MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 28:3
THE MOST INEXCUSABLE OPPRESSION
I. Oppression from an unexpected quarter. Although poverty sometimes has a very hardening influence upon men, we do not often find it takes the form of oppression of their fellow-sufferers in poverty. On the contrary, the sympathy of one poor man for another is often the brightest spot in his character. But the ability to oppress implies some elevation of the oppressor over the oppressed, and therefore leads us rather to look for the heartless tyrant among those who have known poverty, but who are now in some degree raised above it. And even here we should hardly expect to find an oppressor of the poor. Such a man cannot plead ignorance of the miseries of poverty. We might expect that he would be full of sympathy for those into whose trials his own experience has so fitted him to enter. If we wanted a tender nurse for a wounded man we should expect to find one in him who has himself been wounded, and who knows what bodily pain is, and in a man who has himself been poor we ought to find the most patient and generous ruler and judge of the poor. Oppression from such a quarter is a painful surprise.
II. Oppression to an extreme degree. The oppressor of the proverb is one who has sinned against the knowledge furnished by his own experience, and is therefore a greater transgressor than one who sins without such experimental knowledge. If this barrier is not strong enough to restrain him, he is not likely to be hindered by any less powerful ones, and will therefore allow his cruel and unnatural passions to have full dominion over his conduct. And so it will come to pass that a man, who has been poor if he become an oppressor, will be a more terrible one than he who has been always rich and powerful. It may be regarded as a rule with few exceptions, that he who breaks through the most restraints in order to sin will go to the greatest lengths in it.
ILLUSTRATION
This illustrative comparison is here most impressive. It is founded upon a phenomenon which I have frequently seen, and sometimes felt. A small black cloud traverses [the sky in the latter part of summer or beginning of autumn and pours down a flood of rain that sweeps all before it. The Arabs call it sale; we, a water-spout, or the bursting of a cloud. In the neighbourhood of Hermon I have witnessed it repeatedly, and was caught in one last year, which in five minutes flooded the whole mountain side, washed away the fallen olives—the food of the poor—overthrew stone walls, etc. Every summer threshing-floor along the line of its march was swept bare of all precious food … And such is the oppression of a poor man that oppresseth the poor. These landlords, and sheiks, and emirs are generally poor, hungry, greedy, remorseless, and they come in successive swarms, each more ravenous than his predecessor. On a gigantic scale, every hungry pasha from the capital is such a sale, sweeping over the distant provinces of the empire. Vast regions, formerly covered with golden harvests in their season, and swarming with people full of food and gladness, are now reduced to frightful deserts by their rapacity.—Thomson’s “The Land and the Book.”
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Woeful is the condition when necessity and imbecility meet together and encounter. For necessity hath no mercy, imbecility hath no help. When poverty oppresseth anyone, there is no measure in his oppressing another that is poor. He spares not to strip him naked who hath already no clothes on. He fears not to be a spoiler whom spoiling hath left nothing. For there is nothing that doth so harden the heart of man as his own need; and he hath little or no feeling of another’s misery, who feels the biting of his own. As the rain falls, so the earth bears it; and as oppression dealeth, so must the poor suffer it; for as the earth lieth under all, so doth he. The rich man is a dashing rain upon him, and when he pleaseth, washeth away his means and succour from him … but there is no such sweeping rain unto him as when the oppressor is oppressed by poverty.… For he having nothing, takes all that he can get, and the hunger of his own distress so devoureth all, as that he Jeaveth no food.—Jermin.