CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 27:4. Delitzsch reads this verse “The madness of anger and the overflowing of wrath, and before jealousy who keeps his place?”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 27:3-4
WRATH AND ENVY
I. A most unhappy combination. A fool and wrath. Wrath or displeasure is possible to every being capable of emotion. The power to love implies the power to hate, and he who can be pleased can also be displeased. The most tender mother can be angry, and righteously angry, with her child, and we read in Scripture of the “wrath of the Lamb” (Revelation 6:16.) But there is an infinite distance between the wrath of the Holy God, and even between that of a good man or woman, and that of a moral fool. Divine displeasure is an emotion, and never a passion. God is never passive in the hands of His anger. And in proportion as men are like God they always have their displeasure under the control of their will. It is as amenable to their conscience and their reason as an obedient horse to his rider. But a fool is a man who is without power of self-government—who is himself governed first by one passion or desire and then by another—like a ship without a rudder, at the mercy of the winds and waves. When such an one is in the hands of his wrath, a most mischievous and destructive force is at work. For whether we consider its effects on the man himself, or upon the objects of his anger, we may truthfully brand it as burdensome, and cruel and outrageous.
1. It is a cruel burden to the subject of it. A more wretched creature can hardly be found in the universe than a man passive in the hands of his own anger; it is like a heavy weight crushing out of him all power to stand morally erect and self-possessed, and like a knotted scourge inflicting wounds not on the body but on the spirit.
2. The objects of it also find it a painful yoke. In proportion as the fool is in a position to exert his influence over others, in the same proportion is the amount of misery which he can create by his unbridled wrath. Perhaps its effects are nowhere so painfully felt as in the domestic circle. As a master the wrathful fool may make his servants miserable, but they may be able to quit his service and so get beyond his influence. But there is no escape for wife and children from the wrath of a morally foolish husband and father; for such there is a millstone ever about the neck, and tormenting goads always pricking the feet.
II. The most pitiless foe. Terrible as is the unbridled wrath of a fool, there is a passion more to be dreaded. The open battle-field in broad daylight is a place to be shunned, but an ambush at midnight is more certain death. Men fear to meet the lion upon the highroad, but the scorpion concealed among the grass is more dangerous. For some resistance can be offered to an open and avowed enemy, but no defence can be prepared against an unseen foe. And if wrath is like the angry lion, envy is like the deadly scorpion. The first gives some warning of his design, but the latter none. The man of unbridled passion often misses his aim by reason of his unsteady hand—the very excess of his wrath sometimes takes away his power to execute his intention. And he generally deals his blows at his enemy’s face—speaks out his hatred in his hearing, and publicly and openly tries to do him a mischief. But the envious man acts in a different manner. The natures that are most prone to envy have generally some power of self-control—they are more cold-blooded than passionate men. Though they are moral fools, they have generally enough intellectual wisdom to see the best method of bringing to pass their malicious purposes; and they consequently prefer an ambush to an open fight, and choose rather to stab a man in the back than to meet him face to face. In other words, they do not upbraid him openly and give him an opportunity to defend himself, but blacken his character by insinuations when he is absent. And as it is the nature of envy to brood over its grievances in secret, and that of unbridled wrath to manifest its displeasure immediately and openly, the first gathers strength by repression and the other loses it by the very force of its expression.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
As an earthquake ariseth from a tumultuous vapour shut up in the caverns and bowels of the earth, where it tosseth and tumbleth until it break out and overturn all that standeth in the way of it, so envy is a pestilent vapour which lieth in the heart of a man, where it boileth and fretteth until it find occasion to vent itself, and then it tumbleth and throweth down all that standeth in the malicious eye of it. Houses and trees stand firm against a tempest of lightning or a flood of rain, and men stand out against the cruelty of sudden wrath and rage of a man’s lasting anger, but what house or tree standeth against the force of an earthquake, and who is able to stand against the force of envy?—Jermin.
I do not ask for men passionless; this is hominem de homine tollere. Give them leave to be men, not madmen. Anger in the best sense is the gift of God, and it is no small art to express anger with premeditated terms, and on seasonable occasions. God placed anger among the affections engrafted in nature, gave it a seat, fitted it with instruments, ministered it matter whence it might proceed, provided humours whereby it is nourished. It is to the soul as a nerve to the body. The philosopher calls it the whetstone to fortitude, a spur intended to set forward virtue. But there is a vicious, impetuous, frantic anger, earnest for private and personal grudges; not like a medicine to clear the eye, but to put it out.… To cure this bedlam passion … let him take some herb of grace, an ounce of patience, as much of consideration how often he gives God cause to be angry with him, and no less of consideration how God hath a hand in Shimei’s railing—mix all these together with a faithful confidence that God will dispose all wrongs to thy good; hereof be made a pill to purge choler.… Anger is a frantic fit, but envy is a consumption.… Among all mischiefs it is furnished with one profitable quality—the owner of it takes most hurt.… It were well for him that he should dwell alone. It is a pity that he should come into heaven, for to see “one star excel another in glory” would put him again out of his wits.… His cure is hard.… Two simples may do him good if he could be won to take them—a scruple of content and a dram of charity.—T. Adams.
Well then might it be asked: Who is able to stand before envy? Even the perfect innocence of paradise fell before it. Satan lost his own happiness. Then he envied man, and ceased not to work his destruction. (See Wis. 2:23-24). It shed the first human blood that ever stained the ground. (1 John 3:12). It quenched the yearnings of natural affection, and brought bitter sorrow to the patriarch’s bosom. Even the premier of the greatest empire in the world was its temporary victim. Nay more—the Saviour in His most benevolent acts was sorely harassed, and ultimately sunk under its power. “His servants therefore must not expect to be above their Master.”—Bridges.