CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 12:11. Vain persons, or “vanity,” “emptiness.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 12:11
SATISFACTION FROM TILLAGE
I. Satisfaction as the result of tillage depends—
1. Upon the performance of a Divine promise. It is long ago since God gave to Noah the promise that “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” (Genesis 9:22), and it has been so invariably fulfilled that men have come to forget upon whom they are depending—in whom they are exercising faith—when they plough the ground and sow the seed. God’s regularity in His performance has bred in men a contempt for the promise and the promise maker. Men speak of the laws of nature and ignore the fact that it is by the Word of the Lord that the “rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater” (Isaiah 55:10). But so it is. The promise is the power that set the laws in motion at first and that have kept them in motion ever since. There can be no tillage without dependence upon God either acknowledged or unacknowledged. The promise is an absolute one, and implies power in God to fulfil it to the end of time. It can never fail unless God’s power fail, or unless He break His word; these are blessed impossibilities with Him. Therefore, so far as God is concerned the shall of the text is absolute. But it depends likewise—
2. Upon men’s fulfilment of their duties. First, it is not all tillage that will satisfy a man with bread, the tillage must be painstaking and intelligent. The promise of God does not set aside the necessity for the man to be very laborious and to study carefully the nature and needs of the soil which he tills. Agriculture is a science which must be acquired—a man must learn how to till the ground. God claims to be man’s instructor in this matter (Isaiah 28:26). Then, again, it must be his land that he tills, not land taken by fraud or violence from another. Neither if a man tills the land of another as his servant is he always paid sufficient wages to be satisfied with bread. But this is the greed of man interfering with God’s ordinaton.
II. The promise suggests symbolic teaching. We may look at it in relation to the human spirit. As land must be ploughed and sown with painstaking intelligence if a man is to have the satisfaction of reaping a harvest, so the human soul must be the object of spiritual tillage if it is ever to yield any satisfaction to God or man. There is very much to be got out of the land, but no man can obtain the full blessing unless he cultivate it. So it is with the man himself. A human soul left to lie barren can never become as a “field which the Lord hath blessed.”
(1) It must be prepared to receive the words of God. The “fallow ground” must be broken up, lest the sowing be “among thorns” (Jeremiah 4:3), or the seed fall where it can find no entrance (Hosea 10:12; Matthew 13:4).
(2) Good seed must be sown. The word of God (Mark 4:14), that “incorruptible seed” by which men are “born again” (1 Peter 1:23).
(3) And the spiritual sower must be persevering and prayerful. It is true of natural tillage that “He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap” (Ecclesiastes 11:4); it is equally so of soul-husbandry. The world, the flesh, and the devil will be always putting difficulties in the way of a man’s caring for his “own soul.” But these obstacles must be surmounted, and if the seed is watered by prayer God will assuredly send down the rain of the Holy Ghost.
(4) And in spiritual tillage there is also a certainty of satisfaction. This also depends upon not one Divine promise but upon many—upon the revelation of God as a whole. (Upon the opposite character—him “that followeth vain persons,” or vanity, instead of tilling his land or his spiritual nature—see Homiletics on Chapter s Proverbs 6:11 and Proverbs 10:5, pages 79 and 147.)
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
We might have expected that the antithesis of the second clause would have ended with “shall lack bread,” but the real contrast goes deeper. Idleness leads to a worse evil than that of hunger.—Plumptre.
Vain persons or “empty people”—most signally the impenitent—for they are empty of all good. “That follows after empty people” is a fine characteristic of the impenitent man’s decline. Following others is the commonest influence to destroy the soul.—Miller.
Special honour is given to the work of tilling the land. God assigned it to Adam in Paradise. It was the employment of his eldest son. In ancient times it was the business or relaxation of kings. A blessing is ensured to diligence, sometimes abundant, always such as we should be satisfied with.—Bridges.
Of all the arts of civilised man agriculture is transcendantly the most essential and valuable. Other arts may contribute to the comfort, the convenience, and the embellishment of life, but the cultivation of the soil stands in immediate connection with our very existence. The life itself, to whose comfort, convenience, and embellishment other arts contribute, is by this sustained, so that others without it can avail nothing.—Wardlaw.
The only two universal monarchs practised husbandry.… Some people think that they cannot have enough unless they have more than the necessaries and decent comforts of life: but we are here instructed that bread should satisfy our desires. Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content. There are few that want these, and yet few are content.… To be satisfied with bread is a happy temper of mind, and is commonly the portion of the man of industry, which not only procures bread, but gives it a relish unknown to men that are above labour.—Lawson.
Sin brought in sweat (Genesis 3:19), and now not to sweat increaseth sin.… “But he that followeth vain persons,” etc. It is hard to be a good fellow and a good husband too.—Trapp.
Here is encouragement to those who travail in husbandry. They are of as good note with God for their service, if they be faithful, as others whose trades are more gainful, and better esteemed among men. The merchants, and goldsmiths, and others of such places, are not so often mentioned in Scripture as they be, nor animated with so many consolations as they are. The grand promises for blessing on their labour are made to them in special, and the rest must deduct their comforts from thence by proportion.—Dod.
In a moral point of view the life of the agriculturist is the most pure and holy of any class of men; pure, because it is the most healthful, and holy, because it brings the Deity perpetually before his view, giving him thereby the most exalted notions of supreme power, and the most fascinating and endearing view of moral benignity.—Sir B. Maltravers.
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay;
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made:
But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.
Goldsmith.