CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 20:30. The blueness of a wound. Cutting wounds (Delitzsch), Wounding stripes (Zöckler). Miller translates the “welts” (i.e., the tumid and purple confines of a wound), cleanse as though an evil, “that is, although painful and deformed, they have a clear office, viz., to purge away the sore.” Wardlaw suggests that the word, being etymologically derived from a verb denoting to join together, may be translated compressions, and says, “The compressions of a wound are necessary for cleansing out of it the prurient and peccant humour, which would prevent its healing; they are, at the same time, in many cases exceedingly painful, and would only be endured or inflicted from necessity. And as they thus clean the wound and promote its healing, so in a moral sense does the severity of discipline affect with salutary and cleansing influence the condition of the inner man.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 20:30
PAIN AS A PREVENTIVE OF PAIN
For the different renderings of this verse, see the Critical Notes. However we translate it the thoughts suggested are the same, viz:—
I. That pain in the present may prevent greater pain in the future. When the surgeon is called in to examine a wounded man, the examination of the wound may give him more pain than he would have suffered if he had been let alone; it may bring far more present suffering to extract the ball, or to insert the probe, than it would have done simply to bandage the wound. But the pain of to-day is to ensure days of healthful rest by and by; if the present suffering was not inflicted, months and years of pain in the future might be the result. The pain of mind or body inflicted upon a child of five or ten years old, is intended by its parent to prevent greater moral or physical pain when he is fifty or seventy. There is no human creature who can afford to do without the pruning-knife at some period of its life; and if the pruning is not administered, the penalty will be paid either in this world or the next. The wise and loving parent gives pain in youth to prevent pain to his child in manhood, and the All-wise and Loving Father, God, subjects His children to pain in the present life to prevent a deeper and more lasting pain in the life to come. He pricks the conscience by His word to bring men to repentance, and so to salvation from the “wrath to come,” and He sees even in His own children so much “evil” remaining that He is compelled to visit “their transgressions with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes” (Psalms 89:32), in order to “cleanse” their characters.
II. Pain of body may be beneficial to the human spirit. This is a subject to which our attention has been before directed. See on chap. Proverbs 13:24, page 334, and on chap. Proverbs 17:10, page 510.