CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 1:20. The word wisdom is in the plural form in the Hebrew.
Proverbs 1:27. Desolation, or “tempest.”
Proverbs 1:28. To seek early denotes “earnestly.” See ch. Proverbs 8:17, Hosea 5:15. The person now changes from the second to the third, “as though wisdom were increasing alienated” (Miller).
Proverbs 1:32. The turning away of the simple, i.e., their rejection of wisdom. Prosperity, “Security,” “idle, easy rest.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH— Proverbs 1:20-23
THE CRY OF WISDOM
I. The wisdom of God is the voice of God.
1. The wisdom of God in nature, in the heavens which declare His glory and in the firmament which sheweth His handiwork” is Divine speech which speaks loudly of eternal power and Godhead.
2. There is a voice of wisdom in the laws and economy of the old dispensation, although that voice gave sometimes but an indistinct sound concerning Divine mercy and judgment.
3. The wisdom of God as displayed in the plan of salvation by Christ is the loudest, the most persuasive and unmistakable voice of God.
II. God’s voice of Wisdom is an earnest voice. Wisdom crieth. The voice of the mother who thinks that her children are in danger rings upon the ear with no uncertain, theatrical sound. When the voice of Paul rang through the Philippian prison and fell upon the man who was about to destroy himself, it was a loud voice, because he was in earnest. God has to deal with his human children who are in danger, and therefore He speaks with earnestness when He says, “Do thyself no harm.” The voice of God in the human conscience sometimes speaks as loudly as the trump of Sinai. He said by His prophets in the days of old, “Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways, for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11). The voice of Christ was an earnest voice. His death enforced the earnestness of the appeals which He uttered in His life. It proved the reality of His own and His Father’s desire that “all should come to repentance.” The voice of the Gospel ministry is an earnest voice. Those who have been baptised by the Spirit of God, beseech men to be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:20).
III. God’s voice of wisdom has been uttered where men could hear it. Wisdom uttereth her voice “in the streets,” “in the chief places of concourse,” “in the gates.” The merchant brings his silks and diamonds to the crowded cities, because in them he is most likely to find purchasers. The vendors of goods seek the broad thoroughfares, because there they find streams of human beings to whom they offer their wares. God has observed this method in offering His Divine wisdom to the sons of men. The highest wisdom of God—the Gospel—was first proclaimed in the city of Jerusalem, at a time when there were gathered there men “out of every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5). The apostles of Christ preached in the chief cities of the civilised world, in Corinth, Athens, Antioch, Ephesus, and Rome. And now the voice of wisdom cries in the principal centres of the population of the world. The fishermen spread their nets where most fish congregate, and the fishers of men are attracted to the places where most human souls are gathered.
IV. God’s voice of wisdom addresses all classes of sinners.
1. The simple ones. The unwary and those easily misled. Some men sin through ignorance or through the influence of others. As the unwalled garden is open to the foot of every dog that passes by, so the man who has no principle of his own to defend him is liable to have his soul entered and taken possession of by the first tempter who passes by.
2. The scorner. He is a sinner of a deeper dye. The child who is indifferent to his good father’s love and the attractions of his happy home is a sinner, but the son who mocks his parents and holds up their words to ridicule is certainly a greater sinner. The simple man denotes a sinner who is passive in the hands of evil, but the scorner is active against good. He is placed before us in Holy Scripture as one who has reached the climax of human iniquity (Psalms 1:1).
3. Fools are addressed. The man who would rather use means to increase his disease than seek to cure it, may very properly be called a fool. The blind man who chooses to remain blind when he might be healed is certainly a fool. And certainly this is an appropriate name for those who love moral darkness rather than light. He who hates the knowledge which would save him and prefers death to life is the most unwise man upon the face of God’s earth.
V. Although sinners may differ in degree, the same reproof and invitation are addressed to all. A rich man may be able to satisfy the wants of a hungry multitude, although all may not be equally hungry. If a physician possesses remedies which can heal men whose disease is deeply rooted, he will be able to cure those upon whom it has as yet a lighter hold. The voice of God to men offers but one way of satisfaction and soul-healing, viz., repentance. “Turn ye at my reproof.” And the gift of his spirit which accompanies repentance (Acts 2:38) is powerful to change the greatest sinner into a saint.
VI. The rejection of Wisdom’s voice of invitation changes it to one of threatening. The refusal of the invitation to the Gospel feast shut out to retribution those who rejected it (Luke 14:16). The space given for repentance will not last for ever. A time is here foretold when God will not hear them who have refused to hear him. Their cry for help will be treated as they once treated the earnest cry of wisdom. “I will mock when your fear cometh.”
VII. The blessed condition of those who accept Wisdom’s invitation. The promises given under the Old Testament dispensation referred in a large degree to the present life. Dwelling safely here doubtless has its immediate reference to a home in Canaan, as in Isaiah 1:19. “If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land.” Yet the underlying principle is that God will take charge of the real interests of those who yield themselves to Him—who fall in with His plans for their real eternal good.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Proverbs 1:20. What was in the views of godly men, in Solomon’s days, an abstraction, became concrete when Christ was manifested on earth. The manifold character of this Divine wisdom (Isaiah 11:2-3), and the multiplicity of the messengers of this wisdom of God in all ages of the Church accord with the plural form. (See “Critical Notes.”)—Fausset.
The orientals used the plural form to denote the highest excellence. But wisdoms may be plural to denote wisdom in all forms, or all “wisdoms” in one; specially two forms of wisdom—wisdom in a worldly sense, and wisdom in the spiritual sense which the natural man does not discern. Wisdom in both these senses unites in piety. The pious man has spiritual wisdom of which the sinner knows nothing; and fleshly or natural wisdom to avoid hell and to secure heaven, to provide for death and get ready for an eternal world, to a degree altogether superior to a fleshly nature.—Miller.
After that Solomon hath brought in a godly father warning and instructing his sons, now he raiseth up, as it were, a matron or queen-mother provoking her children unto virtue.—Muffet.
The words of men may be wise; but when God speaks, Wisdom itself addresses us.—Lawson.
Perhaps some wide law of association connecting the purity and serenity of wisdom with the idea of womanhood, determines the character of the personification. Not in solitude, but in the haunts of men, through sages, lawgivers, and teachers, and yet more through life and its experiences, she preaches to mankind. Something of the same kind was present, we may believe, to Socrates when he said that the fields and the trees taught him nothing, but that he found the wisdom he was seeking in his converse with the men whom he met as he walked in the streets and agora of Athens. (Plato, “Phædrus,” p. 230.)—Plumptre.
“In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, “Come unto me and drink.” (John 7:37.)—Trapp.
In the Scriptures, Wisdom cried unto men. “They testify of me,” said Jesus. The prophets all spake of His coming. The sacrifice offered year by year, continually proclaimed aloud to each generation the guilt of men, and the way of mercy. The history of Israel, all the days of old, was itself Wisdom’s perennial articulate cry of warning to the rebellious. The plains of Egypt and the Red Sea, Sinai and the Jordan, each had a voice, and all proclaimed in concert the righteousness and mercy that kissed each other in the counsels of God. And the things were not done in a corner.… But the wisdom of God is a manifold wisdom. While it centres bodily in Christ, it is reflected and re-echoed from every object and every event. There is a challenge in the prophets, “Oh earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord!” The receptive earth has taken in that word, and obediently repeats it from age to age.… He hath made all things for Himself. He serves Himself of criminals and their crimes. From many a ruined fortune, Wisdom cries, “Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy.” From many an outcast in his agonies, as when the eagles of the valley are picking out his eyes, Wisdom cries, “Honour thy father and mother, that thy days may be long.” From many a gloomy scaffold Wisdom cries, “Thou shalt not kill.”—Arnot.
Proverbs 1:21. Wisdom’s walk through the streets. The Lord and His Spirit follow us everywhere with monition and reminder.—Lange’s Commentary.
In Proverbs 1:10 sin was represented as trying to get in. Here wisdom is represented as trying to reach out. Sin is harmless unless it can get into the conscience. Wisdom is utterly helpless unless it begins with the flesh. One strives to get in, the others yearns to reach out. “The natural man discerneth not the things of the spirit.” She must begin, therefore, without. The impenitent can only hear natural reasons. “The law is a schoolmaster.” The terrors of death are applied by the Almighty to draw us nearer, within, and finally into the region that is spiritual. It is “out of doors,” therefore, that Wisdom must lift up her voice.—Miller.
The voice of wisdom is heard everywhere. It sounds from the pulpit. From every creature it is heard (Job 12:7-8). The word is in our very hearts, and conscience echoes the voice in our souls. Let us go where we will we must hear it, unless we wilfully shut our ears.—Lawson.
In the Temple she crieth for holiness and reverence, in the gates she crieth for justice and equity, in the city she crieth for honesty and charity. Or else by accommodation we may thus take the words, the head is the chief place of concourse in man, where all the faculties do meet and all affairs are handled: the openings of the gate are the outward fences, the city is the heart, to all which wisdom strongly applieth her instructions. In the head she crieth for a right understanding, in the outward fences for watchfulness, in the heart for upright sincerity.—Jermin.
Proverbs 1:22. Men are always going to be wise, and, therefore, Wisdom plunges upon this very difficulty. You are going to repent; but when? And, as a still more imperative question, “How long first? You are, perhaps, a grey old man, and your resolutions have been for fifty years.—Miller.
Lovers of simplicity and haters of knowledge are joined together; for where there is a love of simplicity, there is a hatred of knowledge, where there is a love of vice there is a hatred of virtue.—Jermin.
Scorners love scorning. The habit grows by indulgence. It becomes a second nature.—Arnot.
These simplicians are much better than scorners, and far beyond those fools that hate knowledge. All sins are not alike sinful, and wicked men grow worse and worse.—Trapp.
Proverbs 1:23. The two things mentioned here are to be taken in connection with each other. The latter is the result of the former—the former in order to the latter. There can be no plea, therefore, for continued ignorance. The Word of God is in possession, and the Spirit of God is in promise.—Wardlaw.
When it is said: “Turn,” &c., could any essay to turn be without some influence of the Spirit? But that, complied with, tends to pouring forth a copious effusion not to be withstood.—J. Howe.
When we turn at His reproof, He will pour out His Spirit; when He pours out His Spirit, we will turn at His reproof: blessed circle for the saints to reason in.—Arnot.
Little as we might have expected it, the teaching of the Book of Proverbs anticipates the prophecy of Joel (Joel 2:28) and the promise of our Lord (John 14:26; John 15:26.) Not the Spirit alone, with no articulate expression of truths received and felt: nor words alone, spoken or written, without the Spirit to give them life.—Plumptre.
He that reproves and then directs not how to do better, is he that snuffs a lamp, but pours not in oil to maintain it.—Trapp.
There are no words that can make known Wisdom’s words but her own, and there is no one that can make known Wisdom’s words but herself. She can, and here she saith: “I will.” And it is as she will, not as she can, and yet freely and fully too, whereof she saith: “I will pour out.”—Jermin.
I. The reproof God administers. God reproves
(1) by the Scriptures;
(2) by ministers;
(3) by conscience;
(4) by Providence.
II. The submission He requires. Turn
(1) with penitent hearts;
(2) with believing minds;
(3) with prompt obedience.
III. The encouragements He imparts. The Spirit is
(1) convincing;
(2) quickening;
(3) comforting;
(4) sanctifying.—Sketches of Sermons.
Proverbs 1:24. It is an honour to be invited to the feast of an earthly prince; how much more to be bidden unto the banquet of the King of kings! And as the desiring of any to dinner or supper is a sign of love and goodwill in him that offereth this courtesy, so it is a point of great ungentleness and sullenness for a man, without just cause, to refuse so kind a proffer; for, in so doing, he sheweth that he maketh none account at all of him, who not only hath borne toward him a loving affection, but made declaration thereof in some sort, and gone about to seal it by certain pledges of friendship; yea, that which is yet more, he causeth him to lose the cost which he hath bestowed about provisions and entertainment, and his messengers to lose their pains and their travail. Then, when those who are bidden to the kingdom of God (Luke 14:18) desire to be excused, how can this be but a great sin? but, when God shall not only call with His voice, but all day long stretch out His hand to a rebellious people, continuing His Word preached with all means pertaining thereunto; as the grace offered in this respect is doubled, so the sin of not profiting thereby is mightily increased.—Muffet.
God called for a famine on the land, and was not refused; God called for a drought upon the land, and was not refused; and, no doubt, should God call any other of His creatures, they would not refuse to come unto Him, seeing those things which are not, when they are called, do come to God. Only man refuseth. Surely hence it is that the prophets of God do so often speak unto insensible things, as: “Hear, O heavens: give ear, O earth.” For it is not seldom that God calleth to men and is refused.—Jermin.
Proverbs 1:26. There is not in the Lord any such affection or disposition of mocking as in man; but when in the course of His providence He so worketh that He leaves the wicked to his misery, or maketh him a mocking stock to the world, He is said in the Scripture to scorn, or have them in derision (Psalms 2), because He dealeth as a man which scorneth.—Muffet.
If God laugh, thou hast good cause to cry.—Trapp.
There is, as has been said, a Divine irony in the Nemesis of history. It is, however, significant that in the fuller revelation of the mind and will of the Father in the person of the Son, no such language meets us. Sadness, sternness, severity there may be, but from first to last no word of mere derision.—Plumptre.
Even I, not, “I also,” I, who have warned you so often, so tenderly, so earnestly.—Stuart.
Proverbs 1:27. Cataline was wont to be afraid at any sudden noise, as being haunted with the furies of his own evil conscience. So was our Richard the Third after the murder of his two innocent nephews, and Charles the Ninth of France after the Parisian massacre. These tyrants became more terrible to themselves than ever they had been to others.—Trapp.
You cannot paint an angel upon light: so mercy could not be represented—mercy could not be, unless there were judgment without mercy, a ground of deep darkness lying beneath, to sustain and reveal it.—Arnot.
Here also the parallelism which we have traced before holds good. The “coming of the Son of Man” shall be as “the lightning” in its instantaneous flashing. And at that coming He will have to utter the same doom. “Many shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able.”—Plumptre.
Proverbs 1:28. Does the sinner ever cry, and not get answered? Does he ever seek diligently, and God laugh at him? The passage is the profoundest Gospel. A man has two ways of seeking, before he becomes a Christian, and after he becomes a Christian. Before he becomes a Christian he seeks from natural motives, otherwise he would be already spiritual. We cannot say that natural seeking has no promise. We think it has. A man can only start outside the camp to get in. The man who out of a deep sense of terror flies toward the wicket gate under that schoolmaster the law, will reach it if he keep on, and that by promise. If he begs God to make him spiritual and to give him the true motives of the kingdom with even a proper common spirit though it be under the terrors of escape, he draws nearer all the time to being spiritual. The light will at last break. If he keeps on in that way he will emerge some day into the light of the blessed. The action of common grace will merge into that which is saving. But if his motives are too carnal; if his state is mere terror; if his moral part has been so abused that it has passed the boundary which our text suggests; if there be the mere terror of the lost, and the mere selfishness, such as wakes up at the judgment day, we could easily understand that oceans of such tears would drift a man only farther off. They are only a more insidious carnality. The sum of the doctrine is, that natural motives may become instruments of conversion if we seek God early, but if we sin away the day of grace, no terror, however selfishly and therefore passionately expressed, can become a saving prayer to bring us any nearer to the Redeemer.—Miller.
This was Saul’s misery: “The Philistines are upon me, and God will not answer me.” This was Moab’s curse (Isaiah 16:12). This was the case of David’s enemies (Psalms 18:41). Even if God answer him at all, it is according to the idols of his heart (Ezekiel 14:3-4) with bitter answers, as in Judges 10:13-14. Or, if better, it is but as He answered the Israelites for quails and afterwards for a king; better have been without. Giftless gifts God gives sometimes.—Trapp.
Proverbs 1:29. Those who do not choose the fear of the Lord are condemned no less than those who hate it. Not to choose is virtually to dislike, and ends in positive hatred. (Matthew 12:30.) Men are free in choosing destruction, so that the blame rests wholly on themselves. “Ye judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life.” (Acts 13:46.)—Fausset.
God will give them a reason of their punishment. No marvel if they who hate knowledge do not choose the fear of the Lord. For knowledge is the guide of election, and if the guide be bad the choice cannot be good. And to show the badness of the choice, there being many fears proposed to man’s choice to which man’s life is subject; to choose the fear of the Lord, freeth from all the rest; not to choose that, is to be a slave to all the rest.—Jermin.
Proverbs 1:30. There is not a word here of disability, it is all unwillingness. Point me to one passage in the Bible where sinners are represented as being condemned for not doing what they could not do. The blessed God is no such tantaliser. When, at any time, inability is spoken of, it is inability all of a moral nature, and resolves itself into unwillingness.—Wardlaw.
Can it be that none of God’s counsel should be followed? Can it be that all his reproof should be despised? Yes; not to have a care of following all God’s counsel is to follow none: not to have a mind that regardeth all His reproof, is to despise all.… As the wings of the living creature which Ezekiel saw, were joined together, so is the joining together of God’s commandments, our desire of yielding a general obedience unto them, that must carry us up to heaven.—Jermin.
Proverbs 1:31. Their miserable end is the fruit—not of God’s way, but of their own. His plan, His device for them, was a plan of salvation.—Wardlaw.
If a man plants and dresses a poisonous tree in his garden, it is just that he should be obliged to eat the fruit. If our vine is the vine of Sodom, and our clusters the clusters of bitterness, we must leave our complaint on ourselves, if we drink till we are drunken, and fall, and rise no more.—Lawson.
The sinner’s sin is its own punishment (Isaiah 3:9-11. Hell is not an arbitrary punishment, like human penalties, which have no necessary connection with the crimes, but a natural development of the seed and the bud (Isaiah 59:4; Galatians 6:8). “Filled with their own devices”—i.e. filled even to loathing, which is the final result of the pleasures of sin. “They did eat, and were well filled; for He gave them their own desire; … but while the meat was yet in their mouths, the wrath of God came upon them” (Psalms 78:29). Men’s own desires fulfilled are made their sorest plagues (Psalms 106:11).—Fausset.
Bad will it be for them that shall eat of it; and yet due will it be to them to eat of it, because it is their own.… It is not said they shall gather the fruit of their ways, which were some expression of their misery, but they shall eat it, it shall enter into them, and be made, as it were, their very substance. This it is that filleth up the misery, and that the filling is of their own devices, that it is, that maketh it be pressed down.—Jermin.
Proverbs 1:32. When Jeshurun waxed fat, he kicked (Deuteronomy 32:15). Thus the objection is met, that sinners often prosper now. Yes, replies wisdom; but that very prosperity proves their curse, and accelerates the judgment of God. It is they who are “settled on their lees” that say in their heart, The Lord will not do good, neither will he do evil (Zephaniah 1:12)—Fausset.
Prosperity ever dangerous.
1. Because every foolish or vicious person is either ignorant or regardless of the proper ends and rules for which God designs the prosperity of those to whom He sends it.
2. Because prosperity, as the nature of man now stands, has a peculiar force and fitness to abate men’s virtues and heighten their corruptions.
3. Because it directly indisposes them to the proper means of amendment and recovery.—South.
Because they are fools, they turn God’s mercies to their own destruction; and because they prosper, they are confirmed in their folly.—Baxter.
When sinners are moved a little by wisdom, and turn away, it is deadly; it is worse than if they had never listened. Prosperity or tranquillity (see “Critical Notes”). The mere doing nothing of impenitent men is carrying them downward.—Miller.
Bernard calls prosperity a mercy that he had no mind to. What good is there in having a fine suit with the plague in it. A man may miscarry upon the soft sands as soon as upon the hard rocks.—Trapp.
Not outward prosperity, but the temper which it too often produces; the easy going indifference to higher truths is that which destroys.—Plumptre.
Proverbs 1:33. He shall enjoy genuine security. His mind will enjoy unmoved tranquillity amidst all the turmoils and all the vicissitudes of this life (Philippians 4:6-7). And he shall be quiet from the fear of ultimate evil. The season of the impenitent sinner’s last alarm shall be to him the season of peace, and hope, and joy.—Wardlaw.
Be it so, that some fits of fear, like grudgings of an ague, in the midst of fiery temptations, begin sometimes to cause the faithful to quake a little, yet the grace of God’s Spirit will drive them out in time, and put them all to flight in such manner at the end, that instead of timorousness, stoutness; of unquietness, peace; of bashfulness, boldness; of shrinking, triumph will arise. O, the valiant courage and unterrified heart of the Christian knight and spiritual champion, who is furnished with the whole armour of God (Ephesians 6), and fighteth under the banner of Divine wisdom, his renowned lady and mistress!—Muffet.
1. Temporally.
2. Mentally.
3. Spiritually.
4. Eternally. (Isaiah 26:3; Isaiah 33:15-16; Jeremiah 23:6; Deuteronomy 33:12; Deuteronomy 33:28.—Fausset.
His ark is pitched within and without; tossed, it may be, but not drowned: shaken, but not shivered.—Trapp.
Eternal life, secure in the world to come, casts a bright beam of hope across, sufficient to quiet the anxieties of a faint and fluttering heart in all the dangers of the journey through.—Arnot.
There is no dwelling but in heaven; hell is a prison; earth is a pilgrimage. In Heaven there be many mansions, wherein every room is the lodging of quietness, the walls whereof are safety, the gates security, and all fear of evil shut out for ever.—Jermin.
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 1:2. Incline. To sharpen or prick the ear, like an animal.
Proverbs 1:5. God. Elohim. One of five instances in the book in which God is thus designated, the appellation Jehovah occurring nearly ninety times. In explaining the all but universal use of Jehovah as the name of God in the Proverbs, while it never occurs in Ecclesiastes, Wordsworth says: “When Solomon wrote the book of Proverbs he was in a state of favour and grace with Jehovah, the Lord God of Israel; he was obedient to the law of Jehovah; and the special design of that book is to enforce obedience to that law.”