians are not called knowing persons, but believers. T. R. Stevenson.—Not the truth which a man knows, but that which he feels and lives, becomes the soul’s life. Truth cannot bless, except when it is lived, proclaimed, and suffered for. Anon.
5. The wise man. A wise man is one who understands himself well enough to make due allowance for moods, never concluding that a thing is thus or thus because just now it bears that look; waiting often to see what a sleep or a walk, or a cool revision, or perhaps a considerable turn of repentance will do. He does not slash upon a subject or a man from the point of a just now rising temper. He maintains a noble candor by waiting sometimes for a gentler spirit and a better sense of truth. He is never intolerant of other men’s judgments, because he is a little distrustful of his own. He restrains the dislikes of prejudice, because he has a prejudice against his dislikes. His resentments are softened by his condemnations of himself. His depressions do not crush him, because he has sometimes seen the sun, and believes it may appear again. He revises his opinions readily, because he has a right, he thinks, to better opinions if he can find them. He holds fast sound opinions, lest his moodiness in change should take all truth away. A man who is duly aware thus of his own distempered faculty makes a life how different from one who acts as if he were infallible, and had nothing to do but just to let himself be pronounced. Bushnell.
Will increase in learning. True wisdom is never stationary, but always progressive; because it secures the ground behind it as a basis for further advances. “He who is not adding is wasting; he who is not increasing knowledge is losing from it,” says Rabbi Hillel. Fausset.—The true lover of learning gives not over his chase and pursuit for a little smattering knowledge he gets, but rather, having got the scent how sweet learning is, puts on with fuller cry for what he wants. The true doctor studies harder than the freshman, because as he knows more of learning, so by that knowledge he understands his own deficiency better; for the higher he ascends the hill of learning, the more his prospect enlargeth, while the other, standing at the bottom, thinks he knows all in his little. Gurnall.—All true knowledge is alluring. The first sight of a mystery is transporting, and also alluring to a further inquiry. “A wise man will hear and will increase learning;” he will arise to more sublime thoughts and discoveries. It is the nature of all true knowledge to sharpen the mind for more. The scholar that has a taste of any curious learning will not leave the pursuit till by turning over books and stretching his thoughts, he has increased his stock. It is also the nature of spiritual knowledge to put an edge upon the appetite, and open the understanding wider that it may be filled with more. Charnock.
7-9. Solomon, having undertaken to teach a young man knowledge and discretion, here lays down two general rules to be observed in order thereunto; and those are to fear God and honor his parents. H.
7. This verse belongs properly to the introduction, giving very appropriately the state of mind in which wisdom should be sought. The “fear of the Lord” in the sense of Solomon is not a slavish dread, but a reverential and filial regard, in which love blends with profound homage, and a respect which, as related to God, rises to the highest reverence. In this spirit we desire above all things else to learn and to do all our Heavenly Father’s will. The lessons of heavenly wisdom are therefore cherished with warmest affection and sought with most earnest endeavor. So vital is the fear of the Lord to the acquisition of all true wisdom that it may fitly be said to be the very beginning of it, the starting-point; the spirit without which there can be no truly honest and earnest pursuit of wisdom. H. C.—“The fear of the Lord” comes as the motto of the book. The beginning of wisdom is not found in keen insight, nor wide experience, nor the learning of the schools, but in the temper of reverence and awe. The fear of the finite in the presence of the Infinite, of the sinful in the presence of the Holy, self-abhorring, adoring, this for the Israelite was the starting-point of all true wisdom. In the Book of Job (28 : 28) it appears as an oracle, accompanied by the noblest poetry. In Psalms 111 : 10 it comes as the choral close of a temple hymn. Here it is the watchword of a true ethical education. The fear of which the three writers speak is not the slave’s dread of punishment. It has no “torment,” and is compatible with childlike love. But this and not love is the “beginning of wisdom.” Through successive stages and by the discipline of life love blends with it and makes it perfect. E. H. P.
In the preface to the Decalogue we are taught to feel awe toward the Creator as the Lord our God, and also grateful love to Him as the One who brought us out of the house of bondage. These two feelings have justly been styled the centripetal and centrifugal forces of the moral universe. Neither can be spared. The concurrence of the two bring about that state of mind and heart which is most acceptable to God and most conducive to our present and future welfare. The text says that it is the head and front of knowledge. T. W. C.—The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge, because knowledge, being the apprehension of facts and application of them to life, cannot properly begin, or be placed on a right foundation, without first apprehending and applying a fact which includes and which modifies all other facts whatever. The knowledge which is to train the soul must begin, continue, and end in the apprehension of God—of God as first, and of all other things as He has made them to be to us exponents of and testimonies to Himself. And if knowledge is to be of any real use to help and renovate man, the affections must be wrought upon at the very outset of teaching. There is but one personal Agent whose influence and presence can abide through life, can alike excite hope, and fear, and love in the infant, in the child, in the youth, in the man, in the aged, and on the bed of death; and that One is God Himself. Unless He be known first and known throughout, knowledge will abide alone in the head and will not find a way to the heart; man will know but will not grow by it; will know but will not act upon it; will know for narrow and low and selfish purposes, but never for blessing to himself or to others, never for the great ends of his being and never for glory to his God. The fear of the Lord is not a barren fact, like the shape of the earth or the course of the seasons; it is a living, springing, transmuting affection, capable of enduring even ordinary facts with power to cheer and to bless, and to bear fruit in men’s hearts and lives. Alford.
Know thyself that thou mayest fear God; know God that thou mayest love Him. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom; the love of God is the fulfilling of the law. In all thy actions think God sees thee, and in all His actions labor to see Him; that will make thee fear Him, this will move thee to love Him. The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge, and the knowledge of God is the perfection of love. Quarles.—To know God, to contemplate the perfections of His nature and the wonders of His hand; to become acquainted with that regular and orderly plan by which He governs His creatures; to observe His watchful care and providential regard; to behold the wonders of redemption, the character and undertaking of Jesus, the doctrine He hath taught, the duties He hath enforced, the promises He hath given; to discover the means of salvation, the economy of the invisible world, and the continuance of our own existence in that immortality which is brought to light by the Gospel—these and other subjects of equal importance, when opened to the mind, not only give pleasure as speculative discoveries and the solutions of distressing doubts, but by kindling an ardent and elevated devotion, giving support and reasonableness to hope and influencing to the discharge of every religious and moral duty, produce also the testimony of a good conscience and the favor of God—the present possession of the peace of the Gospel, and the prospect of a future fulness of joy in the presence of God forever. R. Watson.
8. 9. These verses exhibit the relation of the person addressed to his monitor, and make an earnest appeal to him readily to receive the proffered instruction. As an inducement it holds forth the beautiful ornaments of character which such a readiness will confer upon him.
8. My son is the usual address of a teacher to a learner, and is common in Persia and Arabia, as well as in Palestine. The writer assumes the attitude of a parent addressing his children. M. S.—In the eight opening chapters “my son” occurs no less than fifteen times. This circumstance makes the counsels more winning and more touching. Bishop Alexander.
He charges children both to receive and to retain the good lessons their parents give them. Some observe that whereas the Gentile ethics and the laws of the Persians and Romans provided only that children should pay respect to their father, the Divine law secures the honor of the mother also. H.—Our earthly relations are but a figure of our heavenly relations. The tenderness, the loving care, the joyful self-sacrifice of our earthly parents, are meant to assure us of and to aid us in believing in the exceeding great love of our heavenly Father toward us. E. H. Bradby.
By the forethought of the mother in the touching of this one’s disposition and that one’s disposition, first on this side and then on that, the wise administration of love in the household keeps everything moving harmoniously. There is an atmosphere thrown off from the mother’s heart which keeps the whole household in order, and all progresses regularly and happily. Anon.—Children, look into those eyes, listen to that dear voice, notice the feeling of even a single touch that is bestowed upon you by that gentle hand! Make much of it while you have that most precious of all gifts, a loving mother. Read the unfathomable love of those eyes, the deep anxiety of that tone and look, however slight your pain. In after life you may have friends, fond, dear, kind friends; but never will you have again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you which none but a mother can bestow. Macaulay.—There is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to a son that transcends all other affections of the heart. It is neither to be chilled by selfishness, nor daunted by danger, nor weakened by worthlessness, nor stifled by ingratitude. She will sacrifice every comfort to his convenience; she will surrender every pleasure to his enjoyment; she will glory in his fame and exult in his prosperity; and if misfortune overtake him, he will be the dearer to her from his misfortunes; and if disgrace settle upon his name, she will still love and cherish him in spite of his disgrace; and if all the world beside cast him off, she will be all the world to him. Washington Irving.
10-19. Here Solomon gives another general rule to young people, in order to their finding out and keeping in the paths of wisdom, and that is, to take heed of the snare of bad company. David’s Psalms begin with this caution, and so do Solomon’s Proverbs. How industrious wicked people are to seduce others into the paths of the destroyer! Sinners love company in sin; the angels that fell were tempters almost as soon as they were sinners. They do not threaten or argue, but entice with flattery and fair speech; with a bait they draw the unwary young man to the hook. H.—Solomon admonishes the young to shun the temptations to robbery—the prevailing and besetting sin of freebooting life. The tempter approaches with the suggestion, Let us get up an expedition for murder and plunder; let us advance stealthily and fall suddenly upon some rich village or household; let us swallow them up as the grave does, in a moment, remorselessly; so shall we get stores of wealth without labor, and fill our houses with plunder. Thus, on the one side, are the temptations of gain without work or cost; the social attractions of the secret fraternity and the love of bold adventure; the sense of power also, and the charm of witnessing the surprise and panic of the defenceless; but, on the other hand, Solomon admonishes his young friends that those feet run to evil and hasten to the shedding of blood (v. 16); that their movements may be anticipated and balked by the wariness of those whom they would fain surprise and destroy (v. 17); that their onset may recoil, and so their lying in wait will be for their own, not others’ blood, and their “lurking privily” will cost, not others’ lives, but their own. He then draws the broad conclusion—So it befalls every man who is greedy of gain, for such greed costs the life of those who thus grasp at it. This conclusion justifies the remark that this form of sin may represent numerous other forms, any and every other form indeed in which the social element is strong and human selfishness riots recklessly upon other men’s interests and rights. Such bold, extreme wickedness reacts with fearful power. H. C.
10. From broad general counsels the teacher passes to more specific warnings. The first great danger which besets the simple and the young is that of evil companionship. The only safety is to be found in the power of saying “No” to all such invitations, however enticing they may be. E. H. P.—Unless we have learned to say “No,” we shall be miserable as well as weak. There is no real felicity for the men who have not learned to stand alone, if need be, and when those round them are all going in one direction to say: “I have neither part nor lot in the matter.” We must resist if we are to obey. It is easy, but not blessed, to go with the stream, to be borne by circumstances, to share in the popular way of life. It is better to swim up stream, though much harder, than to let ourselves be lazily borne down it. Young men, if you want to be blessed, learn in time “When sinners entice thee, consent thou not.” Unless your obedience is militant, it will be no obedience at all. A. M.—It matters not to the cattle of the field what company they keep in grazing the meadow for a few short years; but it matters much to thee what associates are permitted to affect thy character for time and for eternity. Respect thyself, and so fear God that thou canst have no companions who do not also fear Him. D. F.
11. Come with us. You know how many there are that say to you, sometimes by articulate words, and still more frequently by example, “Come with us. Let’s have our fling. Time enough to be better when we get old. No harm in sowing our wild oats now. If a young man comes into the city and takes his place at desk or counter, and there forgets resistance, sturdy non-compliance and heroic daring to be singular when evil tempts him, he is ruined body and soul. That is not exaggeration, as anybody who watches for a few years has sorrowful reason to know. I have seen many young men from the day that they entered their situations, fresh and buoyant, “innocent of much transgression,” and “simple concerning evil.” And I have watched them grow hard and reserved, gradually withdraw themselves from good and Christian influences, exchange their simplicity for knowledge which was bitter, sometimes become pale and haggard and old before their time—and then they have disappeared. “Where is he gone?” “Oh, he got into a bad set; he has lost his situation, and is gone abroad.” And sometimes the answer is: “He went home ill, and he is dead.” The lesson that is read you by these sad careers cut so short is surely that one—“Resist.” “My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.” A. M.—The defence prescribed is, “Consent thou not.” It is a blunt, peremptory command. Your method of defence must be different from the adversary’s mode of attack. His strength lies in making gradual approaches, yours in a resistance sudden, resolute, total. Arnot.
17,18. They are worse than the birds, and have not the sense which we sometimes perceive them to have; for the fowler knows it is in vain to lay his snare in the sight of the bird, and therefore he has arts to conceal it. But the sinner sees ruin at the end of his way; the murderer, the thief, see the jail and the gallows before them—nay, their watchmen tell them they shall surely die, but it is to no purpose. H.
19. Greedy of gain. The love of money is a root of all evil. While many other sources of sin exist, there is no description of crime which this vice has not prompted men to commit. On no subject, perhaps, are the Scriptures more copious and minute than on the sin of covetousness. If a faithful portrait of its loathsome character can induce us to hate it; if a sight of the virtues which it has extinguished, the vices with which it is often associated, and the depraved characters in whom it has most flourished; if the tenderest dissuasives from it, and the terrors of the Lord warning us against it; if Sinai and Calvary uniting and protesting against it—if all this combined can deter us from the sin of covetousness, then the Scriptures have omitted nothing which could save us from its guilty contamination. J. H.
20,21. Wisdom crieth aloud to all men. The allurements to evil in the world and the consequences of yielding to tempters, referred to in the preceding verses, naturally suggest the call and the attractions of a heavenly character. In this fine personification, so often and effectively employed throughout the Book of Proverbs, wisdom represents, primarily, supreme excellence—that is, piety or godlikeness of heart and life; and is opposed to folly, which stands for the extreme of impiety. But as Christ is the only manifest embodiment of this exalted idea of wisdom, as His spirit perfectly harmonizes with this personified messenger of God to men, and his office-work both in word and deed corresponds exactly with that indicated in this Divine message, so it is a natural and necessary conclusion that Christ Himself is represented here. And the New Testament by specific statements amply confirms this conclusion. Bearing in mind this reference to Christ in the personified wisdom of the proverbs, and noticing the interchangeable use of the abstract idea of piety or religion with the personal Christ, observe, first, the openness and universality of this call to men. It is not uttered in secret, as if the speaker were ashamed of the message, or as if the invitation were restricted to few. But openly traversing every pathway of man, and persistently seeking out all classes, this herald of heaven is represented as crying aloud to the multitudes gathered in the gateways and other places of concourse, and to those abiding in their homes. B.—How much of Christ the writer of Proverbs descried we know not; but the inspiring Spirit so guided him that he set forth an ideal of wisdom which cannot be satisfied short of the doctrine of Christ—the personal Word, in whom “are hid all treasurers of wisdom and knowledge,” and whose Gospel of grace and truth, wherever received and obeyed, causes this saying to be fulfilled in His disciples—“Wisdom is justified of her children.” D. F.
22. How long will ye? In the vicious ways of the world it mercifully falleth out that it taketh some time and pains to undo ourselves. We fall not from virtue in a day. Bad dispositions require some time to grow into bad habits, bad habits must undermine good, and often-repeated acts make us habitually evil; so that by gradual deprivations, and while we are but staggeringly evil, we are not left without parentheses of consideration, thoughtful rebukes, and merciful interventions, to recall us unto ourselves. For the wisdom of God hath methodized the course of things unto the best advantage of goodness. Browne.
22,23. Three classes addressed, with expostulation, entreaty, and promise. The simple are those untaught and inexperienced who, because of natural infirmity and self-pleasing, are easily ensnared and led into evil by worldly tempters and enticements. But experience in transgression transforms the simple into the scorner. This is a lower grade and more fixed condition in sin. It makes the man a despiser of truth, a scoffer at God and religion. In the third class scorning has deepened into hate of the truth and of God, and to hardened viciousness. Fools here mean men that openly defy God, and are self-abandoned to their lusts. In the first Psalm you will find the same three distinct classes. The same gradation of character is there further indicated by the several attitudes of walking, standing, and sitting; thus intimating the more and more fixed condition of the maturing sinner. First comes expostulation with each class, based upon the increasing brevity of time and difficulty of changing the course of life. When life is so short and uncertain, and the work of return is daily more difficult, how long will ye delay decisive action? Turn you now, and heed my reproof! The meaning is, Repent ye and become wise, docile, trustful. And, as everywhere in the Old Testament, so here we have mercy coupling promise with entreaty. The promise, too, is the same which we find alike in Old Testament and New—the promise of the Spirit and the Word of God. This Divine agent and instrument, by which the simple, the scorner, and the defiantly impious alike are enabled to turn again unto God, is here pledged to “whomsoever will.” B.—The words are specially pertinent considered as coming from the lips of our Divine Lord, “Behold, I will pour out My Spirit unto [upon] you; I will make known My words unto you.” In the fulness of His love He promises to give not only good counsel, but (what is far more) the good influence of His own Spirit to impress His truth on human hearts and so change them from sin to holiness. H. C.
24-31. Consequences of persistent refusal set forth with awful vividness. “I have called,” says Christ, “have stretched forth My hands,” as one earnestly entreating; but ye have refused, despised, rejected My counsels, entreaties, and promised mercies! There remains only warning, and this is uttered in terms that ought to stir thought in the most heedless, and awaken fear in the most hardened. “I, even I, who have dealt with you so forbearingly and kindly, who have besought you so tenderly, and warned you so pityingly and faithfully, even I shall deal with you as with enemies. As ye have laughed and mocked at truth and purity, at My character and commands, derided and despised My promises and warnings, so will I mock and have you in derision when your fear cometh as a destructive tempest and your calamity advances as a sweeping whirlwind, when distress and anguish cometh upon you.” And, to intensify this fearful declaration, He foretells them of the change which shall then be wrought in their convictions and actions. They shall believe in Me then, and call earnestly upon Me. But I will not answer, and they shall not find Me, however intense their desire and seeking. A pause seems to follow these vivid words of prophetic warning. But those that are warned pass on unheeding out of reach of the kindly voice. Then speaks again the pitying Divine messenger of their hopeless estate (vs. 29-31). Because of this persistence in their own evil way in despite of such plain warning, they shall reap as they have sown; misery for sin, remorse and despair for impenitence and hardness of heart. This is the terrible significance of eating and being surfeited with the fruit of their own devices and doings. And this passage, like its New Testament parallel (Gal. 6:7, 8), clearly shows that punishment is directly the result of man’s own consciously responsible acting, a fact which gives it the sharpest sting. B.
Here, in words of terrible truthfulness and figures of appalling force, we have the idea of retribution. The repetition and the accumulation of strong figures heightens the force of the passage. The words before us seem to exhaust their meaning in the awfully solemn assurance that God will never swerve from His course of righteous retribution, but will make the reckless sinner’s doom inexorable and eternal. H. C.—The person represented as speaking these very solemn and terrible words is that same Wisdom which is represented in the verses before the text as making most gracious offers to all who will hear her voice. The love of Christ only measures the wrath of God against those who neglect it. As the blood of Christ saves, so the blood of Christ condemns. Bishop H. Goodwin.
God is long-suffering and of great pity. He gives a thousand chances. He calls and calls again. He reproves gently. He rebukes sternly. He chastens tenderly. He smites severely. Every sinful career is marked by such gradations of discipline. At last the cup is full. Long trifled with, “God is not mocked;” and he who would not have Him for his Father must at last know Him as his Judge. C. J. V.—Mercy, with her weeping eyes (for she hath wept for sinners), when she finds they will not repent, looks more terribly stern in her loveliness than Justice in all his majesty; she drops the white flag from her hand, and saith, “No; I called, and they refused; I stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; let them die, let them die;” and that terrible word from the lip of Mercy’s self is harsher thunder than the very damnation of Justice. Oh, yes, the goodness of God demands that men should perish if they will sin. Spurgeon.
26. Even I is emphatic—I, who have warned you so often, so tenderly, and so earnestly—even I shall henceforth treat you as enemies, who deserve contempt. Laughing at and mocking are expressions of the highest and most contemptuous indignation. Compare Psalms 2:5, where, as applicable to God, this same bold language is employed. M. S.—If God is infinitely good and holy, and if He knows the full misery that sin has brought into His creation, with what other sentiment can He regard sin but with that of hatred and indignation? God must look upon sin with displeasure, and He must act upon that displeasure. Evil must excite displeasure in one that is perfectly good; and in the moral Governor of the universe such displeasure cannot be quiescent and impotent, it must be active and effective. Reason teaches us so, and revelation sanctions, enlarges, and enforces the lesson. A. C. H.
Guilt is not misfortune; it is not imbecility; it is not disease; it is not want of moral balance; it is not inherited depravity—it is guilt, pure and simple. Any trial consistent with a man’s moral freedom, so far as we know, is a fair trial. If a man has more than that it is more than justice, it is grace. Up to the full extent of conscious wrong a man is damnable. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. This is justice. It is not justice with a reservation; it is justice full and absolute. Being just, it is Divine and glorious. Yet this is the retributive idea in God’s government. If it is not right, nothing is right. If it is not a fit theme of exulting song, the universe does not contain such in all its history. Under a moral government if guilt cannot be quelled by means of moral suasion and its equivalents nothing can reach it but retribution. Man’s own will has the decision in itself. If he will not be saved, he cannot be. Nothing is left but retributive devices. And of these the chief and most appalling is to leave guilt to itself. Give it a place where it may be let alone, to act out its own wretched nature, and leave it there. But guilt left to itself is hell. Milton’s Satan felt the ghastly reality—“Myself am hell!” This is the second death. A. P.
27. When fear cometh, . . . when distress and anguish come. No man knows how soon God may let loose the tormenting power of sin upon his conscience; how soon He may set fire to all that fuel that lies dormant and treasured up in his sinful breast. Upon which account the present quiet of his condition is so far from ministering any just cause of satisfaction to him, that he has reason to beg upon his knees that God would alter the method of His proceeding, and rather compound and strike him with some present horror for sin than sink him under the unsupportable weight of an eternal damnation. South.
30. Despised my reproof. Men do not in terms deny God’s existence, but make light of Him; never read His Word with any seriousness; never pray unless they are ill or afraid; count church service and instruction a weariness. Allah has far more reverence from the Moslem than the great God of heaven and earth obtains from multitudes who pass as Christians. They live as if He had no right to command them, and no power to judge them. They lift their own will and pleasure to the throne, and despise the Lord of hosts. D. F.—Back of this rejection lies an intense devotion to present indulgences; a latent and incorrect conviction that the love and service of Christ bereave the present of much that is of solid worth; the determined suppression of serious thought; a haughtiness of intellectual conceit that is ever the patron of error; the studied cultivation of stoicism and insensibility to the Gospel, and soul restiveness under moral restraints. Leech.
31. The fruit of their own way. The Bible meaning of a curse is simply the natural consequence of men’s own ill actions. For even in this life the door of mercy may be shut, and we may cry in vain for mercy when it is the time for justice. This is not merely a doctrine; it is a common, patent fact. Men do wrong and escape again and again the just punishment of their deeds; but how often there are cases in which a man does not escape, when he is filled with the fruit of his own devices, and left to the misery which he has earned. Terrible and heart-searching for the wrong-doer is the message, God does not curse thee; thou hast cursed thyself. God will not go out of His way to punish thee; thou hast gone out of His way, and thereby thou art punishing thyself. God does not break His laws to punish sins. The laws themselves punish; every fresh wrong deed, and wrong thought, and wrong desire of thine sets thee more and more out of tune with those immutable and eternal laws of the moral universe which have their root in the absolute and necessary character of God Himself. The wheels move on, but the workman who should have worked with them is entangled among them. He is out of his place, and slowly, but irresistibly, they are grinding him to powder. Kingsley.
Filled with their own devices. Suppose a man with his memory of all his past life perfect, and his conscience stimulated to greater sensitiveness and clearer judgment, and all opportunities ended of gratifying tastes and appetites whose food is in this world, while yet the soul has become dependent on them for ease and comfort. What more is needed to make a hell? And the supposition is but the statement of a fact. We seem to forget much, but when the waters are drained off all the lost things will be found at the bottom. Conscience dulled and sophisticated here. But the icy cold of death will wake it up, and the new position will give new insight into the true character of our actions. There is nothing improbable in supposing that inclinations and tastes which have been nourished for a lifetime may survive the possibility of indulging them in another life, as they often do in this; and what can be worse than such a thirst for one drop of water, which never can be tasted more. These things are certain, and no more is needed to make sin produce, by necessary consequences, misery and ruin; while similarly, goodness brings joy, peace, and blessing. A. M.
Is it not an ever-terrible truth that men are building up their destiny by the actions and habits of their lives? “Sow an act, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.” The righteous become righteous, the godly become godly; so slowly but surely may the power of being masters of our fate pass out of our hands. B. Carpenter.—By many a small sin, by innumerable minute tamperings with conscience, by a thousand insignificant sacrifices of principle to passion, of duty to inclination, by multiplicity of little fits of anger and unnoted acts of sensual indulgence—it has been by a long series and succession of such experiences as these that many a man’s moral being has been fashioned into the shape it wears. To the call of duty, the voice of religion, the first announcement of the solemn truths of death and judgment and retribution, the mind even in its natural and unrenewed state can never be altogether insensible; but, if unregarded, the impression soon fades, and the solemn sounds grow fainter and fainter to the ear. By every act of disobedience to its dictates we sin away something of the sensitiveness of conscience; and it is quite possible for the process of disobedience to go on until even from the grossest sins all the first recoil of dislike is gone, and to the voice of warning and instruction there rises not the faintest echo of compunction in the soul. No matter how rapid its fatal descent, no warning voice can retard it now; no matter how terrible the ruin before it, no danger can startle it now. “The light that was in it” has become “darkness, and how great is that darkness!” Caird.
32. In this profoundly instructive and warning passage it is the backsliding, the mere turning away of the soul from invitations, admonitions, opportunities of salvation that shall accomplish the destruction otherwise not accomplished, and shall be the very heart and seal of desolation to the lost soul, otherwise saved. Every gracious opportunity is God’s merciful call, every day of time, and of light from the cross, is a new emphatic gesture of God’s outstretched hand; and when all these oft-repeated and compassionate efforts of Divine love disregarded come up for review, with the cost at which every one of them was exercised, and the manner in which they were all treated, then will the sight and sense of these things alone, were there nothing else of judgment, be a calamity like a whirlwind (v. 27), taking away the soul. G. B. C.
Men tell us that if future punishment be provided it will be disciplinary, corrective, and refining, and hence limited in its continuance. But the Scriptures map no such path from perdition to the skies. No inspired ray falls along any such conjectural route from hell to heaven. Apostate angels have been in exile from God for ages, and to them the bottomless pit has not proven a school of virtue or a place to acquire holy habits. Meetness for heaven is secured by the “renewing of the Holy Ghost,” and not by personal expiation for sin. The redeemed in heaven ascribe their redemption to the blood of Jesus, and not to the efficacy of limited penal misery. Inspiration never suggests that the means of salvation, rejected in probation, are afforded to the tenants of the world of woe. The Scriptures portray future punishment as destructive and perpetual, but never hint that it is corrective and limited. Leech
33. Lastly comes, to crown all, the promises of reward to the obedient. The second clause explains the first. Dwelling in confidence means that he will have no reason to apprehend evil, and therefore will not anticipate it. M. S.—He shall not only be safe from evil, but quiet from the fear of it. Though the earth be removed, yet shall not they fear. Would we be safe from evil and quiet from the fear of it? Let religion always rule us and the Word of God be our counsellor. That is the way to dwell safely in this world, and to be quiet from the fear of evil in the other world. H.
32,33. The effects of simple unheeding and heeding the voice of wisdom. The mere silent, even respectful turning away from the proffered counsel and call of God shall ultimately lead to the ruin of the as yet unhardened soul; while the slothful quietude (of “prosperity”), the mere inaction of those advanced in sin, shall insure their destruction. But, on the other hand, we read a crowning promise to every one that simply, frankly, and trustingly heedeth. Safely, confidently such an one shall dwell; tranquilly, without a fear of evil, he shall abide. What more can be asked in this world than to be safe from real evil, and quiet from fear of it? Yet this is the clear, sure, Divine assurance to every one that heeds Christ’s call, that accepts His promise and His rule! Only in fuller, richer, and more exquisitely tender form is this gladdening assurance repeated and confirmed by the incomparable utterance of Revelation: Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with Me!
Two suggested thoughts may be usefully added: 1. The same essential truths are found in every part of the Bible. Here, in the Proverbs, we have the New Testament Gospel; the same merciful invitation, promise, and warning; the same probation, closing with a final retributive award. A fitting parallel we find in 2 Cor. 6:1, 2. 2. So also we read, in the characters and courses of action delineated in the far time of Solomon, an identical picture of worldly life to day. And although the hundred generations since have each passed through a like experience, the strange fact is still to be noted that inexperienced youth will still credit every tempter’s voice rather than believe and act wisely upon the counsel of those who have had experience of temptation and a gracious Divine deliverance. B