CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 18:6. Calleth for. Stuart understands this in the sense of “to deserve.”
Proverbs 18:8. Wounds. The word so translated occurs only here and in chap. Proverbs 26:22, and will bear very different renderings. Some translate it words of sport (Stuart and Zockler); others, with Delitzsch, dainty morsels; others, “whispers, soft breezes.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Proverbs 18:6-8
FOLLY AND ITS RESULTS
I. None but a foolish man seeks contention. As we saw in the previous chapter (Proverbs 18:14) contention or strife is an evil of which none at its beginnings can see the end. It may seem a very insignificant deed to strike a flint and steel together so as to produce a single spark, but one spark may produce a terrible and destructive fire. When a settler in a forest rubs two dry sticks together the act seems a trifling one, but the friction in time develops the latent heat of the wood, and there is enough fire brought into activity to lay low many a mighty forest tree. None but foolish men and children ever play with fire, and when they do it they generally suffer themselves first, but they are often not the only sufferers. So is it with contention, or a dispute in words. Wise men are often obliged to contend for truth and right, but they never seek an occasion of dispute. But there are moral fools who think it only an amusement to pick a quarrel, little heeding what the consequences of it may be, not caring if blows succeed to angry words, or perhaps even desiring that they should do so. But although a man may play with fire and escape unharmed, or may even apply a torch to his neighbour’s house without singeing so much as a hair of his own head, no fool’s lips enter into contention or call for strokes without bringing retribution upon his own head. “His mouth” is in his own “destruction,” and “his lips are the snare of his soul,” for it is a law as old as the universe that “with what measure ye meet it shall be measured to you again” (Matthew 6:1-2). The man who seeks contention will alway find others like-minded with himself who will be willing to do for him what he has done for others, and he who “calls for strokes” upon his fellow-creatures will receive them upon his own head with compound interest.
II. None but a cruel man will be a tale-bearer. A quarrelsome, passionate man is a fool, and he is also a cruel man, but he is not so cruel as the talebearer. The first man wounds, but he inflicts his injury in open daylight and in the front of his victim, but the second is like the treacherous footpad whose face is never seen and whose step is never heard, but who comes up behind his prey in the dark and leaves no trace behind but the mortal sword-thrust. But it must not be forgotten that there must always be two persons implicated in the guilt and cruelty of thus killing the reputation of a fellow-creature. The tale-bearer must have a repository for his slanders—the busy tongue must have a listening ear or no mischief would be done, and tale-bearing would die out for want of an atmosphere in which it could live. A reference to the Critical Notes will show that the word translated “wounds” may be rendered “dainties,” and it is because evil reports of others are so keenly relished by an unsanctified soul that the words of a tale-bearer are able to inflict such suffering and work so much ill in the world.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Proverbs 18:6. The emperor Julian used to banter the Christians with that precept of our Lord, “When thine adversary smites thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other also:” but Christians consult their ease as well as their consciences when they obey this precept in the spirit of it; whereas proud and passionate fools, when they give vent to their rancorous spirits, because they cannot bear the shadow of an indignity, not only turn the other cheek to their adversary, but smite, and urge, and almost force him to strike and destroy them.—Lawson.
Proverbs 18:8. The bite of a viper is not so deadly as the wound of these “talebearers’ ” stories and insinuations. The truth is they contrive to infuse their poison without a bite. If they would but appear in their true character;—would they but show their fangs, and make us feel them, we should be put upon our guard. We know the viper. We shun it. And when it has unhappily succeeded in wounding us, we instantly have recourse to means for preventing the poison from getting into the mass of the blood, and pervading the system. But these human vipers infuse their poison in the language of kindness and love. “Their words are smoother than oil; yet are they drawn swords;”—envenomed fangs, of which the virus gets into our system ere we are aware, works its mischievous and morally deadly effects, and becomes incapable of extraction. Every attempt at its removal still leaves some portion of it behind. There is, in the original word, an implication of softness, simplicity, undesignedness, which only gives the secret weapon with which the wound is inflicted the greater keenness.—Wardlaw.
The tongue of the tale-bearer is a two-edged sword, at once it cutteth on both sides, and his words are his wounds, at once wounding both him of whom he speaketh and him to whom he speaketh. To the one he gives the wounds of his slandering, to the other the wounds of his flattering. The one he woundeth so, that his blow is neither heard, seen, nor felt. The other he woundeth so, that though his blow be heard, seen, and felt, yet it is not perceived: in both they go down into the heart, as revealing the heart of the one, and as removing the heart of the other from him.… Or the words may be translated, the words of a talebearer are as smoothing words: for he frameth his own words to as much softness, as those which he reporteth he maketh to be hard. And indeed, as they sound, they are commonly so pleasing, that they easily slip down into the heart, where they are readily entertained.—Jermin.