Proverbs 14
Butler1. EVERY wise woman buildeth her house: But the foolish plucketh it down with her own hands.
2. He that walketh in his uprightness feareth the LORD: But he that is perverse in his ways despiseth him.
3. In the mouth of the foolish is a rod of pride: But the lips of the wise shall preserve them.
4. Where no oxen are, the crib is clean: But much increase is by the strength of the ox.
5. A faithful witness will not lie: But a false witness uttereth lies.
6. A scorner seeketh wisdom, and findeth it not: But knowledge is easy unto him that hath understanding.
7. Go into the presence of a foolish man, And thou shalt not perceive in him the lips of knowledge.
8. The wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way: But the folly of fools is deceit.
9. The foolish make a mock at guilt: But among the upright there is good will.
10. The heart knoweth its own bitterness; And a stranger doth not intermeddle with its joy.
11. The house of the wicked shall be overthrown: But the tent of the upright shall flourish.
12. There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, But the end thereof are the ways of death.
13. Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; And the end of mirth is heaviness.
14. The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways: And a good man shall be satisfied from himself.
15. The simple believeth every word: But the prudent man looketh well to his going.
16. A wise man feareth, and departeth from evil: But the fool beareth himself insolently, and is confident.
17. He that is soon angry will deal foolishly: And a man of wicked devices is hated.
18. The simple inherit folly: But the prudent are crowned with knowledge.
19. The evil bow before the good; And the wicked at the gates of the righteous.
20. The poor is hated even of his own neighbour: But the rich hath many friends.
21. He that despiseth his neighbour sinneth: But he that hath pity on the poor, happy is he.
22. Do they not err that devise evil? But mercy and truth shall be to them that devise good.
23. In all labour there is profit: But the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury.
24. The crown of the wise is their riches: But the folly of fools is only folly.
25. A true witness delivereth souls: But he that uttereth lies causeth deceit.
26. In the fear of the LORD is strong confidence: And his children shall have a place of refuge.
27. The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, To depart from the snares of death.
28. In the multitude of people is the king’s glory: But in the want of people is the destruction of the prince.
29. He that is slow to anger is of great understanding:
But he that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly.
30. A sound heart is the life of the flesh :
But envy is the rottenness of the bones.
31. He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker :
But he that hath mercy on the needy honoureth him.
32. The wicked is thrust down in his evildoing :
But the righteous hath hope in his death.
1. THE “woman” (wife) is thought of as a manager of her domestic concerns. Managing them prudently, she increases the comforts of the household, lessens the outgoes, builds up the estate. The foolish woman, managing badly, reverses this process, and tears down her house. H. C.—Many a family is brought, to ruin by ill housewifery, as well as by ill husbandry. A foolish woman, that has no fear of God nor regard to her business, that is wilful and wasteful and humorsome, will as certainly be the ruin of her house as if she plucked it down with her hands; and the husband himself, with all his care, can scarcely prevent it. H.
4. In its literal meaning a household proverb, “Labor has its rough, unpleasant side, yet it ends in profit.” But here, as elsewhere, there may be a meaning below the surface. The life of contemplation may seem purer, “cleaner” than that of action. The outer business of the world brings its cares and disturbances, but also “much increase.” There will be a sure reward of that activity in good works for him who goes, as with “the strength of the ox,” to the task to which God calls him. E. H. P.
5. The allegiance of the soul to truth is tested by small things rather than by those which are more important. There is many a man who would lose his life rather than perjure himself in a court of justice, whose life is yet a tissue of small insincerities. We think that we hate falsehood when we are only hating the consequences of falsehood. We resent hypocrisy and treachery and calumny, not because they are untrue, but because they harm us. We hate the false calumny, but we are half pleased with the false praise. It is evidently not the element of untruth here that is displeasing, but the element of harmfulness. Now, he is a man of integrity who hates untruth as untruth; who resents the smooth and polished falsehood of society, which does no harm; who turns in indignation from the glittering, whitened lie of sepulchral Pharisaism, which injures no one. F. W. R.
33. Wisdom resteth in the heart of him that hath understanding :
But that which is in the inward part of fools is made known.
34. Righteousness exalteth a nation :
But sin is a reproach to any people.
35. The king’s favour is toward a servant that dealeth wisely :
But his wrath shall be against him that causeth shame.
6. The successful pursuit of wisdom presupposes at least earnestness and reverence. The scoffer shuts himself out from the capacity of recognizing truth. E. H. P.—Bacon says: “He that comes to seek after knowledge with a mind disposed to scorn and censure will be sure to find matter enough for his humor, but none for his instruction.” Remarkably the scorner is here put over against the man of understanding, as if to imply that the former naturally lacks that love of truth and that sympathetic attraction toward it which intuitively sees and then seizes upon it. To a man who has these last-named qualities knowledge comes naturally and easily. This doctrine assumes that good moral qualities are vital to the acquisition of truly valuable knowledge. H. C.
Having sneered at all that is pure, august and heavenly, men may, amid the ruins of their faith, be haunted by spectres of multiform doubt; having challenged God to forsake them, they may spend their decline in ever learning, yet never coming to the knowledge of the truth; for “a scorner seeketh wisdom and findeth it not.” J. W. A.—Have it as a fixed principle, that getting into any scornful way is fatal. Scorn is dark, and has no eyes; for the eyes it thinks it has are only sockets in the place of eyes. Doubt is reason, scorn is disease. One simply questions, searching after evidence; the other has got above evidence, and turns to mockery the modest way that seeks it. Even if truth were found, it could not stay in any scorning man’s bosom. The tearing voice, the scowling brow, the leer, the sneer, the jeer, would make the place a robber’s cave to it, and drive the delicate and tender guest to make his escape at the first opportunity. There was never a scorner that gave good welcome to truth. No man can fitly seek after truth who does not hold truth in the deepest reverence. Truth must be sacred even as God, else it is nothing. Bushnell.
8. Christian prudence consists in a right understanding of our way; for we are travellers, whose concern it is not to spy wonders but to get forward toward their journey’s end. It is to understand our own way, not to be critics and busybodies in other men’s matters, but to look well to ourselves and ponder the path of our feet; to understand the directions of our way, that we may observe them; the dangers of our way, that we may avoid them; the difficulties of our way, that we may break through them; and the advantages of our way, that we may improve them; to understand the rules we are to walk by and the ends we are to walk toward, and walk accordingly. H.
9. Fools scoff at and scornfully repel the idea of personal guilt; nor do they care much if the fact of wrong-doing is fastened upon them. The antithesis lies (as often) between what is assumed in the first clause and asserted in the second, thus: Fools mock at sin and therefore incur God’s wrath [not His favor]; but the righteous have His favor, and what is thus true of God’s favor is true also of the esteem of all right-thinking moral agents in the universe. H. C.
Society is always suffering from perverse banter and coarse humor directed against rigid morals. The thefts, defalcations, peculations, forgeries, fraudulent escapes from obligation, full living on other men’s money, and filthy purchase of votes and verdicts, which are at once the opprobrium and the rottenness of certain classes in modern society, are fostered and brought into development by what young men hear in the houses where their business lies; by jokes which imply that a clever operation is worth some moral risk; by pleasantries about lying and stealing, under decent names; and by contemptuous pity of the tortoise-like habits of a former age. J. W. A.—Religion and virtue, in all their forms, either of doctrine or of precept—of piety toward God, integrity toward men, or regularity in private life—are so far from affording any ground of ridicule that they are entitled to our highest veneration. It is said in Scripture, “fools make a mock at sin.” They had better make a mock at pestilence, at war, or famine. With one who would choose these public calamities for the subject of his sport you would not be inclined to associate; you would fly from him as worse than a fool, as a man of distempered mind. Yet certain it is that, to the great society of mankind, sin is a greater calamity than pestilence, or famine, or war. Blair.
If the law could suddenly lighten on the minds of the “fools” that are making “a mock at sin”—what fearful amazement! The object of their gaiety would instantly assume a terrifying aspect. The loose, vague, indulgent notions of the evil of sin, which men thoughtlessly entertain in their own favor—the slight estimates, the easy palliations—how would these be exploded and annihilated by a luminous manifestation of that law! Conscience would rise up, incensed to have been so trifled with and beguiled. J. F.—What is the reason that so many make a mock of sin and play with the unquenchable fire, but ignorance? Did they know what they do when they wilfully break God’s law, they would sooner leap into a furnace of scalding lead than provoke so jealous a God. But sin goeth in a disguise, and thence is welcome; like Judas, it kisseth and kills; like Joab, it salutes and slays. The foolish sinner seeth the pleasant streams of Jordan, but not the Dead Sea into which they will certainly empty themselves to his ruin. Swinnock.
—The wages that sin bargains with the sinner are life, pleasure, and profit; but the wages it pays him with are death, torment, and destruction; he that would understand the falsehood and deceit of sin thoroughly must compare its promises and its payments together. South.
Men make a mock at sin by their words and by their actions. We show our scorn of a thing in our words when we speak carelessly of it or turn it into ridicule. We show it in our actions when we live in such a manner as proves that we have no value or regard for it. Even of the mockery of words, few are wholly innocent; of the mockery of deeds, all have been more or less guilty. The guilt of such mockery is too plain; the folly is the folly of playing with death. It is the folly of provoking God to cut us off in the midst of our calculating wickedness. Above all is such conduct folly, because we are disabling our hearts and souls more and more for the work of repentance, without which we know we can have no part in the promises of the Gospel. For nothing is more certain than that the longer a man persists in sin the harder it is to leave it off. His heart is deadened; his conscience is blunted; his soul closes itself by little and little against the impulses of the Holy Spirit. A. W. Hare.
Fools make a mock at sin—more cruel fools make a mock at holiness! A little laughter, a passing jest, an idle nickname, or sometimes, it may be, an unkinder word, these are strong enough to shake many purposes which seemed to be firm, and to overthrow resolutions which, but for such assaults, would probably have stood fast. In such ways does thoughtlessness every day and hour deny Christ; denies Him itself, and makes others deny Him. G. M.—If we would truly see what sin is, we must see it in the light of redemption. Who can measure the guilt and the power of that sin from which we could only be redeemed by the sacrifice of the Son of God? See your folly in the light of your Redeemer’s tears, your Redeemer’s anguish, your Redeemer’s cross; and confess as you look on His marvellous sacrifice that “fools” only can “make a mock at sin.” Bishop Perovene.
10. Within the range of human experience there is perhaps no expression of the ultimate solitude of each man’s soul at all times so striking in its truth and depth as this. Something there is in every sorrow, and in every joy, which no one else can share. E. H. P.—Every man we meet carries in the unperceived solitude of his bosom a little world of his own; and we are just as blind and as insensible, both of perception and of sympathy, about his engrossing objects as he is about ours. Did we suffer this thought to have all its weight upon us, it might serve to make us more candid and more considerate of others; to abate the monopolizing selfishness of our nature; to soften the malignity which comes out of those envious contemplations that we are so apt to cast on the fancied ease and prosperity which are around us. It might serve to reconcile every man to his own lot, and dispose him to bear with thankfulness his own burden. And we should surely conclude that throughout all conceivable varieties of human condition there are trials which can neither be adequately told, on the one side, nor fully understood on the other; that the ways of God to man are as equal in this as in every department of His administration; and that, go to whatever quarter of human experience we may, we shall find how He has provided enough to exercise the patience and to accomplish the purposes of a wise and a salutary discipline upon all His children. T. C.
For the most part we are strangers to the inner life of others, to their thoughts and feelings, their joys and sorrows, and they are alike strangers to ours. “Every heart knoweth its own bitterness.” The world within ourselves is for the most part known only to God and to our own hearts. It is but little comparatively that others know of our inner lives, our trials, our secret sins; and our efforts to overcome them are known only to the all-searching eye. Hallock.—Human suffering, in all its forms, is solitary. Tenderest sympathies may flock abundantly and graciously to visit it and minister to it. But there is something in it that their kindest offices cannot reach; something appointed by Providence to be left alone; and it is well. Grief is of many kinds, but all grief that is really terrible sends the soul into speechless, secret solitude. Human love may reach out ready hands, eager to help and to soothe; but it cannot reach down to that lowest centre of anguish where the pang throbs in intensest pain. So true is it that the heart knoweth its own bitterness, that not only the stranger, but the friend, cannot intermeddle with its distress. F. D. H.
You by whom silent suffering, secret grief, and hidden joy are understood; by the knowledge of your own unspoken sorrow, unexpressed because inexpressible feelings; by the consciousness of the unrevealed depths of your own nature, the earnest but ever unsatisfied yearnings of your spirit, learn to reverence and love those by whom you are surrounded, whose inner life can never be completely read, but whom you are sure must need sacred sympathy and tender consideration. The silent breathings of the spirit are not for our ears; the hot tears which in secret fall are not for our eyes; in mercy has the veil been drawn round each heart; but by the sacred memory of our own sadness, let our voice be gentle, our look tender, our tread quiet, as we pass among the mourners. Jessie Coombs.
These words mean that the inner life of man—his truest and highest life—is a solitary and secret thing. It may be said of every human soul that “clouds and darkness are round about it,” and that it dwells in light or in gloom that no man can approach unto. This loneliness is not our own choice; it is imposed upon us by a law of our nature that we cannot violate or reverse. When we try to reveal our innermost soul we fail; after we have said everything, much remains unsaid. When our sympathy for the sufferings of our friends is deepest, we sit with them and are dumb; we cannot say what we feel; our tears and our silence seem to tell them more than our speech. And as we are unable to utter all that is in us when we try to utter it, so we are unwilling, for the most part, that any but God should search us and try us, should know either all the good or all the evil that is in us. Every man bears his own burden, fights his own battle, walks in the path which no other feet have trodden. God alone knows us through and through. And He loves us, as Keble says, better than He knows. He has isolated us from all besides, that He alone may have our perfect confidence, and that we may acquire the habit of looking to Him alone for perfect sympathy. He will come into the stillness and solitude in which the soul dwells, and make the darkness bright with His presence, and break the monotonous silence with words of love. We have Him only to speak to; He alone can understand us. He will rejoice with us when we rejoice, and weep with us when we weep. The heart knoweth its own bitterness; God knows it, too; and though a stranger cannot intermeddle with its joy, He whose temple and dwelling-place is the soul that loves Him is no stranger, but the soul’s most intimate and only friend. R. W. Dale.
11. Two beautiful points are prominent in this proverb. There is an antithesis between “house” and “tent;” the house of the wicked, built as he supposes of most substantial material, wood, brick, or stone, shall yet be razed to the ground; while the tent of the upright, fragile in itself, put up so as to be easily taken down, shall yet stand, and long outlast the house of the wicked. This tent is said to “flourish,” like a plant, shrub, or tree, well rooted, having a life-power of its own, and therefore blooming in beauty as well as living with its own life and only waxing the stronger for the coming and going of the seasons and for all the storms that beat upon it. All this is involved in the Hebrew verb here rendered “flourish.”
12. The obvious sense of this proverb is no doubt the true one—viz., that a way of living (in the moral sense of life) may seem right to a man, and yet be wrong and end in death. Men may be deceived by their associates, or they may deceive themselves, and so may assume what is utterly wrong to be, at least in their case, right. Hence the somewhat popular doctrine that it matters not what a man believes provided he be sincere, is a fatal mistake, for a man may think himself very sincere in accepting and holding pernicious error and in pursuing a fatally wrong course of life. This proverb, affirming a most momentous truth, appears again (16:25), also one part of it (12:15). H. C.
Their way is seemingly fair; it seems right to themselves; they please themselves with a fancy that they are as they should be, that their opinions and practices are good, such as will bear them out. The way of ignorance and carelessness, the way of worldliness and earthly-mindedness, the way of sensuality and flesh-pleasing, seem right to those that walk in them; much more, in religion external performances, partial reformations, and blind zeal will bring them to heaven; they flatter themselves in their own eyes, that all will be well at last. Their end is really fearful, and the more so for their mistake; it is the ways of death, eternal death; their iniquity will certainly be their ruin. Self-deceivers will prove, in the end, self-destroyers. H.—The great truth is that no one, old or young, can save his soul by following the course of life quietly and letting it drift him whither it will. It is not in our life here as we now live, with all its wisdom and all its labor and all its pleasures, to attain to life eternal. Round the tree of life there is a fiery guard, which allows not fallen man in his own natural course to reach unto it. It is not like a tree standing by the wayside, so that we have only to put forth our hand as we go by and eat and live forever. Christ came to take us out of our common nature, to tear us away from the path which we were naturally treading; to give us another nature not our own, to set us in a new way, of which the end is not death but life. T. A.
There is a theory very much in fashion, that if a man acts according to his convictions he cannot be brought into condemnation. The principle here involved is simply this, that a man’s own ideas are his own standard, that he is a law unto himself, that if he does violence to his own views of truth and error, good and evil, he is reprehensible, but that if he be fully convinced in his own mind that is at once a bar to his condemnation. The text offers a strong protest against this theory, “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man;” but, notwithstanding his sincerity, notwithstanding his convictions, the end thereof are the ways of death. Bishop Woodford.—Many a way that leads to perdition may seem to us to be right. Nothing is better calculated to disturb the superficial optimism in which so many of our fellow-men find a delusive security than the firm conviction of this fact. In their opinion, that a man may be saved he must be sincere; in other words, the way he follows must seem to him to be right. In the order of things temporal it is evident that sincerity in ignorance or error has never saved any one from the often terrible consequences which such ignorance or error may entail. Societies are based upon this maxim: “No one is supposed to be ignorant of the law.” Moreover, this axiom is graven in nature itself. Nature strikes those who violate its laws, and never takes into consideration their state of ignorance or good faith. Bersier.
There is nothing in life for which we are so deeply and solemnly accountable as the formation of our belief. It is the compass which guides our way, which if it vary ever so little from truth is sure to cause a fatal divergence in the end. Whether we consider practice or belief, each man’s deeming is not each man’s law; every man’s deeming may be wrong, and we can only find that which is right by each one of us believing and serving God as He has revealed Himself to us in Christ. Alford.—God does not permit us to content ourselves in anything short of the truth. He marks out a plain path for us to follow; and gives us no reason to conclude that anything but truth will save us. The sentiment of its being a matter of indifference what we believe or practise, if we are only sincere in it, is a maxim of the world, not of God. Sincerity does not alter the truth. If God has given a revelation of His will to man which contains a definite meaning, that meaning is unalterable. No belief of any man to the contrary can in the least affect it. If God has said, for instance, that no man shall be saved except he repent, if any man think otherwise, be he ever so sincere in his opinion, the truth remains, and the consequences must take place. Sincerity in error often arises from wilful blindness, and therefore is guilty and must be punished. How often does it happen that a man will refuse to look, determined to believe what he wishes to believe, be it right or wrong. Our Lord Jesus Christ long ago declared that there are some who “hate the light, and will not come to the light lest their deeds should be reproved.” Sincerity in error often arises from indifference to the will of God; and therefore is guilty and must be punished. God has given us a revelation of His will, and surrounded it with such unequivocal evidences that no honest man who will examine can mistake them. Yet many are so indifferent about this revelation that they will not even give themselves the trouble to inquire what it contains. God has declared that you must seek the truth and embrace it, and you are sincere in being indifferent to it! Your sincerity, then, amounts to this, you are sincere in acting contrary to the command of God. Such sincerity is the very aggravation of your sin. What idea can a man have of God who can suppose that He will regard with complacency the sincerity which proceeds from mere indifference to what He has said? Can you suppose that God has given us a revelation of His will, and yet cares nothing at all about it? No, God is not sporting with His creatures. He has not given a law to be trifled with. He has surrounded it by the most solemn and awful sanctions, and He expects, being a God of truth, that men will place confidence in what
He says, or else take the reward of their perverse-ness in destruction. Old Review.
13. The reaction which follows vain mirth is often the most painful heaviness. The passion for laughter, which assumes it to be very much the chief good of life, is a miserable folly.
14. The apostate from God shall be sated with his own ways, shall have enough and more than enough of the bitter fruits of his apostasy. On the contrary, the good man will find ample sources of joy in himself. The turn of the thought which is the gist of the proverb lies in the play upon the sense of the word rendered “filled,” which is obviously to be supplied in the last clause. The backslider shall be filled with the sorrow that comes from his backsliding; the good man shall be filled with the joy of his steadfast goodness. H. C.
In the heart, unseen, there has been a long preparation of backsliding. Vain thoughts have lodged within and vile thoughts have been welcome visitors. By such a process his heart has been hollowed out, and inhabited by creatures more loathsome than crawling vermin, while the skin of profession was kept whole, and its fairest side turned to public view. Beware of backsliding in heart; small beginnings may issue in a fearful end. Arnot.
The Christian has a fons perennis within him. He is satisfied from himself. The men of the world borrow all their joy from without. Joy wholly from without is precarious and short. From without it may be gathered, but like gathered flowers, though fair and sweet for a season, it must soon wither and become offensive. Joy from within is like smelling the rose on the tree, it is more sweet and fair, and it is immortal. Salter.—The good man acts from principle and in the sight of God. He is not only preserved from the sting and reproach of an evil conscience, but he possesses that joyous healthiness of soul which arises from a life of purity, devotion, and goodness; that calm yet irrepressible feeling of delight, which daily and hourly, continually and always, fills the heart. It is not positive reflection upon doing, it is not thinking about character or actions, but the perpetual rising up in the soul of an inexpressible satisfaction. This is the way in which a good man is “satisfied from himself.” Binney.
The essence of happiness and misery is in character; a man sinful in heart shall be filled with his own ways, and the good man also shall be satisfied from himself. G. B. C.—We all have our creeds, and, in spite of ourselves, we profess them—the creed of fashion; the creed of appetite; the creed of a selfish expediency; the creed of a sect; the creed of indifference, which is as irreligious and as bigoted in its way as any other; or the creed of eternal right and Gospel faith. Conduct is the great profession. Behavior is the perpetual revealing of us. A man’s doctrines flow from his fingers’ ends, and stand out in his doings. What he may say is not his chief profession, but how he acts. Character lets out the secret of his belief; what he does tells what he is. He has “put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” when he has “Christ formed within him.” His profession is as natural as the pulse in his veins. The good man makes profession of his goodness by simply being good. F. D. H.
15. The “simple” in the sense of Solomon are the credulous and susceptible who are open to every impression, especially if evil, and who have no forethoughtful wariness in choosing their path of life. The point of the proverb is that while the prudent man thinks before he acts, the simple believes whatever is said to him and thinks not. H. C.
16. A wise man fears sin and distrusts himself. He knows that the enemy is strong, and that his own defences are feeble. His policy, therefore, is not to brave danger, but to keep out of harm’s way. Arnot.—The wise man fears to sin; has a reverential fear of God, and hence departs from evil. The fool is self-confident, reckless, breaking over all restraint. H. C.—None so bold as the blind. “The fool is confident.” If he be in an error or entangled in any evil cause or way, you know not what to say to him for his recovery. The less he knows the more he despiseth knowledge and sets his face against his teachers. Will you go to dispute or debate the case with one of these? Be sure of it they will put you down and have the day. He will go away and boast that you could not convince him; as if a madman should boast that the physicians could not all of them cure him. He that speaks nonsense saith nothing while he seems to speak. And there is no refuting a man that saith nothing. Nonsense is unanswerable, if there be but enough of it. Baxter.—Presumption is folly. He who when he is warned of his danger cannot bear to be checked, bids defiance to the wrath and curse of God, and fearless of danger persists in his rebellion, makes bold with the occasions of sin and plays upon the precipice, he is a fool, for he acts against his reason and his interest, and his ruin will quickly be the proof of his folly.
20. The rich have many friends, friends to their riches, in hope to get something out of them. There is little friendship in the world but what is governed by self-interest, which is no true friendship at all, nor what a wise man will either value himself on or put any confidence in. H.
21. This “pity” of the text is a very wide word. It covers both the kindly feeling and the kindly act; and it stretches itself over both the great departments of human necessity—men’s sufferings and men’s sins. The same attitude of mind which makes one relenting or forgiving to the penitent offender makes one also pity and relieve the supplicant sufferer. He who sins becomes a candidate for mercy so soon as he acknowledges his sin. Dykes.
22. The original word for “devised” includes both plotting and laboring for an end. He who in this sense deviseth mischief will “err,” or miss his end, to his ruin; while mercy and truth will be the reward of those who devise good. The intent of the heart determines the moral character of the act, and therefore the sort of retribution that righteously follows.
23. All well-directed labor naturally brings some useful returns, but lip-words are only toward want. Mere talk, words having no worthy aim, work out only poverty. H. C.—
In all labor there is profit. If you want knowledge you must toil for it; if food, you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it. Toil is the law. Pleasure comes through toil, and not by self-indulgence and indolence. When one gets to love his work, his life is a happy one. Ruskin.
The lesson holds good through all matters of life. It is a short-sighted mistake to avoid taking trouble; for God has so ordered the world that industry will always repay itself. God has set thee thy work, then fulfil it. Fill it full. Throw thy whole heart and soul into it. Do it carefully, accurately, completely. It will be better for thee and for thy children after thee. All neglect, carelessness, slurring over work, is a sin—a sin against God, who has called us to our work; a sin against our country and our neighbors, who ought to profit by our work; and a sin against ourselves also, for we ought to be made wiser and better men by our work. C. Kingsley.—It is only by labor that thoughts can be made healthy, and only by thoughts that labor can be made happy; and the two cannot be separated with impunity. It is no man’s business whether he has genius or not; work he must, whatever he is, but quietly and steadily; and the natural and unforced results of such work will be always the thing
God meant him to do, and will be his best. No agonies nor heartrendings will enable him to do any better. If he is a great man, they will be great things; but always, if peacefully done, good and right; always, if restlessly and ambitiously done, false, hollow, and despicable. Ruskin.
Toil is every man’s Divine vocation. All of us, unless we have fallen from grace, belong to the laboring classes, however differing our occupations may be. It is not a question whether a man labors with the hand or the head, whether he drives a plough or handles a pen; but whether what he does supplies a real demand, whether his labor is helpful and enriching to his generation. Every such man is worthy of honor, and only such men are. Behrends. —Luxury and leisure are more fatal to human life than downright hard work, whether of muscle or of brain. Steady labor of the body hardens the muscles, invigorates the nerves, and gives the deep rhythmic movement of health to the breathing. Steady labor of the mind purifies, invigorates, and feeds both mind and brain. Lack of bodily labor results in bodily atrophy and wasting; lack of toil of the brain means the gradual death of the mind. Overwork sometimes kills; complete cessation of activity always kills. See to it that it is not inactivity that is weakening you, rather than overwork; see to it that your faculties are not dying because they have too little, rather than too much, to do. H. C. T.
There is nothing like life’s drudgery to make men and women of us. You chafe under it. You sigh for leisure, to be freed from bondage to hours, to duties, to tasks, to appointments, to rules, to the treadmill round. Yet this is God’s school for you. Accept your treadmill round, your plodding, your dull task-work, and do always your best—and you will grow into strong, noble character. J. R. M.—Character comes out of work. It is what we do that educates us, rather than what we read or speculate about. The work of life, with the temper and spirit we put into it, trains and moulds. It not only illustrates but cultivates virtue. High, honorable integrity of act cultivates integrity of heart; enthusiasm in effort resupplies the founts of enthusiasm in the will, and sympathetic activities nourish the emotion itself out of which they flow. Daily work assists us to larger and clearer views of Divine truth. We may not see how the minor and distracting duties of daily life—those of the home, the school, the shop—can be made tributary to advancement in piety. There is, however, a proverb older than Christ, that says, “In all labor there is profit.” While the Word of God puts discredit on labor that is dishonorable or useless, it extols the labor of the wise. Fidelity in work and a fervent, enthusiastic temper will assuredly freshen our faculties and give tone and balance to the mind. R. S. S.
The true rest of the soul is that not of inactivity, but of congenial exertion. Labor is rest to the active and energetic spirit. The mind itself does not waste or grow weary; and but for the weight of the weapons wherewith it works, it might think, and imagine, and love on forever. The service of God, beyond all other kinds of labor, may become the most perfect rest to the soul. As love to Christ deepens in the soul that is truly given to Him, the work which it prompts us to do for Him loses the feeling of effort and passes into pleasure. This rest is not absolute, but relative. While it is a great thing to be an earnest worker in Christ’s service, yet the Christian life is not mainly a life of action, but of trust. Caird.
The talk of the lips tendeth only to penury. Here is noted that words and discourse abound most where there is idleness and want. Bacon —Talking without working will make men poor. Those that waste their time in tittle-tattle, in telling and hearing new things, and neglect the work of their place and day, waste what they have, and the course they take tends to penury, and will end in it. If men’s religion runs all out in talk and noise and their praying is only the labor of the lips, they will be spiritually poor and come to nothing. H.
24. The riches they acquire add new honors to the wise, inasmuch as they still deport themselves wisely and worthily; but the folly of fools will still be folly though they acquire never so much wealth. Wealth will make them no wiser, and hence will confer upon them no honor. They will only play the fool the more conspicuously. H. C.
26. Fear is confidence. The words sound strangely. They are like that blessed paradox of Paul, “When I am weak, then am I strong.” They are strange, indeed, but true. To fear God aright is to be delivered from all fear. “His salvation is nigh them that fear Him.” Arnot.
Love, which destroys fear, heightens reverence and deepens self-distrust. The Bible tells us both that “perfect love casteth out fear,” and that “in the fear of the Lord is strong confidence.” The fear which is cast out is in reality an altogether different thing from that which is enjoined as the foundation of all religion, and as being the abiding duty and joy of Christian men. The one is simply the dread of personal consequences falling upon me. The other is that reverential and awe stricken bowing down of myself before the face of the Infinite Majesty, which must ever be an element in the approach of created beings to Him. But it is worth noticing how love, which casts out dread and makes us cease to be afraid of God, perfects reverence and makes us venerate with holy awe far deeper than ever subsisted by the side of terror, and yet makes us stand much nearer to God than when we were slaves, and crouched before the image of Him which conscience set up. Love takes out of the heart all that bitter sense of possible evil coming on me and leaves me at liberty, with thankful, humble heart, and clear eye, to look into the centre of the brightness and see there the light of His infinite mercy. Love destroys fear, and perfects reverence and self-distrust. A. M.
26,27. The fear of the Lord is here put for all gracious principles, producing gracious practices. Where this reigns, it produces a holy security and serenity of mind; there is in it a strong confidence, it enables a man still to hold fast both his purity and his peace, whatever happens, and gives him boldness before God and the world. It entails a blessing upon posterity. The children of them that by faith make God their confidence shall be encouraged by the promise that God will be a God to believers and to their seed, to fly to Him as their refuge, and they shall find shelter in Him. It is an overflowing, overflowing spring of comfort and joy; it is a fountain of life, yielding constant pleasure and satisfaction to the soul. It is a sovereign antidote against sin and temptation. H.
29. The two personages described here are doubly contrasted. The one is slow to anger; the other quick and hasty; the former has great wisdom and evinces it prominently by his remarkable self-control; the latter not only has great folly, but sets it up on high before all observers. Every one sees and feels how foolish it is to let one’s passions flash suddenly into flame with no self-control. H. C.—While so many think it the only valor to command and master others, study thou the dominion of thyself, and quiet thine own commotions. Let right reason be thy lawgiver; move by the intelligences of the superior faculties, not by the rapt of passion, nor merely by that of temper and constitution. They who are merely carried on by the wheel of such inclinations, without the hand and guidance of sovereign reason, are but the automatous part of mankind, rather lived than living, or at least underliving themselves. Browne.
30. A calm, placid heart [better than “sound”] gives life to the flesh in the sense of augmenting the vital forces and conducing to health and therefore to life; while, on the other hand, envy, forever disquieting the soul, works rottenness of the bones. Probably the Hebrews were familiar with the physiological fact that an unhappy state of mind retards the healing of broken bones. H. C.—Envy is the worst of all passions, and feedeth upon the spirits, and they again upon the body, and so much the more because it is perpetual, and, as it is said, keepeth no holidays. Bacon.—Envy, like a cold poison, benumbs and stupefies; and thus, as if conscious of its own impotence, it folds its arms in despair. When it conquers, it is commonly in the dark, by treachery and undermining, by calumny and detraction. Envy is no less foolish than detestable; it is a vice which they say keeps no holiday, but is always in the wheel, and working upon its own disquiet. Collier.
To have constituted the world so that envy is as rottenness in the bones, and love is felt like the glow of health permeating the frame, is a glory to the world’s Maker. Every sensation of glad enlargement enjoyed by a loving heart, at the sight of a neighbor’s prosperity, is a still small voice, announcing to him who hath an ear that God is good; and every pang that gnaws the envious, like rottenness in his bones, is the same word, God is good, echoed unwillingly back from the suffering of sin. Arnot.
31. All the poor are under God’s protection against unrighteous oppression, so that whoever tramples on God’s law forbidding the oppression of the poor contemns God Himself. Both clauses concur to show how our treatment of God’s poor expresses our regard for Himself. Oppressing them, we reproach Him; compassionating them, we do Him honor. Corresponding to which are the words of Jesus: “Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me.” H. C.—It is a base thing to get goods to keep them. God, who only is infinitely rich, holdeth nothing in His own hands, but gives all to His creatures. If we will needs lay up, where should we rather repose it than in Christ’s treasury? The poor man’s hand is the treasury of Christ. All my superfluity shall be there hoarded up where I know it shall be safely kept, and surely returned me. Bishop H.
Mercy to the poor must be a law operating from within, and not a system adopted from without. There must be regulating wisdom as well as motive power. Whatever share you may be able to take in the wholesale benevolence of organized societies, you should also carry on a retail business by personal contact with the sufferers. Arnot.—The objects on which mercy is exercised are as numerous as the wants and calamities incident to human nature. The merciful man labors, as far as his means allow, to instruct the ignorant; to reclaim the wanderer; to shelter the persecuted; to console the mourner; to forget injuries; to relieve the indigent; to comfort the sick. If this world’s goods are wanting to him, he offers the tribute of Christian sympathy, and beseeches God for their support. Pitman.
32. The wicked is thrust down in his evil-doing. There are dark and real penalties to come in another life which the sacred writers dimly show to us. It is no part of my business to enlarge upon these solemn warnings. An inspired man may do it. But let me remind you that terror is a legitimate weapon to which to appeal, and, unwelcome and unfashionable as its use is nowadays, it is one of the weapons in the armory of the true preacher of God’s Word. I believe we Christian ministers would do more if we were less chary of speaking out “the terror of the Lord.” Such appeals are legitimate, and such terror is a part of the Divine Revelation. The clearer, the tenderer, the more stringent the beseechings of the love and the warnings of Christ’s voice, the more solemn the consequences if we stop our ears to it. Better to hear it now, when it warns, and pleads, and beseeches, and comforts, and hallows, and quickens, than to hear it first when it rends the tombs and shakes the earth, and summons all to judgment, and condemns some to the outer darkness to which they had first condemned themselves. A. M.
The righteous hath hope in his death. These words have no meaning except on the supposition of a future state; for hope always looks forward and has respect unto something that is future; but if death puts an end to our being, what hope can the righteous have in his death any more than the wicked; or how can either of them have any hope at all? This hope can be built on nothing but the belief of the soul’s immortality, and a future state of retribution. Ibbot.—This proverb draws the fearful contrast between the wicked and the righteous in their death, and leaves us to infer the yet more fearful contrast in their respective destinies in the life beyond. The wicked are pressed and forced along by resistless agencies of disease or disaster, their guilty souls shrinking, recoiling, and struggling in vain against the iron power of death and retribution. They are thrust down in their wickedness, no penitence in their hearts and no pardon from the throne of a just God, and as the antithesis of the proverb implies, with no hope, such as the righteous have in their death. H. C.—The little particle but is of amazing force in the connection of the two affirmations. The wicked dieth in his wickedness and therefore without hope; but the righteous hath hope in his death. The whole proverb is a counterpart of that passage in the New Testament, “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Cheever.
The Scriptures have cast sufficient light on the reality of a future state, and on the certainty of final, unending joy for the righteous. Yet darkness rests upon the manner of our exit from this world, on the nature of the human soul when separate from the body, and on the entire mode of our future existence. But here the supporting arm of the Almighty comes to our relief. In Him the Christian may trust with the most confiding assurance. Were it not, however, for this solid resting-place, the valley of the shadow of death would have no egress. He who is without God in the world cannot appeal to His sustaining power. As he was without God in life, so he must be without Him in death. This poor, dependent, weak man, when heart and flesh are failing him, in this direst exigency of his existence, has nothing out of himself to which he can flee—no mighty Deliverer on whom he can hang. If this be not the consummation of wretchedness, what can be? B. B. E.—The righteous hath hope in his death, because his hope standeth in God’s own covenant grace and love, which make sinners righteous in Christ. This hope shall never forsake the righteous; it animates him in life to love and obedience; it comforts him in death against fears of wrath and terrors of hell; it inspires him with joyful assurance of a crown of righteousness in life and immortality, according to the precious promises of God, through the righteousness of Jesus. W. Mason.
Death does not affect the moral character; it expends its force upon the body, but works no radical or real change in the soul. It has no power whatever to revolutionize the moral nature—to make it better or worse. In itself it can neither make a good man better nor a bad man worse. It can transfer, but cannot transform. Each person now living carries in himself at this an every moment the essential elements of either heaven or hell. By the essential elements we mean those moral qualities, those dispositions and affections of soul which fit it for the one or for the other. Were all at this moment snatched from time into eternity, such are their moral characters that they would instantly drop into their appointed and appropriate places. What a thin partition separates the saint on earth from the saint in heaven—the sinner in time from the sinner in eternity. Anon.—If life has not made you, by God’s grace through faith, holy—think you, will death without faith do it? The cold waters of that narrow stream are no purifying bath in which you may wash and be clean. No, no! as you go down into them, you will come up from them. If here you have not the Holy Spirit, which makes holy your hearts, the inheritance will never be yours—never. Here, or nowhere, you must begin. And they only have that Holy Spirit who receive it through Christ, and they only are heirs of God who are content to hold their possession through Him who is the true Lord of it, and who made us joint-heirs with Himself. A. M.
In one sentence at the close of the resurrection chapter, Paul brings together the three terms most terrible to man, never elsewhere united as they are here—death, sin, and the law. Death has no terror that sin does not give it; and if sin be destroyed death is resolved into a stingless accident in man’s history, a mere change from what is good to something far better. Sin has an eternal terror of its own, dependent neither on death nor on the law; yet it is the law which defines and gives strength to sin; and unless the law be satisfied sin must rule forever. But in the work of the atoning Saviour these words lose their triple terror; the law is satisfied and sin is abolished, and death is translated into endless life. Then, cries the apostle, in the name of the ransomed Church, and finding a new song for this new transport: “Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” And this word is the earnest, always on the lips of the redeemed upon earth, of that greater thanksgiving when redemption shall be complete. W. B. Pope.—This life is the vestibule, and death the gateway of another. Death is an apparent end, a real beginning. A Christian’s death is the true entrance upon life. He goes right on living and serving, only in a higher sphere, where fatigue and decay are unknown. He reaps the fruit and reward of service begun on earth. His powers reach a higher maturity and find a nobler field for exertion. The sun that sets on this horizon rises on another and a far broader one. Dum exspiro spero. J. M. Sherwood. (Last printed words.)
Death cannot separate from the love of God. Death does not change the spirit, it only liberates it. We have the assurance in the words of Christ, in the resurrection of Christ, that death does not destroy the soul. Rather, it sets the soul free from the lassitude and inactiveness of the body. The body hampers and manacles the soul. Now, can you conceive that death, which so adds to the spirit, can separate from the love of God? Death does not affect our love for our departed friends, save to augment it. How much more will it but augment the love of God! No, says the apostle, and our conscious and sentient being responds, Death cannot separate from the love of God. R. S. S.—Death will mean to us birth, deliverance, a new creation of ourselves. It will be what health is to the sick man, what home is to the exile, what the loved one given back is to the bereaved. As we draw near to it, a solemn gladness should fill our hearts. It is God’s great morning lighting up the sky. The night with its terrors, its darkness, its feverish dreams, is passing away; and when we awake, it will be into the sunlight of God. Merriam.—Then make thoughts of death the exercise of thy life. Believe, as Jesus believed, that thy Father in heaven has appointed the hour of thy death, and that thy thoughts of death do not move the hour a single minute either backward or forward. Look at death in the death of Jesus, and it is then a friendly angel. Let the death of Jesus drive away death, and bring life before the soul. Think of death thus, for death in the death of Jesus is happy life. Caspars.
34. This proverb speaks of righteousness and sin as pertaining either to the government or to the general character of a people; or more probably to both, since in general the government will reflect the average sentiment and character of the people. The point of the antithesis seems to be not so much strength on the one hand and weakness on the other, as honor in the one case and shame in the other. Righteousness in the sense of rectitude, a just administration of government and a people bearing themselves justly toward each other, but especially toward other nations, will lift the nation high in honor; while on the other hand sin, in the strong sense of national outrages against the great laws of our common humanity, the oppression of the weak, unjust wars, tyrannous exactions—these are the reproach of nations. H. C.—Justice, reigning in a nation, puts an honor upon it; a
righteous administration of the government, impartial equity between man and man, public countenance given to religion, the general practice and profession of virtue, the protecting and preserving of virtuous men, charity and compassion to strangers—these exalt a nation, they elevate the people’s minds and qualify a nation for the favor of God, which will make them high, as a holy nation (Deut. 26:19). H.