CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 21:5. Thoughts, rather the counsels, the calculatings.
Proverbs 21:6. Vanity tossed to and fro. Rather a fleeting breath. The Hebrew word hebel, here translated vanity, means rapour.
Proverbs 21:7. Robbery, or violence, rapacity.
Proverbs 21:8. Zöckler translates the first clause of this verse, “Crooked is the way of the guilty man.” Fausset remarks that the Hebrew word ish (man) expresses a man once good; froward implies his perversity, by having left the good way. Right, i.e., direct, straightforward.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 21:5; Proverbs 21:7; Proverbs 21:17
TWO ROADS TO WEALTH
I. The most likely road to lead to wealth.
1. Thoughtful diligence as opposed to thoughtless haste. We have before considered the necessity of thought before action (see on chap. Proverbs 20:18), and the same idea is conveyed in the use of the first noun here (see Critical Notes). But although it is wise and necessary to think before we act, thinking must only be preparatory to action, and must not take its place. It is good for a man to make a good plan of his house before he begins to build; but a house on paper only will not shelter him from the winter storms. It is advisable for the captain to study his chart well before he embarks upon his voyage, but if he does no more he will never reach the desired port. So it is good for a man to take counsel with himself and others before he sets out upon the voyage of commercial life—before he begins to build for a competency or a fortune; but after the thought and with the thought there must be action, and there must be painstaking and persevering action. He must not be all eagerness to-day and indifference to-morrow—he must not work hard this week and neglect his business next week;—such a man may get rich by a mere chance speculation or by a dishonest act, but, apart from all higher considerations, it is not the best road, because it is not the most likely road. No doubt there are men who have made their fortunes by short cuts—by what is called luck, or by craft and robbery—but these are the exceptions, and the way of diligent perseverance is the one by which riches are generally gotten.
2. Self-denial as opposed to self-indulgence. “He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man: he that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich” (Proverbs 21:17). He who spends in self-indulgence as fast as he earns will be always poor. The lover of pleasure and luxury will not be a lover of hard work, and as we have just seen, it is that alone by which most men grow rich. And the extravagant and idle man will not be very likely to keep within his means, and to confine himself to honest ways of making money. And both these roads are roads which lead in the end to ruin. It is not likely that Solomon here refers to any poverty except material poverty. But it is also true that no man whose heart is set upon the gratification of his own selfish desires—whose life is one of self-indulgent ease—can ever be rich in the only true and lasting riches. He must always be in poverty as to character, as to intellectual wealth, and as to the gratitude and respect of those whom he might bless with his riches. “If, therefore, ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s (or another’s), who shall give you that which is your own?” Luke 16:11-12). He is a poor man who has nothing but what he must leave behind him when he leaves the world. The greatest millionaire has nothing he can call his own if he has not a godly character.
II. The only blessed road to wealth, viz., the way of truth as opposed to lying, the way of honesty as opposed to dishonesty. We need not consider these sins separately, for they are inseparable in human character and conduct. The liar is a thief, for by his tongue he cheats men of their rights, and the thief lies in action as well as in word. Solomon does not say that thieves and liars shall not grow rich. As a matter of fact they often do, and leave far behind them in their race those who are plodding slowly on in the path of honest diligence. But he looks to the end of such a way of making money, and of those who so make it. It often vanishes like a vapour (see Critical Notes), while the man who made it still lives. One falsehood leads to another, and a little dishonesty bringing success leads to another and another, each one on a larger scale, until the bubble becomes too thin, and it bursts and all is gone. But if the rogue keeps his fortune till the last—if he meets death a rich man, and is buried with all the pomp of wealth,—retribution awaits him before the tribunal of a righteous God. He sought death and destruction while he lived, and he found it even here;—destruction of character and spiritual death, and he who here “refused to do judgment” goes to meet his judge a morally self-ruined man—one whose spiritual deathblow has been dealt by his own hand. (On this subject see also Homiletics on chap. Proverbs 13:11, page 306.)
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Proverbs 21:5. Haste may have much of diligence in the temperament. But as indolence is its defect, this is its excess, its undisciplined impulse. The hand too often goes before, and acts without the judgment. Hence our English philosopher wisely counsels us—“not to measure dispatch by the times of sitting, but by the advancement of the business.” A wise man had it for a bye-word, when he saw men hasten to a conclusion—“Stay a little that we may make an end the sooner.” To choose time is to save time, and an unreasonable motion is but “beating the air.” The heavenly race is not to be run by so many heats, but by a steady course. “Run,” not with haste or speed, but “with patience the race set before us.” (Hebrews 12:1.) The seed springing up in haste withered. (Matthew 13:20-21.)—Bridges.
Proverbs 21:6. They seek death because they not only walk in the way to it, but run and fly with post haste as if they were afraid they should come too late or that hell would be full before they got thither. Thus Balaam’s ass never carries him fast enough after the wages of wickedness. Set but a wedge of gold before Achan, and Joshua that could stop the sun in his course, cannot stay him from fingering of it. Judas, in selling his Master, what he doth, doth quickly.—Trapp.
Treasures; literally stores; from a root to shut up. “Tongue;” standing for all instruments of labour (see comment on chap. Proverbs 12:6). “Lying;” not telling lies in the worldly sense, for, so put, decent sinners would miss the signification, but lying in that high sense in which the most honest worldling may fill the portrait. “Tongue;” just coincident with fact, is of the haste of the last verse; that untrue uttering of thought against conviction in one’s self, and, therefore, hardly to be dreamed of as spared by the Most High. Stores got by this lying career of business may seem solid, because they may be whole blocks of granite in some fire-proof square mile of street; and yet as to their possession the wise man employs a singularly intensive figure. They are driven breath! Surely he will pause at that! But no! They are driven breath as of men chasing after death!… The meaning is, that the hot breath of a man rushing to his doom is like the money made by the deceived impenitent. First, it is utterly perishable; second, it betokens the speed; and third, the voluntary rush to get himself to ruin.—Miller.
And forget not what the “lying tongue” includes—that he is chargeable with the evil who pretends, in any way, to be what he is not, to have what he has not, not to have what he has, to have said what he has not said, or to have done what he has not done, or not to have said and done what he has said and done; who tries to gain an end by any word, or act, or look, or even by silence and concealment designed to convey a false impression—by any means whatever not in harmony with honest truth—with “simplicity and godly sincerity.” This, says Solomon, “is a vanity tossed to and fro of them that seek death.” It is a “vanity;” inasmuch as it involves both folly and sin—the folly being made evident in ultimate detection, exposure, shame, and loss—loss of character, loss of confidence, and many a time loss of even what the falsehood had acquired. It is “tossed to and fro.” Men learn it from one another. The man who has been imposed upon retaliates—he has no satisfaction until he has succeeded in duping him by whom he has himself been taken in, in practising on him an equal or a better trick. It is practised with little thought—with the vanity of a light and inconsiderate mind—and laughed at, in many instances, when it proves successful, instead of engendering remorse. Success produces a hundred imitators: and the cheats and the dupes are successively reversed, the dupe becoming in his turn the cheat, and the cheat the dupe.—Wardlaw.
Proverbs 21:17. Self-indulgence is not human happiness; it is a delirium, not a delight. It is a mere titillation of the dying nerves, not a Divine thrill of our imperishable sensibilities and powers. Its music is the notes of a maniac, not the strains of a seraph.—David Thomas.
He may be rich secularly. For here is a proverb that on earth has but a partial verity. But now, spiritually it is as settled as the heavens. “He that loveth his life shall lose it” (John 12:25). A man cannot scale heaven for its “wine.” Unless a man gets higher objects than himself, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And, therefore, it is literally true that the wealth that the soul attains is never made by the very most feverish desire to escape, or by the very most impassioned thirst for the mere joy of heaven. “Man;” the higher name for man. He may be ever so skilful.… “Loving;” not, if it loves, but because it loves. It is no harm to love happiness; but it cannot be in loving it, or because we love it, that we can create everlasting riches.—Miller.
Strange as it may seem, the way to enjoy pleasure is not to love it; to live above it; to “rejoice as though we rejoiced not; to use the world, as not abusing it” (1 Corinthians 7:30-31); never pursuing it as our portion, or as making the happiness of an immortal being. The man who gives his whole heart and time to the love of pleasure, and sacrifices to it all his prudence and foresight, is surely on the highroad to poverty. On the same road is he that loveth wine, under the power of a “mocking delusion.” He that loveth oil—one of the most precious fruits of Canaan—may find, that “those who could not live without dainties came to want necessaries.”—Bridges.