CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 25:23. Driveth away. Rather “Brings forward the rain-clouds.” Most modern commentators adopt this rendering of the verb, and read the latter phrase to suit the metaphor—“So a secret or slanderous tongue, a troubled countenance.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 25:23
THE WAY TO TREAT A BACKBITER
It will be seen from a reference to the Critical Notes, that nearly all modern commentators render this verse quite differently from the common version, and so reverse the meaning. It will, however, bear the common rendering. “I confess,” says Wardlaw, “that if the word will bear it at all, our version seems decidedly preferable. There is something tame, commonplace, and of little practical consequence—hardly worth forming the subject of a proverb—in saying that as the north wind brings rain, ‘a backbiting tongue’ brings anger. But the verse as it stands in our translation inculcates a most important lesson.” We therefore take the proverb as we find it in our Bible, as setting forth—
I. An unrighteous action producing a righteous emotion. We have before had brought before us in this book the peculiar iniquity of backbiting and its evil results (see page 274). The special unrighteousness of the act lies, of course, in the fact that the person who is the subject of it, being absent and ignorant of the charge brought against him, has no opportunity of defending himself. A feeling of indignation against such an act, and an expression of it in the countenance, is therefore demanded from every lover of truth and justice. He who will calmly listen to a tale of slander and show no tokens of disapproval, makes himself a partaker of the sin. But it is impossible for a righteous man to act thus. When a putrid body is presented to our bodily senses, if we are healthy men we experience a feeling of revulsion which we cannot conceal. And so if a man is morally healthy he must experience and reveal a strong dislike to the backbiting tongue.
II. The unrighteous action overpowered by the righteous emotion. When the heavy rain-clouds which overspread the sky are dispersed and driven away by the wind, they show themselves to be the weaker of the two contending forces. And so when the backbiting tongue is silenced by the look of righteous indignation, it gives proof that, however strong the workings of evil are, the power of goodness is stronger. Those who set their faces against this or any other vice, may always draw encouragement from the fact that there is a reprover within the breast of the wrong-doer, which in spite of all efforts to stifle it, seconds the reprover from without—wherever the conscience is at all awake, it says Amen to a faithful rebuke, whether administered by word or look. And so it is that a countenance upon which is written righteous anger is so potent a check to a backbiting tongue.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
It is a great encouragement to talebearers, to observe that their wicked stories are heard with attention. If a man looks upon them with a cheerful countenance, and listens to their tales, and makes them welcome to his table, they naturally conclude that the person to whom they speak has as bad a heart as themselves, and they will not fail to bring him new stories of the like kind, as soon as they have got an opportunity to learn or to make them. But if the receiver of stolen goods is a sharer with the thief in his guilt, and if any man that encourages another in evil partakes in his sin, then he that hears the backbiter with complacency is little better than himself, and would probably follow the same trade if he had the same talents for it. We cannot, therefore, clear ourselves from the sin of backbiting, unless we refuse to receive a bad report of our neighbour, and testify our displeasure, by all proper methods, at the base conduct of the assassins that would murder in the dark the good-name of their fellow-creatures. When the murderers of Isbosheth brought their master’s head to David, judging from their own disposition that it would be an acceptable present to him, he treated them in such a manner that no man ever sent another present of the like kind to him.—Lawson.
There is a place for anger as well as for love. As in nature, a gloomy tempest serves some beneficial purposes for which calm sunshine has no faculty; so in morals, a frown on an honest man’s brow is in its own place, as needful and useful as the sweetest smile that kindness ever kindled on the human countenance … We don’t want a fretful passionate man; and if we did, we could find one without searching long or going far. We want neither a man of wrath nor a man of indiscriminating, unvarying softness. We want something with two sides; that is, a solid real character. Let us have a man who loves good and hates evil, and who, in place and time convenient, can make either emotion manifest upon his countenance. The frown of anger is the shade that lies under love and brings out its beauty.—Arnot.
For Homiletics on Proverbs 25:24, see on chap. Proverbs 21:9, page 613.