CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 19:16. Miller reads this verse “He that guards the commandment guards himself; in scattering his ways he dies.” (See his comment.) Hitzig’s rendering of the last clause agrees with Miller’s.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 19:16
A DOUBLE KEEPING
I. A keeping of the Divine commandments. What is it to “keep the commandment?” Dr. Miller translates this verb to guard or watch. Taken in this sense therefore the proverb implies that there is need—
1. To lay up God’s law in our hearts. It is to be our constant aim to know the will of God—the words which He has spoken, the commands which He has given, are to be constantly kept in remembrance and made the principal subject of our thoughts. We are to tread in the footsteps of the man described in the first Psalm, whose “delight is in the law of the Lord” and who “meditates” upon it “day and night. But the word as it is commonly understood implies—
2. To translate God’s law into life, It is one thing to know the will of God, it is another thing to do it. Knowledge must come before obedience, but knowledge alone will not save the soul from death.
II. A keeping of the human soul. There is but one way to guard the human soul from the dangers to which it is exposed, and that is by complying with the demands of the God who can alone give spiritual life. He commands us to yield ourselves unreservedly to his guidance, to accept his method of being made right in relation to His law, to fight against the evil tendencies of our fallen nature, and to seek His help to overcome them. In doing this He has promised that we shall find that emancipation from the bondage of sin, that awakening of spiritual faculties, and that sense of His favour which alone is the life of the soul. We have before dwelt upon proverbs which embody truths similar to those contained in this verse. (See on chap. Proverbs 11:3, page 195; chap. Proverbs 10:8, page 151; chap. Proverbs 13:6; Proverbs 13:13-14, pages 299, 312, 313; chap. Proverbs 16:17, page 479.)
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Keep means to retain. Guard means to watch. The root of the present word means to bristle, then to watch close, either from the bristling of spears, or from a sharp stave. There is a philosophy in these words, … viz., that conscience is vagrant. We have to watch. Like the mind itself, it is hard to hold it to the point. Attention is our whole voluntary work. And, to a most amazing degree, the Scriptures are framed upon this idea. We are to remember now our Creator (Ecclesiastes 12:1). We are to remember the Sabbath day (Exodus 20:8). We are to “observe to do,” etc. (this very word guard). See Deuteronomy 5:1; Deuteronomy 5:32, et passim. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed (this same word guarding) thereto according to Thy word” (Psalms 119:9). “Guards himself” (the same word). (See Critical Notes.) This is an iron link of sequence which no Anti-Calvinistic thought can shake. He who stands sentry over the “commandment” stands sentry over himself; literally “his soul.” There is no helplessness in man other than that tardema, or deep sleep (Proverbs 19:15) which “sloth” wilfully casts him into, and which a voluntary slothfulness perpetually increases and maintains.” The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are aliens.” The proverb advances upon this in the second clause. What more voluntary than a man’s “way?” It has a voluntary goal, it has a daily journeying, and it includes all that is voluntary. Seize a man at any moment. All that he is upon is part of his life’s travel. Now, a Christian has but one way. So far forth as he is a Christian, he has but one end, and one path for reaching it. There is a beautiful unitariness in his journeying. It is a habit of Scripture to turn attention to the scattered life of the lost. They have no one end. “If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light,” says the Saviour (Matthew 6:23). Thou “hast scattered thy ways to the strangers,” says Jeremiah (Proverbs 3:13); this same expression. “Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way” (Jeremiah 2:36). Despiseth (English version) suits the lexicon and suits the sense, for certainly the lost man has less respect for his way and life than the pardoned believer; but “scattering” is equally legitimate and common; more strengthened by analogy, and more in keeping with the first clause, where the verb to guard stands more opposed to vagrant and distraught ideas. “Dies;” see Job 5:2. Corruption is seated in the soul, but not out of reach by any means. A man can increase it. What we do outside kills inwardly. A man’s counting-house might seem to have little to do with the state of his soul, but it is shaping it all the time. If he scatters his ways he is killing his soul, and what we are to remark is, that there is an ipso actu condition of the effect (as in chap. Proverbs 11:19) which is expressed in the Hebrew. The vagrancy of a morning’s worldliness is that much more death, as punctually administered as any of the chemistries of nature. The form is participial. It is “in scattering,” or “as scattering,” his ways that “he dies.”—Miller.