Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth. Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house: Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel: Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger; And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me! I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.
I desire the Reader to remark with me, the alteration of persons with which this portion of Solomon's discourse begins. In the former it seems to have been his address to a single person, but here it is to more than one. But the instructions are the same, and the motives made use of are the same. Perhaps there is no particular reason for the change, unless it be supposed, which I confess I am not a little inclined to think, that the sacred writer upon many occasions, as he passed on in these discourses, had in view, the person of Christ; and now the people of Christ in him. But whether this be or not, it is always profitable to a child of God to eye Christ in everything as first in priority of order; and then his children, his seed, his church, in him. Psalms 89:1-4.