CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 17:23. A gift, i.e., a bribe, judgment. i.e., justice.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 17:23
BRIBERY
I. Its nature. An act of bribery may be committed without any monetary transaction taking place. It is not necessary that gold should pass from hand to hand to make a man guilty of bribery. It is not even necessary that there should be a distinct promise of any good either in the present or the future. A man bribes another if he merely implies by word or deed that he can make him suffer for speaking what he knows is the truth, and for acting according to the dictates of his conscience. And a man is guilty of accepting a bribe it he abstains from such speech or action from a fear of loss or from a hope of gain, although no distinct promise or threatening has been made by those whom he wishes to propitiate.
II. Its cause. Want of integrity on the part of both the man who offers the bribe and him who accepts it. There are some men in the world to whom even a man who held their lives in his hand would not think of offering a bribe of any kind. He knows it would be as useless to attempt to make such men swerve from the path of right as to try to alter the course of the earth round the sun. There are many, we know, in this country, notwithstanding its many timeservers and place-hunters who, like Samuel of old can say, “Whose ox have I taken, or whose ass have I taken, or whom have I defrauded, whom have I oppressed, or of whose hands have I received any bribe to blind mine eyes therewith? (1 Samuel 12:3). Only one thing is needed to destroy bribery—in its most impalpable and shadowy forms as well as in its more glaring and shameless manifestations—and that is universal honesty of character. When every man loves truth and right more than he loves material gain then bribery will cease, but not before. Men may be restrained by shame from being guilty of it openly, and will call it by some less obnoxious name, but the spirit of bribery will be at work so long as there are men upon the earth who love gain more than godliness.
III. The universal testimony of the human conscience against it. “The wicked man taketh a gift out of his bosom”—it is a transaction of secrecy—there is a shame connected with the act which proves that conscience condemns it. The man who offers the bribe does not do it openly, which shows that he is fully conscious that he is transgressing the law of right; and the man who accepts it does not boast openly that he has done so for the same reason. Bribery is a sin which is repeatedly denounced by God (Isaiah 1:23-24; Ezekiel 22:13), but men who have not possessed the light of revelation have denounced bribery as a crime.
IV. Its effect. It “perverts the ways of justice.” Its effect is to bring about that abomination mentioned in Proverbs 17:15—the justification of the wicked and the condemnation of the just. (See Homiletics on that verse.)
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
An honest man would rather lose his cause, however just, than gain it by such a base thing as a bribe. It must have been a great bondage for Paul to have been confined in a prison, when he loved the pulpit so well, had not his will been sunk in the will of God; yet he would not offer the least bribe to his covetous judge, who detained him in prison, expecting that money would be offered for his freedom (Acts 24:6).—Lawson.
Is not the child of God often pressed with this temptation? Does the influence of a gift, the sense of obligation, never repress the bold consistency of godliness? Does no bias of friendship, no plausible advantage, entice into a crooked path.—Bridges.
There is a gift of thankfulness, there is a gift of reconciliation, there is a gift of goodwill, all these are lawful. Besides these there is a gift of corruption; this is unlawful.—Muffet.
Bribery is an officious fellow, and a special bidder to the fatal banquet. (Proverbs 9:17-18.) He invites both forward and froward: the forward and yielding by promises of good cheer, secunda dies, that they shall have a fair day of it; the backward, honest man, by terrors and menaces that his cause shall else go westward (indeed, it goes to Westminster!). Yea, with pretence of commiseration and pity, as if the conscience of their right did animate him to their cause. Thus with a show of sanctimony they get a saint’s money; but indeed, argentum fæcundum, argumentum facundum,—there is no persuasion more pathetical than the purse’s. Bribery stands at the stairfoot in the robes of an officer, and helps up injury to the place of audience; thus Judas’s bag is drawn with two strings, made of silk and silver, favour and reward. All officers belong not to one court; their conditions alter with their places. There are some that seem so good that they lament the vices, whereupon they yet inflict but pecuniary punishments. Some of them are like the Israelites, with a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other, with the motto of that old emblem, In utrumque paratus; as the one daubs up justice, so the other cuts breaches of division. They mourn for truth and equity, as the sons of Jacob for Joseph, when themselves sold it; they exclaim against penal transgressions.… If the party be innocent, let his cause be sentenced for his innocence’s sake; if guilty, let not gold buy out his punishment. If the cause be doubtful, the judge shall see it worse when he hath blinded his eyes with bribes. But the will of the giver doth transfer right of the gift to the receiver. No; for it is not a voluntary will. But as a man is willing to give his purse to the thief rather than venture life or limb, so the poor man gives his bribes rather than hazard his cause. Thou sayest the thief has no right to the purse so given; God saith, Nor thou to the bribe … Far be from our souls this wickedness, that the ear which should be open to complaints is thus stopped with the ear-wax of partiality. Alas! poor Truth, that she must now be put to the charges of a golden ear-pick, or she cannot be heard.—T. Adams.