CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 14:21. Poor, or “suffering” (Delitzsch).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 14:20-21
AN AGGRAVATED CRIME, A QUESTIONABLE VIRTUE, AND A PRESENT BLESSING
I. A fourfold sin. A man who despises or hates his neighbour sins—
1. In the simple exercise of the feeling. Hatred, or even the act of despising another, is in itself a sin. Here we must distinguish between hatred of the person and hatred of his practices—between despising a man himself and despising his actions. God Himself hates and abhors evil character, but he makes a distinction between a man’s character and the man. To hate or to despise any human creature is devilish.
2. By hating or despising him for his poverty. Poverty is a calamity often—always a burden and a cross. It is that for which a man should be pitied, and on account of which he should receive the sympathy of his fellow-men. Poverty is a burden heavy enough in itself, to add to it in any way is diabolical.
3. Because he hates and despises his fellow-sufferer. It is not a man beneath him, of whose trials he is ignorant, but his neighbour, one with whom he is on a level. The proverb speaks of one poor man hating another. Cases are not uncommon in which men who have risen from poverty to wealth hate and despise the class from which they have risen even more than those do who were born to rank and wealth. And sometimes men who have risen are hated by those whom they have left behind in the race. But for a poor man to dislike and to despise another poor man for his poverty, is a most unnatural and aggravated crime. A common calamity generally makes men feel a kinship for each other. Those who partake of a common lot generally feel a common sympathy. The poor do not generally hate and despise the poor. The poor man who does commit this sin against his neighbour commits a double sin against himself, for he knows himself the trials of his poor brother, and, therefore, does not sin through ignorance or inconsiderateness.
4. Against God. God “putteth down one, and setteth up another” (Psalms 75:7). It is His ordination that “the poor shall never cease out of the land” (Deuteronomy 15:11). They are His especial care (Psalms 12:5, etc.), and He will count any addition to their burden as a wrong to Himself.
II. A questionable virtue. “The rich hath many friends.” Friendship with a rich man may spring from social equality. There is a natural tendency in men who are equals in anything to form friendships with each other. Men of the same moral standing do so, men of the same intellectual attainments are attracted to each other, and men who are equals in social rank and in wealth are, by the force of circumstances, often thrown into each other’s society, and so a friendship which is real may be formed. But it is a more questionable bond than that which unites men in the two first-mentioned cases. It may be only a counterfeit of the genuine article, and it is nothing more if wealth is the only bond. Friendships formed upon similarity of intellectual and moral wealth have a far firmer foundation, because they rest upon what is inseparable from the man himself, while friendship founded upon riches has for its foundation what may at any time take to itself wings and fly away. Or the friendship may be one of social inequality. A poor man may attach himself to a wealthy man. This, too, may be genuine. The friendship may be built upon something which both value more than wealth; but if the friendship of the rich with the rich is regarded with doubt, and requires adversity to test it, much more does the friendship of the poor for the rich. The proof of the genuineness of the metal is the fire, the proof of the seaworthiness of the vessel is the storm, and it is an universally recognised truth that the proof of friendship is power to come uninjured through the fire and storm of adverse circumstances.
III. A present blessedness. “He that hath mercy on the poor, happy is he.”
1. Happy because “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35), because gladness always comes to the heart when an effort has been made to lighten another’s burden.
2. Happy in possessing the gratitude and confidence of his poor brother.
3. Happy because he wins the favour of God. (See on Proverbs 14:31).
ILLUSTRATION OF Proverbs 14:20
The bees were haunting the flowering trees in crowds, humming among the branches, and gathering honey in the flowers. Said Gott-hold, “Here is an image of temporal prosperity. So long as there is blossom on the trees, and honey in the blossom, the bees will frequent them in crowds, and fill the place with their music; but when the blossom is over, and the honey gone, they too will disappear.” Temporal gain is the world’s honey, and the allurement with which you may entice it whithersoever you will; but where the gain terminates, there likewise do the love and friendship of the world stop.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Proverbs 14:20. Alas! it is a mystery of knowledge to discern friends: “Wealth maketh many friends” (chap. Proverbs 19:4); they are friends to the wealth, not to the wealthy. They regard not qualis sis, but quantas, not how good thou art, but how great. They admire thee to thy face, but inwardly consider thee only as a necessary evil, yea, a necessary devil.… Worldly friends are like hot water, that when cold weather comes, are soonest frozen. Like cuckoos all summer they will sing to thee, but they are gone in July at furthest; sure enough before the fall. They flatter a rich man, as we feed beasts, and then feed on him.—T. Adams.
How former friendship etween two persons may be transformed into its opposite on account of the impoverishment of one of them, is impressively illustrated by our Lord’s parable of the neighbour whom a friend asks for three loaves (Luke 11:5-8).—Lange’s Commentary.
The same word in the original which signifieth a friend signifieth a neighbour also, because a neighbour should be a friend. But though a rich man hath friends far and near, a poor man is hated even of his neighbour. He that best knoweth his wants and should most of all pity them, doth least regard him and use him worst. He that is nearest at hand to help him is farthest off from helping him. Wherefore the neighbourhood of man being so bad, God becometh his neighbour, and as it is in the Psalms (Psalms 109:31). “He standeth at the right hand of the poor to save him.”—Jermin.
Proverbs 14:21. The impenitent is the poorest among men; and he who neglects him, and lets him go on in his iniquity, of course, is a cruel sinner. “They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that lead many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever.” He who despises his neighbour “sins,” literally “misses,” “blunders.” He wastes a splendid opportunity, not only for his neighbour, but for himself. The appeal is to self, and is made more intense where, instead of “despising” our neighbour, we actually “devise evil” against him (See next verse).—Miller.
1. There is sin against the arrangements of God’s providence.
2. Against the frequent and express commands of His word (Deuteronomy 15:7-11); Luke 12:33; Luke 14:12-14).
3. Against the manifestation of His distinguishing love. God has not only avowed Himself jealous for the poor, but “to the poor the gospel is preached,” and of those who become the subjects of God’s grace, and heirs of glory, a large proportion belong to this class.
4. In the contempt of God’s threatened vengeance against all who neglect them, and of His promised special favour to all who treat them with kindness.—Wardlaw.
We show our contempt of the poor, not only by trampling upon them, but by overlooking them, or by withholding that help for which their distress loudly calls. The Levite and the priest that declined giving assistance to the wounded traveller on the way to Jericho, were notorious breakers of the law of love in the judgment of our Lord. The Samaritan was the only one that performed the duty of a neighbour.—Lawson.
Through the gate of beneficence doth the charitable man enter into the city of peace … God makes some rich, to help the poor; and suffers some poor to try the rich. The loaden would be glad of ease: now charity lighteneth the rich man of his superfluous and unwieldy carriage. When the poor find mercy they will be tractable; when the rich find quiet, they should be charitable. Would you have your goods kept in peace? First, lock them up by your prayers, then open them again with your thankful use, and trust them in the hands of Christ by your charity.—T. Adams.
He that hath mercy on the poor maketh the other’s misery to be his own happiness, and as the other is comforted by it, so is he blessed by it. Blessed he is by the poor and his prayers for him, blessed he is by God and His favours upon him. Tabitha had reached out her hand to give unto the poor, and Peter reacheth out his hand in delivering her from death. She had bestowed clothing on the poor, and life is bestowed upon her. Wherefore the exhortation of Chrysostom is, “those things which God hath given us, let us give Him again, that so with advantage they may be again made ours.”—Jermin.