CRITICAL NOTES.
Proverbs 7:2. Apple of the eye, the “pupil,” literally the “little man” of the eye, referring to the reflected image of a man seen in that organ.
Proverbs 7:3. Bind them “refers to rings with large signets, upon which maxims were inscribed” (Stuart).
Proverbs 7:4. Kinswoman, rather, “an acquaintance, a familiar friend.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH— Proverbs 7:1-4
THE SOURCE OF TRUE LIFE, ETC
I. The true life of man depends upon his relation to the Word of God. “Keep my commandments, and live” (Proverbs 7:2). The life which is given to man upon his entrance into this world is not life in its highest sense, but an existence in which he is to obtain life. “It is not all of life to live.” Those who do not keep God’s commandments are living existences, but in the moral signification of the word they are dead. It was said by the highest authority—by the Son of God Himself—that “it had been good for Judas Iscariot if he had not been born” (Matthew 26:24). Existence is not a blessing, oftentimes a curse, unless a man is “born again,” “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). Christ taught the same truth when He said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God” (Luke 4:4). Man is not flesh and blood only, he has not a mere animal existence, but moral capabilities and needs, which must be nourished by the thoughts of God. If this is not done, he has no life worth the name.
II. The relation that a man should have to the Word of God is like that which a rich man has to his banked money. “Lay up my commandments with thee.” The best place for money which the merchant wishes to use constantly is a safe bank, from which he can draw out at any time of need. So the Word of God must be laid up in the mind ready for constant use. The Word of God must “dwell in us” (Colossians 3:16). It must be stored up to furnish us with encouragement and admonition in the unceasing warfare with temptation which we are called upon to wage. It must be at hand at the moment of need.
III. It is to be guarded with the same care as the eye is guarded by the eyelid. “As the apple of thine eye.” The eye is carefully protected by nature because it is the organ of a most precious sense—of a sense of which we stand in the greatest need—without which we walk through the world in darkness. The revelation of God in the Holy Scriptures is the only light which enlightens us amid the darkness of ignorance and mystery by which we are surrounded. Without it all our future would be darkness indeed. Hence its preciousness, and hence the value we ought to set upon it.
IV. It is to hold to us a relation like that of a pure, and tender, and beloved sister. “Say unto Wisdom, Thou art my sister.” The Word of God is the highest wisdom. The relationship of brother and sister, where it is what God intended it to be, is a very tender and pure relationship, involving willingness to undergo self-denial for the sake of her who is loved, to listen to her advice, to seek her welfare. In this light we must regard the wisdom of God as revealed in the word of God if existence is to become life to us. We must exercise self-denial for her sake. “I prevented the dawning of the morning, and cried: I hoped in Thy word” (Psalms 119:147).
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Proverbs 7:2. As God would have us keep His law as the apple of our eye, so He keeps His people (Deuteronomy 32:10), in answer to their prayer, as the apple of His eye (Zechariah 2:8). We guard the eye as our most precious and tender member from hurt, and prize it most dearly. As we guard the pupil of the eye from the least mote, which is sufficient to hurt it, so God’s law is so tender and holy a thing that the least violation of it in thought, word, or deed, is sin; and we are so to keep the law as to avoid any violation of it. The law resembles the pupil of the eye also in its being spiritually the organ of light, without which we should be in utter darkness.—Fausset.
The instruction of the Word is the same to the soul which the eye is to the body. For as the body without the sight of the eyes runneth upon many things that hurt it, and falleth at every little stumbling-block, so the soul most fearfully runneth into sins if it want the light and direction of the Word.—Muffet.
Men are off and on in their promises: they are also slow and slack in their performances. But it is otherwise here: the very “entrance of Thy Word giveth light” (Psalms 119:130), and the very onset of obedience giveth life. It is but “Hear, and your soul shall live” (Isaiah 55:3). Sin is homogeneous, all of a kind, though not all of the same degree. As the least pebble is a stone as well as the hugest rock, and as the drop of a bucket is water as well as the main ocean, hence the least sins are in Scripture reproached by the names of the greatest. Malice is called manslaughter, lust, adultery, etc. Concupiscence is condemned by the law; even the first motions of sin, though they never come to consent (Romans 7:7). Inward bleeding may kill a man. The law of God is spiritual, though we be carnal. And as the sunshine shows us atoms and motes that till then we discerned not, so doth the law discover and censure smallest failings. It must therefore be kept curiously, even “as the apple of the eye,” that cannot be touched, but will be distempered. Careful we must be, even in the punctilios of duty. Men will not lightly lose the least ends of gold.—Trapp.
In some bodies, as trees, etc., there is life without sense, which are things animated, but not so much with a soul as with a kind of animation; even as the wicked have some kind of knowledge from grace, but are not animated by it. Or rather the wicked do not live, indeed, for life consisteth in action, and how can he be said truly to live whose words are dead? But keep God’s commandments, and live indeed, live cheerfully with the comfort of this life, which makes life to be life; live happily in the life of glory hereafter, which is the end for which this life is lent us.—Jermin.
Proverbs 7:4. Since, O youth, thou delightest in the intimacy of fair maidens, lo! here is by far the loveliest one, Wisdom.—Cartwright.
Wisdom has been represented as a wife, and here she is called a sister. As Didymus says (in Catenâ, p. 104), “Wisdom is called a mother, a sister, and a wife.” She is a mother, because, through her, we are children of Christ; she is a wife, because, by union with her, we ourselves become parents of that which is good; she is our sister, because our love to her is chaste and holy, and because she, as well as ourselves, is the offspring of God. Such is the love of Christ, who is the true Wisdom, and who is all in all to the soul. Compare His own words, applied to every faithful and obedient soul: “The same is my brother, and my sister, and mother” (Mark 3:35). “Do thou love the true faith with sisterly love, it shall keep thee from the impure love of the strange women of false doctrine” (Bede).—Wordsworth.
Holiness is positive. Sin is negative. The one is to love God, and also our neighbour. The other is not to love God or our neighbour. The one shows itself in a positive delight in the abstract holiness; the other not in a positive delight in the opposite, viz., in an abstract sin, but a delight in women, a delight in money, a delight in praise, a delight in everything except moral purity, and therefore a delight in things which are innocent when in limits, and that are only guilty when the soul is let in upon them without curb of superior affection. If a man calls Wisdom his kinswoman, then he may love wine or love without moral danger.—Miller.