CRITICAL NOTES,—
Proverbs 6:12. A naughty person, “a worthless man.”
Proverbs 6:13. Teacheth, “motions.”
Proverbs 6:14. Frowardness, “perverseness.”
Proverbs 6:16. Six, yea, seven. “A peculiar proverbial form, for which Arabic and Persian gnomic literature supply numerous illustrations. Eister probably gives the simplest and most correct explanation, deriving it “purely from the exigencies of parallelism.” “The form of parallelism could not, on account of harmony, be sacrificed in any verse. But how should a parallel be found for a number? Since it was not any definite number that was the important thing, relief was found by taking one of the next adjacent numbers as the parallel to that which was chiefly in mind” (Lange’s Commentary).
Proverbs 6:17. A proud look, literally, “haughty eyes.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH— Proverbs 6:12-19
A STUDENT OF INIQUITY
I. We have in these words a picture of a man so wicked that he makes it his study how to commit sin. The sin of many men, perhaps of most men, arises from thoughtlessness, weakness, or slothfulness (see Proverbs 6:9-10), but there are others who make sin their business, and apply themselves to it with as much diligence as the merchant gives to his trade, or the man of letters to his pursuit of knowledge. “He deviseth mischief” (Proverbs 6:14), “his heart deviseth wicked imaginations” (Proverbs 6:18). Those who wish to compass any particular end must think upon the means by which they can accomplish it. Progression in iniquity is not always accomplished without thought, and wicked men have to plan much and think deeply sometimes before their malicious devices are ripe for execution. The thief has to study his profession before he can become an accomplished burglar. The sharper must spend much time in acquiring the skill by which he preys upon less experienced gamblers. The murderer must ponder deeply how he is to do his bloody deed without detection. It cost Haman a good deal of thinking before he could devise a scheme likely to injure Mordecai. The chief priests and scribes held many consultations before they could compass the death of Christ (Mark 11:18; Mark 14:1-55, etc.). The wicked man of the text is a student of ways and means.
2. He is constant in his studies. If a man professes to make any branch of knowledge his particular study and only applies himself to it by fits and starts, we know he is not much in earnest about it, but if he is constant in his application, he demonstrates by his perseverance that he intends, if possible, to excel. The wicked man here pictured by Solomon has made up his mind not to fail through lack of continuous application, “he deviseth mischief continually” (Proverbs 6:14). If one plan fails, he begins to form another; when one scheme has brought the desired end, he at once sets to work at a fresh one; as a natural consequence—
3. He makes progress, “he walks with a froward mouth” (Proverbs 6:12), his feet become “swift in running to mischief” (Proverbs 6:18). The man who is always in the practice of any art can hardly stand still in it. He can hardly fail to become more and more of an adept. He sees where he might have done better yesterday and supplies the deficiency next time. And this is true of the work of wickedness as of any other work, “practice makes perfect.” There are men, for instance, who from constant practice “lie like truth.” The more the man studies how to injure his fellow-creatures, the more easily he can plan; the oftener he plans, the easier he finds it.
4. In order to carry out his designs he invents an original language (Proverbs 6:13). There is no member of the body which cannot become a medium to convey thought. The eye is very eloquent in this work, the hand, the lip, the finger, the whole body may do this to some extent, and are sometimes blessedly so employed when affliction has shut out our fellow-man from hearing the human voice, but this man of wickedness makes his whole body a medium for the conveyance of his evil plans and desires. He yields his “members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin” (Romans 6:13). The common every-day language of outspoken honest men will not do to convey his thoughts, because his thoughts are against the welfare of his fellow creatures. This compels him to use a language which is comprehended only by those who are like himself. The eye can be used in this way as a more safe and swift instrument than the tongue. A look may embody a thought that would need many words to express. The glance of one wicked man to another has often been the sentence of death to many. And so, in a less degree, perhaps, with the foot and the hand, as Matthew Henry says, “Those whom he makes use of as the tools of his wickedness understand the ill meaning of a wink of his eye, a stamp of his feet, the least motion of his fingers. He gives orders for evil-doing, and yet would not be thought to do so, but has ways of concealing what he does, so that he may not be suspected.”
II. The end of such a man. (Proverbs 6:15.)
1. His very success will bring his ruin. The man who makes it the business of his life to lay plans against the comfort of his fellow-creatures may succeed for a time, but by-and-by he will find himself so famous, or infamous, that a reward may be offered for his person, and his very success in deceiving others in the past will possibly so throw him off his guard as to make him an easy prey to those who now lay in wait to bring him to justice. But if he escapes the messenger of human retribution, he is sure of the Divine Nemesis. God’s law and the universe are against him. In sowing discord in the world, he has sowed destruction for himself, and he must reap it. However cleverly he may have outwitted his fellow-men, he has not deceived God, and His law is that “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Ephesians 6:7).
2. The punishment will come when least expected. “Suddenly shall he be broken” (Proverbs 6:15). The thief makes it his study to find an entrance into his victim’s house when he least expects him, and he finds himself one day repaid in his own coin. When he is enjoying his fancied security an officer of justice visits him, and suddenly he is summoned to answer for his crimes. This we find is generally the case with retribution; it not only comes certainly, but at a time when it is least looked for.
3. His ruin will be complete. “He shall be broken without remedy” (Proverbs 6:15). The crime of murder is regarded by our code of law as one which deserves the extremest penalty which man can inflict upon man. The murderer, as a rule, is visited with a punishment which, so far as his earthly existence goes, cuts off all hope for the future. The man who is pictured to us in these verses is one who appears to have completed his character as a sinner. The number seven is often used in Scripture to denote perfection—completion; and this student of iniquity appears to have succeeded so well in his studies that there is no vice which is not found in one of the seven things which go to make up his character. His pride leads him to refuse God’s yoke, and to carve out for himself a way without reference to the will of Him in whom he lives and moves. But his lying tongue betrays a sense of weakness. He fears that his plans, though so skilfully laid, may not succeed, and therefore he has recourse to deception to help him out with them. And so cruel is he that he shrinks from no misery that he may bring upon others in the furtherance of his own designs; neither the character nor the life of his victims is spared. He is “a false witness that speaketh lies and soweth discord,” his “hands shed innocent blood.” For so diseased a member of the body politic there seems nothing left but amputation. So complete a sinner must suffer a complete ruin, Finally, that such a character should be an abomination to the Lord (Proverbs 6:16) is most natural, if we consider how entirely it is at variance with what God is Himself. Like seeks and loves like. The musical soul seeks and delights in those who love music. The courageous Jonathan delights in the courageous David. God is humble. He takes a right estimate of Himself and others. This is true humility. “Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwelleth on high, who humbleth Himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth?” (Psalms 113:5-6). How great a contrast is He in this respect to the man of “proud look.” God is a “God of truth” (Psalms 31:5), it is a blessed impossibilty with Him to lie (Titus 1:2). How can He do other than abominate a “lying tongue.” He is the Saviour of men (1 Timothy 4:10); this sinner seeks to destroy them. He is the Author of peace and the lover of concord; this man’s aim has been to “sow discord” even “among brethren.”
ILLUSTRATION OF Proverbs 6:13
It should be remembered that, in the East, when people are in the house they do not wear sandals, consequently their feet and toes are exposed. When guests wish to speak so as not to be observed by the host, they convey their meaning by the feet and toes. Does a person wish to leave the room in company with another? he lifts up one of his feet; and should the other refuse, he also lifts up a foot and suddenly puts it down again. When merchants wish to make a bargain with others without making known their terms, they sit on the ground, have a piece of cloth thrown over the lap, and then put a hand under, and thus speak with their fingers. When the Brahmins convey religious mysteries to their disciples, they teach with their fingers, having the hands concealed in the folds of their robe.—Roberts, in Biblical Treasury.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Proverbs 6:12. He who is nobody in deeds is often strong in words. He whose hands are idle has a tongue anything but idle; and he tries by words suited to men’s humours to win that favour which he cannot by deeds.—Cartwright.
“Walketh” implies progress in evil, as the tendency of all sin is to grow more and more inveterate.—Fausset.
Every idle man is a “naughty” man; is, or, ere long, will be, for by doing nothing men learn to do evil. And “thou wicked and slothful servant,” saith our Saviour (Matthew 25:26). He putteth no difference between the idle person and the wicked person. The devil will not long suffer such an one to be idle, but will soon set him to work. Idleness is the hour of temptation.—Trapp.
Proverbs 6:13. He conveys his meanings, and carries on his schemes, and promotes his ends, in every sly, covert, unsuspected way.—Wardlaw.
Not speech only, but all other means by which man holds intercourse with man, are turned to instruments of fraud and falsehood. The wink which tells the accomplice that the victim is already snared, the gestures with foot and hand, half of deceit, half of mockery—these would betray him to anyone who was not blind.—Plumptre.
Proverbs 6:14. The wise man had showed before the outward rivulets, now he shows the inward fountain, a corrupt heart. This is added lest we should think that only outward signs and gestures are evil. If neither by outward signs nor gestures a wicked man dare express himself, yet his heart is evil—Francis Taylor.
As the agriculturist applies himself wholly to the ploughing and sowing of his land, so the froward gives himself wholly to iniquity, seeking his harvest of gain, or of enjoyment of malignity, in traducing or lying, or in praising with words whilst all the time traducing by signs.—Fausset.
Where frowardness soweth the field, what can grow but contentions only? But these are first sown in the heart by mischievous devices, and there being come to a ripeness, then are they gathered, and are again sown in the outward actions of discord, one harvest serving to bring on another until they bring the seedsman to the harvest of destruction. The force of the verse is, that when wickedness is silent outwardly, it is devising mischief inwardly, that it may practice it the more abundantly.—Jermin.
Proverbs 6:15. Therefore, if a thing be so ruinous; if it be a fountain of sin; if it be sending forth corruption in such a manner as to increase the mass of it, and never diminish it; if it be putting forth causes of quarrel both with God and man, then that thing must be crushed. We would expect a sharp, clean end. If it be a root, it must be threaded to its very eye, and all the life of it must be traced and crushed quite out of it in the soil.—Miller.
The word “suddenly” shows the vanity of the sinner’s hope that he shall have the time or the gift of repentance (Job 21:17-18; Psalms 64:4).—Fausset.
It were pity such a villain should go without his reward. The wise man, therefore, doth not leave him without his judgment denounced, and it is a grievous one. For he that spendeth time to devise mischief shall not have time at last to devise help for the preventing of his own sudden mischief. He that by plots maketh the breaches of strife, shall at length be broken suddenly into pieces, without hope of piecing himself together again.… Of Satan it is said that he fell like lightning from heaven, the fall whereof is most sudden, and so that it never riseth again. And so cometh the calamity of malicious, froward hearts: such is the breaking fall of their destruction.—Jermin.
Proverbs 6:16. This, curtly, is a restatement of the picture just passed; not exactly, but ripened a little, and advanced into a more mature expression.—Miller.
It is an evidence of the good-will God bears to mankind, that those sins are in a special manner provoking to Him which are prejudicial to the comfort of human life and society.—Henry.
The things which God hateth are the things which the devil maketh. He cannot be the author and hater of the same thing. And therefore it is not man, but the wicked things in man, which God abhorreth, and which, did not man love, God would still love man, although He hateth them.—Jermin.
Proverbs 6:17. A proud look or “lofty eyes” might seem to have little to do with a “worthless man” (see Critical Notes on Proverbs 6:12), but a man is a man of emptiness solely because he is depending, in divers ways, upon himself. Humility is the very first lesson towards salvation. A man could not live a whole long life taking “a little more sleep” if he was not arrogantly depending upon something within himself. “Hands that shed innocent blood:” The movements of such a man are all deadly. The amiable may be fairly stung by such rude speech, but the wise man intends to imply that a deceived impenitence deceives and festers all about it. The worldly father that misguides his son sheds his blood. It is astonishing how much there is in the Bible of this cruel language (Psalms 5:9; Isaiah 1:21, &c.).—Miller.
Proverbs 6:18. The heart underlies the seven vices which are an abomination to God, and in the midst, because it is the fountain from which evil flows in all directions.—Starke.
Proverbs 6:19. If the heavenly “dew descends upon the brethren that dwell together in unity” (Psalms 133), a withering blast will fall on those who, mistaking prejudice for principle, “cause divisions” for their own selfish ends (Romans 16:17-18). If we cannot attain unity of opinion, “perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (1 Corinthians 1:10), at least let us cultivate unity of Spirit (Philippians 3:16).—Bridges.
Proverbs 6:12-19. As respects the arrangement in which the seven manifestations of treacherous dealing are enumerated in Proverbs 6:16-19, it does not perfectly correspond with the order observed in Proverbs 6:12-14. There the series is—mouth, eyes, feet, fingers, heart, devising evil counsels, stirring up strifes; here it is eyes, tongue, hands, heart, feet, speaking lies, instigating strife. With reference to the organs which are named as the instruments in the first five forms of treacherous wickedness, in the second enumeration an order is adopted involving a regular descent; the base disposition to stir up strife, or to let loose controversy in both cases ends the series.… The six or seven vices, twice enumerated in different order and form of expression, are, at the same time, all of them manifestations of hatred against one’s neighbour, or sins against the second table of the Decalogue; yet it is not so much a general unkindness as rather an unkindness consisting and displaying itself in falseness and malice that is emphasised as their common element. And only on account of the peculiarly mischievous and ruinous character of just these sins of hatred to one’s neighbour, is he who is subject to them represented as an object of especially intense abhorrence on the part of a holy God, and as threatened with the strongest manifestations of His anger in penalties.—Dr. Zöckler, in Lange’s Commentary.
Proverbs 6:16-19. There is one parallel well worthy of notice between the seven cursed things here and the seven blessed things in the fifth chapter of Matthew. In the Old Testament the things are set down in the sterner form of what the Lord hates, like the “Thou shalt not” of the Decalogue. In the New Testament the form is in accordance with the gentleness of Christ. There we learn the good things that are blessed, and are left to gather thence the opposite evils that are cursed. But, making allowance for the difference in form, the first and the last of the seven are identical in the two lists. “The Lord hates a proud look” is precisely equivalent to “Blessed are the poor in spirit;” and “He that soweth discord among brethren” is the exact converse of the “peacemaker.” This coincidence must be designed. When Jesus was teaching His disciples on the Mount He seems to have had in view the similar instructions that Solomon had formerly delivered, and, while the teaching is substantially new, there is as much of allusion to the ancient Scripture as to make it manifest that the Great Teacher kept His eye upon the prophets, and sanctioned all their testimony.—Arnot.