MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 21:16
LIKE TO LIKE
I. The way of understanding. What is this way? In other parts of this book it is called the “path of the just” (chap. Proverbs 4:18. See page 58). “A way of righteousness” (chap. Proverbs 12:28, page 291), and a “way of life” (chap. Proverbs 15:24, page 430). It is a way of understanding, because it is the path or method of life which is followed by those who have well considered their way—who regard both their present and future welfare in the highest sense of the word. The way of righteousness is a way of understanding, because it leads to spiritual life and blessedness, both here and hereafter; therefore those who walk in it give a proof of their wisdom. If we count a man to have no understanding who persists in walking on a road which those who know tell him leads to a precipice over which he must fall, and if the truth of what they say is confirmed by his own knowledge, how much more shall we count those of no understanding who persist in following the path of moral ruin? And by contrast the way of present moral light and life which is ever leading on to more light and life is well named “the way of understanding.”
II. The doom of the wanderer from it. He becomes one of an assembly with whom it is most undesirable to be numbered—the congregation of the dead. The graveyard is a place in which living men never take up their abode. Those who are there are there because they can no longer remain in the dwellings of the living and healthy. They would pollute the homes of those who are in life, and must therefore be separated from them. There is a spiritual graveyard—a place to which those who are destitute of moral life must be banished, because they are unfit for any other dwelling. And there they must remain, for it is the only place suited to their character and disposition. Judas, when he left this world, went to his “own place” (Acts 1:25)—to the place to which he belonged, because it was the abode of those like-minded with himself. From the parable of the rich man and Lazarus we infer that those who become numbered with that congregation will remain there until the great gulf fixed between them and the living is removed (Luke 16:26).
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
The original word here translated remains, signifieth to rest and be quiet. It is rest that giveth understanding, and it is understanding that giveth rest. A disquieted mind doth not readily understand things, and it is the understanding of things that quieteth the mind. In the way, therefore, of understanding, there be many resting-places. He that is wearied with the cares of the world, when he understandeth that man is born to cares, resteth himself therein. He that is toiled in getting the things of this world, when he understandeth how little sufficeth nature, and that when he dieth all shall be taken from him, resteth himself there. He that tireth his brains to search out knowledge, when he understandeth that the greatest part of men’s knowledge is the least of his ignorance, and that to know Jesus Christ is life everlasting, resteth himself there. But he that wandereth from the way of understanding meeteth with no rest in all the ways he goes—his thoughts are in no quietness, his heart hath no contentment, his mind no peace. It is the grave alone that is the bed of his rest; and when he cometh to the congregation of the dead, to the general assembly of all mankind, then he shall be quiet. Or else, to consider the verse as our translation hath it: everyone that understandeth his way is not in the way of understanding. The crafty politician understands his way well enough, and goes on readily in it; the covetous worldling understandeth his way well enough, and goes and gets apace in it; the cunning cheater understandeth his way well enough, and passeth through with it. But none of these are in the way of understanding: that is but one, and is the enlightening of the understanding by the word and grace of God. That is the way of understanding, because thereby we understand ourselves to be in the right way indeed. The man, therefore, that wandereth out of this way, when he hath wandered all his ways, shall end them at last in the congregation of the dead—that is the rendezvous to which all are gathered—and being once there, he shall remain for ever amongst them. For when that change is come, they that have passed the way of understanding shall pass from death to life, but they that have gone out of the way shall only go from one death to another.—Jermin.
Proverbs 21:17 has been treated with Proverbs 21:5-7.