CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 22:3. Are punished, rather “must suffer injury.”
Proverbs 22:4. By humility, rather “The end or reward of humility,” etc. Delitzsch reads “The reward of humility IS the fear of the Lord,” etc.
Proverbs 22:5. Shall be, etc., or Let him keep, etc.
Proverbs 22:6. Train up a child, etc. Miller reads “Hedge in a child upon the mouth of his way;” Delitzsch, “Give to a child instruction according to his way,” i.e., conformably to the nature of youth.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 22:3-4
A HEDGED-UP WAY
I. God will hedge in the way of the froward man. As we have seen in considering former proverbs, men in a fallen condition have a tendency to break loose from restraint—especially from Divine restraint—and to mark out a path for themselves of their own devising. (See on chap. Proverbs 21:8). Every human creature shows more or less wilfulness in regard to their relations to God and His law—choosing rather to fashion his life according to his own ideas than according to the Divine idea and desire concerning him. And this wilfulness, if unchecked, grows with a man’s growth and strengthens with his years, until his frowardness becomes the distinctive feature of his life. But he will not have it all his own way. He will not find the crooked path which he has chosen altogether pleasant and safe. Thorns will prick his feet and pitfalls will endanger his life. He will find himself confronted and fenced-in by laws of retribution which God has set about him to admonish him to forsake his rebellious way. For all the pain of body or mind which men suffer, and all the obstacles they meet with in the way of frowardness are intended to keep them from a deeper pain and a heavier punishment. A thorn-hedge is set by the side of the highway to admonish the traveller to keep the path, and so avoid, it may be, the precipice or the bog on the other side. If he attempts to climb the hedge he will be wounded, and if he is a wise man the thorn-pricks will lead him to abandon his intention, and so to escape more serious harm. If the hedge does this it fulfils the end for which it was planted. So with the pains and penalties with which God hedges in the present way of the wicked man—they are intended to lead him into a better and safer way.
II. It is a parent’s duty to hedge in the way of his child. The father stands in the place of God to his young children in this respect, for his discipline in their early years is the best possible preparation for the discipline of God later on in life. Indeed the wiser the training of the earthly father the less are his children likely to need the corrective discipline of their heavenly parent. The child that is accustomed to bend its will to the will of a good father will not find it so hard to yield obedience to the will of God as he who has had no such training. He will grow up in the practice of sinking his will in that of a wiser will, and it will not be irksome for him so to do. Having found his father’s yoke an easy one, and having in the path of filial obedience tasted pleasures unknown to the rebellious child, he will the more readily accept the yoke of God, and find in His service perfect freedom. But this blessed result will not be attained without much anxious and sometimes painful effort on the part of the parent. For the natural waywardness of man in general manifests itself in very early life. A child would like to be trained in the way it would go, rather than in the way that it should go. But this would in effect be no training at all. For the training of anything implies a crossing of the natural tendency—a repression in one direction, and an effort towards development in another. The training of the vine does not mean a letting it put forth its branches just where it wills or a twining of its tendrils around any object it chooses—it implies a free use of the pruning-knife and of the vine-dresser’s other implements and methods of restraint and guidance. Every child, like every unwise man, would like to set up its own hedge, and put up its own fences, and prescribe the limits and bounds of its own conduct. But as we have already seen, God lets no man do this beyond certain limits, for He Himself sets “thorns and snares in the way of the froward.” It is, therefore, cruel neglect in a parent to allow a child to do it, for thus the tendency to go in the wrong way is strengthened by indulgence, and every year the path of obedience to God becomes more difficult, and looks less inviting. If the parent does not set a hedge about his son’s path, he is only making it certain that he will encounter thorns and snares further on in life. As to the promise attached to the command in this proverb, it can hardly be said to be of universal application. Solomon himself seems to have been an exception to the rule. We have every reason to believe that his father, after his birth, would train his son most carefully and enforce his precepts by example. We must believe that David’s own bitter experience of the thorns and snares in the path of sin made him very anxious to preserve his son from wandering as he had done, and led him to train him most carefully. It is also said of the sons of a man whose life was outwardly stainless—of Samuel—that his sons “walked not in his ways” (1 Samuel 8:3). Yet we cannot suppose that Samuel, who had seen in Eli’s family the miserable fruits of non-restraint, had neglected to train his sons. Yet the exceptions are doubtless very few in number compared with the rule,—that a rightly-trained child does not depart from the right way in his riper years, though, in Bishop Hall’s words, “God will let us find that grace is by gift, not by inheritance.”
“Lord, with what care hast Thou begirt us round!
Parents first season us: then schoolmasters
Deliver us to laws; they send us bound
To rules of reason, holy messengers.
Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin,
Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes,
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in,
Bibles laid open, millions of surprises.
Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness,
The sound of glory ringing in our ears;
Without our shame, within our consciences,
Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears.
Yet all these fences and their whole array,
One cunning bosom—sin blows quite away.”—Herbert.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Proverbs 22:5. A forcible image to show that nothing stands so much in a man’s way as the indulgence of his own unbridled will. The man who is most perversely bent on his purposes is most likely to be thwarted in them.—Bridges.
The ungodly finds nothing in his path to hell but thorns and snares, and yet he presses on in it! A sign of the greatness and fearfulness of the ruin of man’s sin.—Lange.
Proverbs 22:6. Three different meanings have been found of the interpretation, “according to his way.” (See Critical Notes.) It may be—
1. His way in the sense of his own natural characteristics of style and manner,—and then his training will have reference to that for which he is naturally fitted; or—
2. The way of life which he is intended by parents or guardians to pursue; or,
3. The way in which he ought to go. The last is moral, and relates to the general Divine intention concerning man’s earthly course; the second is human and economical; the first is individual, and to some extent even physical. Yet although the third presents the highest standard and has been generally adopted, it has the least support from the Hebrew idiom, Tr. of Lange’s Commentary.
He learneth best any way that knoweth no other, and he best keepeth any way that groweth in it. Two children that are bred and grow up together, are settled in affection the one to the other. Now, it can be but a childish goodness that is in a child; but if the childhood of goodness shall be bred and grow up with the child-hood of man, it will settle the stronger union between them. Aristotle saith, it is a matter of chiefest moment for a man to be accustomed this way or that.—Jermin.