CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 4:2. Doctrine, Literally something received, handed over; the author so describes it because he received it from his father. The Septuagint and the Vulgate translate by donum, “a gift.”
Proverbs 4:3. Tender and only, “dearly-beloved”—not that Solomon was Bathsheba’s only son (1 Chronicles 3:5).
Proverbs 4:4. Get, Heb. “acquire or buy”—spare no cost. The repetition of the verb makes the injunction more imperative. Forget is a word in Hebrew that takes the preposition from. In the idea of forgetting there is naturally involved that of turning aside or away from the object to be remembered.
Proverbs 4:6. Miller translates the last clause: “Love her, and she shall stand sentry over thee.”
Proverbs 4:7. The first clause of this verse contains only four words, viz: Beginning, or “principal thing;” Wisdom; get wisdom Its terseness has led to various translations. Hitzig and others read: “The highest thing is wisdom.” Miller translates: “As the height of wisdom, get wisdom.” Delitzsch—The beginning of wisdom is: “Get wisdom.” With, not to be taken in the sense of “in connection with,” but “by means of,” or “at the price of.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH— Proverbs 4:1-4
THE RECIPROCAL DUTIES OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN
I. Parental Duty. “He taught me.” Solomon, and all children, hare many claims upon their parents to receive from them instruction in the revelation of God.
1. Parents are responsible for the existence of their children. They are the instrumental cause of their child’s being in the world, of his being in that state of probation upon which hang such “infinite possibilities.”
2. The child is so absolutely ignorant of the life into which he comes. Unavoidable ignorance has always a claim upon knowledge, and the claim is assuredly increased in proportion as those who know and those who do not know are related to each other by a divinely constituted bond. “I am a stranger in the earth” is the claim which every child puts in as a reason why he should be instructed and taught in the way in which he should go. “Hide not God’s commandments from me” is the appeal which the child’s ignorance makes to those who have had some experience in the world.
3. Children claim instruction because of their future relationship to others. The neglect of a child’s education is a sin against more than himself. He will come, in his turn, to influence others. Upon his character will depend, in a great degree, the characters and eternal destinies of many in generations yet to come.
4. Children have a claim upon their parents because they belong to God. If a proprietor of land hands over to the cultivator a piece of virgin soil, he does not relinquish his own claim thereby—he demands that his property shall be restored to him increased in value by being brought under cultivation. The child is given to its parent by God in its undeveloped moral condition, but God retains his own inheritance in the gift. He looks for nurture, for cultivation; he demands from the parent such a fulfilment of parental duties as will ensure to Him that His gift shall grow of more and more worth in the moral universe. A day of reckoning on this matter will assuredly come. Solomon recognises the claim which children have upon their parents by recording his own parents’ conduct in relation to himself and by giving us an example of his own method of instructing his children.
II. Filial Duty. “Hear, ye children.” Parents have claims upon their children.
1. From the simple fact of the relationship. A good father claims the obedience of his son because he is that child’s ordained guide and ruler. He is to his son God’s viceregent so long as his commands are in accordance with God’s law.
2. From their larger experience. They have trodden the path which the youth has yet to traverse, they have climbed the hill which rises yet before him, they have tested the worth of the things which will allure him. Their superior knowledge entitles them to say, “Hear the instruction of a father.”
3. From the self-denial which, as parents, they have exercised. All that a good mother and father have done and suffered in order to advance the welfare of their children, their toil and forbearing love, constitutes a powerful claim to their children’s grateful, reverential, attention and love. Solomon here gives an example of the honour in which every child should hold godly parents.
A PARENT’S MOST PRECIOUS GIFT
Good Doctrine. Proverbs 4:2.
1. Because without it there can be no good character. There can be no right feelings towards God unless there has been right teaching about Him. True views of God can only come from true doctrine concerning Him. Without a right view of God there is no motive power to form character. A man must know God as He is before he can begin to follow Him. There must be a true mirror to give a correct reflection.
2. Because if there is not the beginning of a good character, there will be an increasingly bad one. When men have no right doctrine concerning God, in other words, when they do not know Him as He is, they invariably make a God after their own conceptions. They bring God down to their level. “Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself” (Psalms 50:21), has been the fatal mistake of men in all ages. If a man falls overboard from the deck of a vessel, he will not remain long at the level of his first fall. If he is not rescued he will sink to such a depth as will be out of all comparison with it. He will go lower and lower till his body finds the bottom of the ocean. Man’s first fall from obedience to disobedience was a great fall, but he has not been content with this moral distance between himself and his Maker, he has tried to drag God down with him and thus has brutalised and demonised the divine that was still within him. In more than a material sense he has “changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible man” (Romans 1:23). This changing of the truth of God into a lie will always take place where there is an absence of right conceptions of God, and the result must always be the moral deterioration which Paul gives as the result in Romans 1:26-32. There is as much relation between “good” or “right” doctrine and good and holy character as there is between good bread and pure water and a healthy body. Good bread will make good muscle and sinew, bad bread will not nourish the human frame. Pure water is indispensable to health, stagnant water will breed a hundred diseases. And mistaken views about God must be fruitful of soul disease. Results prove this to be the case. National and individual history prove the truth of it. “By their fruits ye shall-know them” (Matthew 7:20). As we can foretell what the quality of the harvest will be from the seed sown, so can we tell what has been the character of the seed from that which it brings forth.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Proverbs 4:2. The common cry is “Who will show us any good?” and every man will lend both ears to a good bargain. The doctrine here delivered is good every way, whether you look to the author, matter, or effect of it.—Trapp.
God’s commandments are not like the commandments of any other, which are directed to the benefit of the commanders: but God’s commandments do only bring good to him that is commanded.… What is there so absurd, as to despise His commands who doth command that He may have matter for rewarding: for God doth not want our obedience, but we do want His commanding. Therefore it is said, “As the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their master, and the eyes of a maiden to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God until he have mercy upon us, that is, until He command us something, and that, thou, O David, callest mercy.—Jermin.
Good.
I. In itself. It is most majestic, as containing not trivial and common sentences, but high parables and extraordinary mysteries. It gives the highest direction in the greatest things.
II. It is good to us. Good for profit and pleasure. Good for soul and body (1 Corinthians 15:2; Deuteronomy 28:1). Good for this life and the life to come (1 Timothy 4:8). Good when it pleaseth us (Psalms 119:7). Good when it crosseth us (Isaiah 39:8).—Francis Taylor.
Proverbs 4:3. Noteworthy is the prominence given to the mother’s share in the training of the child. Among the Israelites and the Egyptians alone of the nations of the old world, was the son’s reverence for the mother placed side by side with that which he owed to his father.—Plumptre.
Proverbs 4:4. Training discipline, not foolish indulgence, is the truest evidence of affection to our tender and beloved ones (chap. Proverbs 13:24; with 1 Kings 1:6).—Bridges.
“He taught me.” The prayer of Solomon, at Gibeon, for wisdom, as the principal of God’s gifts, was suggested to him by his father David, just before his death. (See 1 Chronicles 28:9; 1 Chronicles 29:19).—Wordsworth.
Here Solomon again commands the involuntary, because he has shown the steps to it. We cannot, of all other things in the world, live by a voluntary act, but we can “keep watch over the commandments.” I mean, we can, as it is a voluntary act, if God makes us willing. But we cannot live as a voluntary thing except through some form of anterior obedience.—Miller.