2. — FIFTEEN DIDACTIC POEMS, OR DISCOURSES ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS (Proverbs 1:7 to Proverbs 9:18).
(a) First Discourse: — Against Companionship in Robbery (Proverbs 1:7-19).
(7) The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. — The first discourse is prefaced by a distich, which serves as a key-note to all the teaching of the book. This expression, “the fear of the Lord,” occurs thirteen times in the Proverbs, and plays a prominent part throughout the Old Testament.
“When God of old came down from heaven,
In power and wrath He came.”
That law which was given amid “blackness, and darkness, and tempest” was enforced by the threat, “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them” (Galatians 3:10). Men had to be taught how hateful sin was to God, and the lesson was for the most part instilled into them by the fear of immediate punishment. (Comp. Deuteronomy 28) But when the lesson had been learnt, and when mankind had found by experience that they were unable to keep the law of God by their own strength, then the new covenant of mercy was revealed from Calvary, even free justification “by God’s grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24). And with this new message a new motive to obedience was preached. The “fear of the Lord” was now superseded by the higher duty of the “love of God,” and of man, for His sake. “The love of Christ constraineth us,” says St. Paul. “We love Him because He first loved us,” writes St. John. Now, it was seen that, although the “fear of the Lord” may be the “beginning of wisdom,” yet something better still may be aimed at: that “he that feareth is not made perfect in love;” and so the teaching of St. John, the last New Testament writer, is summed up in the words, “If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another” (1 John 4:11).
Fools (’evîlîm). — Self-willed, headstrong persons, who will listen to no advice.