CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 18:4. The last clause of this verse may be divided into two smaller ones and placed in apposition, thus: “a bubbling brook,”—a fountain of wisdom. Fausset remarks that the Hebrew word used for man is ish, a good man, not adam, the general term for man.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 18:4
A GOOD MAN’S MOUTH
We must understand Solomon here to refer to a good man—to a man whose words are in harmony with the mind of God. Of such a man it may be said that his words are as deep waters and as a living spring.
I. Because his soul is in communication with an exhaustless source of spiritual life and wisdom. Rivers and wells that are fed from the mountain recesses which are filled with eternal snows never dry up—they are fed from a source that is never exhausted. So long as the lasting hills remain, and the present natural laws govern the world they must give forth every day abundant streams. A communication has been established between the soul of a good man and the living God—he holds constant communion with a source of spiritual life which can never fail, and consequently he can never be at a loss for subjects upon which to discourse—his mind is always filled with new thoughts of God, and new hopes of heaven upon which to meditate himself and which he can communicate to others.
II. Because that which flows from his lips is beneficial and refreshing to others. The waters in a shallow and stagnant pond give little or no refreshment to the thirsty traveller; they may even be the means of imparting disease to those who drink of them, or who live near them. But the water from a well, or from a deep and flowing stream, is generally pure and wholesome to the taste, and refreshing to the land through which it flows. And so it is with the speech of a godly man. Very mighty are the influence of words for good or for ill. Our first parents lost Eden by listening to the words of the tempter, and the speech of the wicked always diffuses an unwholesome moral atmosphere around it, if it does not eject a deadly poison into the soul. But the conversation and teaching of the godly are always a means of moral health to others; by their words they witness for the truth of God, and are the means of “opening men’s eyes, and turning them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God” (Acts 26:13). And, like their Divine Master, they “know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary” (Isaiah 50:4), and thus that which flows from their lips is as refreshing and healthful to weary and struggling men and women on the highway of life as the living, cooling watercourse is to the dusty and thirsty traveller.
III. Because the flow is natural and spontaneous. Water may be sent through a tract of country by artificial means; fields may be watered and reservoirs filled by calling in science to supply natural deficiencies. But there is, after all, no comparison between this kind of forced irrigation and that which is the result of natural causes. If there is water beneath the surface of the earth it must force its way and find an outlet; it needs no hand of man to come to its aid; it penetrates the soil and forms a fertilising stream in obedience to natural law. And so the speech of a good man has nothing forced or artificial about it. It is the overflow of heartfelt experience. Like the apostles of old, he “cannot but speak the things which he has seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). The “good things” of his lips are the natural outcome of the “good treasure of his heart,” “for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Matthew 12:24-25).
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Talleyrand defined speech to be the art of concealing one’s opinions. Speech, even without any attempt at concealment, must be endlessly deep and wide as uttering all our being. Who can translate all its outgoings? If this be so with man, who shall judge of God and censure His obscurer revelations? Solomon is satisfied with one great difference,—that while man’s speech is “deep,” God’s speech is both “deep” and “living.” One has a vital source, the other is dead and stagnant. Grant that both are obscure. One is the darkness of a pool, the other the breadth and gush of an overflowing water. We ought to submit to mystery in God, for the tide of His utterance is to flow on for ever.—Miller.
One “greater than Solomon” “astonished the people” by the clearness, no less than by the depth of the waters (Matthew 7:28-29). No blessing is more valuable than a “rich indwelling of the word,” ready to be brought out on all suitable occasions of instruction. If the wise man sometimes “spares his words,” it is not for want of matter, but for greater edification. The stream is ready to flow, and sometimes can scarcely be restrained. The cold-hearted, speculative professor has his flow—sometimes a torrent of words, yet without a drop of profitable matter; chilling, even when doctrinally correct; without life, unction, or love. Lord! deliver us from this barren “talk of the lips” (chap. Proverbs 14:23). May our waters be deep, flowing from thine own inner sanctuary, refreshing and fertilising the Church of God!—Bridges.
In the two clauses of the verse, on the principle of parallelism, there appears to be an inversion of the same sentiment; for, properly speaking, the words uttered are not the “deep waters,” but the stream that issues from them; and, on the other hand, “the wellspring of wisdom” is not “the flowing brook,” but the deep and copious fountain or reservoir from which it issues. Another passage may serve to confirm this view. “Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out.” Here, the counsel is the deep water, not the words. But the words are the stream which the deep waters send forth. The words bring out and contain the counsel.—Wardlaw.
It must be remembered that “deep waters” are associated in the Old Testament with the thought of darkness and mystery (Proverbs 20:5; Psalms 69:2; Ecclesiastes 7:24), and we get a more profound thought if we see in the proverb a comparison between all teaching from without and that of the light within. The words of a man’s mouth are dark as the “deep waters of a pool, or tank; but the well-spring of wisdom is as a flowing brook, bright and clear.” So taken the verse presents a contrast like that of Jeremiah 2:13.—Plumptre.
When this word vir is used for man in sacred Scriptures it signifieth one who is strong and mighty, and for his strength great and excellent, and then by a man here we may understand him who is mighty and great in knowledge; the words of such a man are as deep waters, to the bottom whereof the shallow capacity of every one is not able to reach. But yet where the spring of those waters is a well-spring of wisdom, though sometimes it send forth deep waters, yet it doth not always; for that were to overwhelm the hearers. But at other times it is as a flowing brook, more shallow for capacity, but more forcible also in the stream of it, and either by persuasive exhortation carrying on the hearers to a pursuit of virtue and godliness, or else by a dissuasive reproof carrying them away from the practice of wickedness, and in both washing away the stains of their sinful lives. Wherefore St. Gregory saith, so must every preacher deal with his hearers as God dealeth with him; he must not preach to the simple as much as he knoweth because himself doth not know of heavenly mysteries as much as they are.—Jermin.
The subject of Proverbs 18:5 has been treated in the Homiletics on chap. 17, Proverbs 17:15 and Proverbs 17:26.