CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 2:12. Deliver, “snatch,” as a brand out of the fire. Evil man, rather “an evil way.”
Proverbs 2:13. “Level” paths.
Proverbs 2:16. Strange, “unknown,” “wanton” (see 1 Kings 11:1-8).
Proverbs 2:17. Guide, or “companion,” “confidant,” her lawful husband.
Proverbs 2:18. House, in the East means “interests;” a man’s whole blended well-being (Exodus 1:21).—Miller. (On Proverbs 2:16-18 see Note at the beginning of Chap. 7)
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH— Proverbs 2:12-20
THE CHARACTER OF THOSE FROM WHOM WISDOM PRESERVES
I. The evil man.
1. His speech is corrupt, Proverbs 2:12. The closed grave contains death and holds within it the seeds of pestilence, but while it remains unopened the corrupt influence remains enclosed in its narrow walls. But should it be opened, and its foulness allowed to fill the air, it begins to set in motion what will strike men down to its own level. The mouth of the wicked man while kept shut is a closed grave, his iniquity is shut up within himself, but when he speaks out the thoughts of his heart his mouth is as an open sepulchre, and he spreads around him moral disease and death.
2. He is a man of progressive iniquity. “He walks in the ways of darkness.” When a stone is set in motion, the momentum given to it, if no other law comes into operation to prevent it, will carry it to the lowest level in the direction in which it travels. The progress of wickedness is downhill, and walking in the ways of darkness implies a destination which in Scripture is called “outer darkness.”
3. He delights in his downward progress. Sorrow and joy are revealers of human hearts. The saint rejoices in whatsoever things are pure, lovely, and of good report, and in his increase of power to do the same. That which rejoices him reveals his heart. The sinner that “rejoices to do evil and delights in the forwardness of the wicked,” brings to light the hidden things of darkness that are within him.
II. The wicked woman.
1. She is, pre-eminently, a covenant-breaker. The ribs of a vessel hold and keep together the whole structure, and enable it to keep its cargo safe. If the ribs give way, all goes to pieces, and the precious things which have been stored up within the ship are lost in the ocean. Human society is belted together—kept from going to pieces—by covenants. They are the ribs which keep together the State. The marriage covenant holds the first place. The woman whose character is here depicted has broken the bonds of this most sacred covenant—to which God was a witness (the covenant of an institution of His own ordination)—and has taken to the “strange” way of the devil. Well may she be called a strange woman. That a woman should be guilty of such a crime—should choose such a course of life, so opposed to all that is pure and womanly—is indeed a mystery.
2. She is a destroyer, not only of herself, but of others. When the river has broken through its proper boundaries there is a present and continual destruction, of which the bursting of its banks was only the beginning. This woman in the past broke the moral boundaries of her life, and is now not content to go to ruin herself, but tries to take others with her. To this end are her false and flattering words, of which we shall hear more in chapter Proverbs 5:3. She carries her victims beyond hope of recovery. There are no rules without exceptions. We know that there are those who have for a time been under the influence of such characters, and have returned to the paths of virtue and honour. But these are rare exceptions. In the main, it is, alas! true that “none that go unto her return again.” A vessel founders at sea, and we say that the crew is lost, although one survivor may have been rescued. We speak of an army being destroyed if one escapes to tell the tale. Where one who has taken hold on her paths struggles back to life and purity, thousands go down with her to death, bodily, social, and spiritual.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Proverbs 2:12. To snatch (see “Critical Notes.”) “The way of evil.” The terms begin gently. It is only the gentle aspects that are dangerous at first. These are so fascinating that it requires us to be snatched to keep us out of the ways of darkness.—Miller.
Proverbs 2:13. Among the pests of men, none are such virulent pests of everything that is good as those that once made a profession of religion, but have left the way of uprightness. The stings of conscience which such persons experience, instead of reclaiming them, tend only to irritate their spirits, and inflame them into fierce enmity against religion.—Lawson.
Darkness, as thus set in contrast with uprightness, may be interpreted as descriptive both of the nature of the ways, and of their tendency and end. The man who walks in uprightness walks in light. His eye is “single.” There is “none occasion of stumbling in him.” He has but one principle; his “eyes look right on, his eyelids look straight before him.” He is not always looking this way and that, for devious paths that may suit a present purpose, but presses on ever in the same course; and thus all is light, all plain, all safe. “The ways of darkness” are the ways of concealment, evasion, cunning, tortuous policy and deceit. He who walks in them is ever groping; hiding himself among the subtleties of “fleshly wisdom”: and being ways of false principle and sin, they are ways of danger, and shame, and ruin.—Wardlaw.
There is a strictly causal and reciprocal relation between unrighteous deeds and moral darkness. The doing of evil produces darkness, and darkness produces the evil doing. Indulged lusts put out the eye-sight of the conscience; and under the darkened conscience the lusts revel unchecked.—Arnot.
The light stands in the way of their wicked ways as the angel did in Balaam’s way to his sin.—Trapp.
Proverbs 2:14. Though it be wormwood which they drink (Lamentations 3:15), yet being drunk with it, they perceive not the bitterness thereof, but like drunken men rejoice in their shame and misery.—Jermin.
Better is the sorrow of him that suffereth evil than the jollity of him that doeth evil, saith St. Augustine.—Trapp.
Here is a note of trial to discern our spiritual estate. Wicked men rejoice in sin; good men sorrow more for sin than for troubles.… Many triumph in their evil deeds because they have no good to boast of. And men are naturally proud and would boast of something.—Francis Taylor.
Proverbs 2:16. There is no viler object in nature than an adulteress. Though born and baptised in a Christian land, she is to be looked upon as a heathen woman and a stranger, and as self-made brutes are greater monsters than natural brute beasts, so baptised heathens are by far the worst of pagans.—Lawson.
This strange woman is an emblem of impenitence. The passage 16–19, means the seductiveness and yet the betraying wretchedness of impenitence. The woman who has left her husband has also left her God; and the nulla vestigia retrorsum witnessed in her dupes is the warning for the saint by which he keeps clear of her undoing. No man would err who would treat of adultery as having its lessons here. But no man would understand the passage who did not understand it further as a great picture of impenitence. The warnings are two:
(1) the un-stopping-short character of sin; she who wrongs her husband will be seen universally wronging God; and
(2) the unrecuperative history of the lost.—Miller.
Twice Solomon uses a similar expression, “the strange woman (even) the stranger,” to impress more forcibly on the young man the fact that her person belongs to another. The literal and spiritual adulteress are both meant. The spiritual gives to the world her person and her heart, which belong by right to God. In this sense the foreign women who subsequently drew aside Solomon himself, were “strange women,” not so much in respect to their local distance from Israel, as in respect to their being utterly alien to the worship of God. Lust and idolatry were the spiritual adultery into which they entrapped the once wise king. How striking that he should utter beforehand a warning which he himself afterwards disregarded.—Fausset.
We are not to forget that the accomplished seducer has herself perhaps been seduced. The fair and flattering words, the endless arts of allurement, are on both sides.—Wardlaw.
One who is as it were, a stranger to her own house and husband by faithlessness (Hitzig), and hence a type of anything that is false and seductive in doctrine or practice.… By God’s goodness Solomon’s words in this divinely inspired book were an antidote to the poison of his own vicious example.—Wordsworth.
Proverbs 2:17. False doctrine and false worship are in Scripture compared to harlotry and adultery. (Numbers 14:33; Judges 2:17; Judges 8:33; Psalms 106:39; Revelation 17:1-2; Revelation 18:3.—Wordsworth.
It is God that is the guide of her youth, whoever may be under Him; it is God’s covenant that is made, whosoever may be the contractor in it. It is God who is first forsaken, then forgotten; forsaken in the beginning of wickedness, forgotten in the hardened practice of it. God hath appointed guides for youth—to stay the weakness of it, and to which, as unto God, youth ought to yield obedience. For elder years He hath appointed covenants as bonds and chains to hold them sure.—Jermin.
There is no trusting them that will fail God and their near friends. If they fail God, they will fail men for their advantage. If they fail friends—much more strangers.—Francis Taylor.
Proverbs 2:18. When you get into the company of the licentious, you are among the dead. They move about like men in outward appearance, but the best attributes of humanity have disappeared—the best affections of nature have been drained away from their hearts.—Arnot.
Her house is not a building reared up, but inclined and bowed down, and she who dwelleth in it will, by her life, bring thee to the dead.… Death is here twice mentioned to show that it is a double death, a temporal death, and an eternal death, to which she bringeth men.—Jermin.
Proverbs 2:19. Who would cast himself into a deep pit in the hopes of coming out alive, when almost all that fell into it were dashed in pieces.—Lawson.
It is as hard to restore a lustful person to chastity as it is to restore a dead person to life.—Chrysostom.
A sin which, I am verily persuaded, if there be another that slays her thousands, may with truth be affirmed to slay its ten thousands.—Wardlaw.
Proverbs 2:20. Here follows the whole ground of the exhibition: “That,” for the very purpose that “thou mayest walk in the way of good men.” This is a grand, pregnant doctrine. This bad life was abandoned to its worst partly as a lesson.—Miller.
It is not enough to shun the evil way, unless men walk in the good way.—Muffet.
He that walks in the way of good men shall meet with good men, and that shall keep him from the company of evil men and women. The paths of the righteous are too narrow for such: he shall not be troubled with them.—Jermin.