CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 13:23. “Tillage,” rather “fallow ground” or “a new field,” land which requires hard labour.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 13:23
LAND AND ITS TILLERS
I. That untilled land (see Critical Notes) possesses a latent power to produce food. There are many things in nature in which there exists a latent power to minister to man’s needs; but his hand must be put forth to arouse the sleeping power. There is heat in coal to warm him, but he must kindle the coal before it will put it forth. So in the earth, there are stores of life-giving power wrapped up in its bosom, but the hand of man must till it before it will yield him food. And it will yield food to the poor man as well as to the rich; his hard toil will be rewarded by receiving bread for his labour.
II. That though much food is to be got out of the land by the poor man, yet more is to be got out of it by the rich. This is implied in the contrast, though it is not directly expressed.—(See Fausset’s Note in the Comments.) The poor man cannot spend so much upon his land as the rich man can. He can give little beside hard labour, while the man who possesses wealth can call in every appliance to increase the fruitfulness of the land. It is well known that the more liberally a land is farmed the more abundant will be the crop.
III. Yet want of judgment—i.e., a sense of justice, often leads a rich man to neglect to cultivate his land so as to increase its power of yielding food. All landowners are responsible to God for a right use of His earth. Holding in their hands, as they do, the power of making food abundant or scarce, they have much for which to give an account to Him whose stewards they are. When they turn into hunting-grounds and parks for their own exclusive use acres of land which, if cultivated, would yield much food, and thus lighten the burdens of their poorer fellow-creatures, they “destroy it for want of judgment,” or “justice.”
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
By the rule of interpretation by the contrast of opposites, and by supplying the wanting member in one clause from its opposite expressed in the other clause, the sense is, “But there is food (wealth) possessed by rich men that is destroyed for want of honesty in its acquisition and its employment.” The poor man’s (honest) labour forms the contrast to the rich man’s “want of justice” in his acquisitions. The newly tilled land of the poor forms the contrast to the rich man’s possessions held for some time.—Fausset.
What is the practical or extended application? If talents lie inactive, or if their activity is not wisely directed, a rich harvest is destroyed for want of judgment. The same ruin flows from a neglect of religious advantages. The harvest of grace withers into a famine. Slothful professor! rouse thyself to till the ground; else thou wilt starve for want of food. Then let thy roused energy be directed by a sound judgment; for want of which, the fruits of industry, temporal, intellectual, and spiritual, will run to waste.—Bridges.
There seems an interesting connection between the former verse and this. Talk of inheritances! says the poor man, with his scanty means and daily hard toil; we have no inheritance, either from our fathers, or for our children: all is homely with us, and likely to remain so. Well, says Solomon, the poor man is not without his consolations, even of a temporal nature, “much food is in the tillage of the poor.” The maxim is not to be confined to the one kind of labour specified, but extends equally to all the different modes in which the poor make their daily bread. The poor peasant, who cultivates his plot industriously and by “the sweat of his brow,” will, through the Divine blessing, procure thereby an ample supply of food for himself and his family, and industry and tidy economy will make the cottage fireside and table snug and comfortable, and its lowly tenants will enjoy plenty, though in a plain and homely form. On the other hand, how often in the case of those who obtain inheritances may the poor see the saying verified, “There is that is destroyed for want of judgment.” By prodigality, by bad management, they waste their fortunes. Their lands are extensive, but unproductive; or if productive, the product is mis-spent and squandered; it goes, no one can tell how. To such persons the homely comfort of the poor is a just object of envy; far more, in many cases, than the wealth of the rich is to the poor.—Wardlaw.
The proverbial sense is, that a little is made much by God’s blessing and pains, and that much is made little by wickedness and carelessness.—Jermin.