CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 8:5. Wisdom. This is a different word from the one used in Proverbs 8:1, and may be translated “subtilty,” or “prudence,” and though it is here used in a good sense, may, when the context requires it, be translated “artful cunning.”
Proverbs 8:6. Excellent, literally “princely,” generally rendered “plain,” “evident,” “obvious.”
Proverbs 8:7. Mouth, lit. “palate.” Speak, literally, “meditate;” the word originally meant “mutter,” and grew to mean “meditate,” because what a man meditates deeply he generally mutters about (Miller).
Proverbs 8:8. Froward, literally, “distorted,” or “crooked.”
Proverbs 8:9. “Right to the man of understanding, and plain to them that have attained knowledge” (Zöckler). “To the men of understanding they are all to the point” (Delitzsch).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH— Proverbs 8:4-9
GOD’S SPEECH MEETING MAN’S NEED
I. Divine Wisdom has spoken because God’s silence would be human death. When a man is lying in prison awaiting the execution of the extreme penalty of the law, after he has petitioned the monarch for a reprieve, the silence of the monarch is a permission that the sentence is to be carried out. His silence is a death-knell to the criminal who has asked for pardon. It is an anticipation of the steel of the executioner, of the rope of the hangman. He longs for the word that would bring pardon. There is death in the silence. In the history of men’s lives there are many other instances when the silence of those whom they desire to speak embitters their life. There are many who keep silence whose speech would fall upon the heart of those who long for it, as the dew and gentle rain falls upon the parched earth. A word or a letter would be like a new lease of life, but the silence brings a sorrow which is akin to death, which perchance is the death of all that makes life to be desired. A parent who has no word from his absent son goes down in sorrow to the grave. Jacob was thus going down mourning when the words of Joseph reached him. Then “his spirit revived” (Genesis 45:27), and the aged, sorrowful patriarch renewed his youth. The life of man—all that is worth calling life—depends upon God’s breaking the silence between earth and heaven. His silence is that which is most dreaded by those who have heard his voice. Hence their prayer is, “Be not silent unto me; lest, if Thou be silent unto me, I become like them that go down into the pit (Psalms 28:1). If man had been left without any communication from God, he must have remained spiritually dead throughout his term of probation. For he is by nature what is called in Scripture, “carnally-minded,” which “is death” (Romans 8:5). Every man, if left to himself, forms habits of thinking and of acting that cause him “to be tied and bound with the chain of his sins.” And if God had not spoken he must have remained in this condition, which is spiritual death. Therefore, God has broken this silence with an “Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead” (Ephesians 5:14). The nations were walking in the darkness and the shadow of death when the “light shined” upon them (Luke 1:79), in the person of Him who is the Word and the Wisdom of God, who, Himself, declared “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life;” “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly (John 6:63; John 10:10).
II. Human nature needs the voice of Divine Wisdom because the soul cannot rest upon uncertainties (Proverbs 8:6-8). If a man is in the dark upon any subject, he is in a condition of unrest; there is a desire within him to rise from the state of probability to one of certainty. If a boy works a sum and does not know how to prove that it is right, he does not feel that satisfaction at having completed his task that he would do if he could demonstrate that the answer was correct. After all his labour he has only arrived at a may-be. So the result of all efforts of man’s unaided reasonings concerning himself and his destiny was but a sum unproved. There was no certainty after ages of laborious conjecture. There might be a future life and immortality, but it could not be positively affirmed. Although the sum might be right there was a possibility that it was wrong. The world by wisdom arrived at no certain conclusions in relation to the Divine character and the chief end of man, and uttered but an uncertain sound on the life beyond the grave. “How can man be just with God?” “If a man die shall he live again?” were never fully and triumphantly answered until the Incarnate Word stood by His own empty grave and said, “I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God” (John 20:17). He brought “rest” to the weary and heavy laden (Matthew 11:28), because His words were truth, and plainness, and certainty (see Proverbs 8:6-8); before they had been only error, or obscurity, or conjecture.
III. The wisdom of God is appreciated by those who have realised its adaptation to human needs. (Proverbs 8:9.) There is a twofold knowledge, or “understanding,” of Divine truth, as there is of much else with which we are acquainted. There is an acquaintance with the general facts of Divine revelation—a theoretical understanding of its suitableness to the needs of men, and there is a knowledge which arises from an experience of its adaptation to our personal need—a practical understanding which springs from having received a personal benefit. The chemist knows that a certain drug possesses qualities adapted to cure a particular malady, but if he comes to experience its efficacy in the cure of the disease in his own body, he has a knowledge which far surpasses the merely theoretical. It is then “plain” to him from an experimental understanding. The wisdom of God in the abstract, or in the personal Logos, is allowed by many to be adapted to the spiritual needs of the human race. They see the philosophy of the plan of salvation in the general, but its wonderful adaptation and “rightness” is only fully revealed when they have “found” the “knowledge” by an experimental reception of Christ into their own hearts. To him that thus “understands” all is “plain.”
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Proverbs 8:4. Christ offers Himself as a Saviour to all the human race.
I. The most awakening truth in all the Bible. It is commonly thought that preaching the holy law is the most awakening truth in the Bible, and, indeed, I believe this is the most ordinary means which God makes use of. And yet to me there is something far more awakening in the sight of a Divine Saviour freely offering Himself to eyery one of the human race.… Does it not show that all men are lost—that a dreadful hell is before them? Would the Saviour call so loud and so long if there was no hell?
II. The most comforting truth in the Bible. If there were no other text in the whole Bible to encourage sinners to come freely to Christ, this one alone might persuade them. Christ speaks to the human race. Instead of writing down every name He puts all together in one word, which includes every man, woman, and child.
III. The most condemning truth in all the Bible. If Christ be freely offered to all men, then it is plain that those who live and die without accepting Christ shall meet with the doom of those who refuse the Son of God.—McCheyne.
They are called to repentance, they are called to the remission of their sins; they may and must repent, and they, by repentance, are sure of pardon for all their sins. The good angels have not sinned, the bad angels cannot repent; it is man that hath done the one, it is man that must do the other.—Jermin.
“O men.” Some render it, “O ye eminent men” (see Critical Notes), whether for greatness of birth, wealth, or learning. But “the world by wisdom knows not God” (1 Corinthians 1:21); and “not many wise men, not many mighty, not many noble, are called” (Proverbs 8:26). And yet they shall not want for calling, if that would do it. But all to little purpose, for most part. They that lay their heads upon down pillows cannot so easily hear noises. “The sons of men,” i.e., to the meaner sort of people. These, usually, like little fishes, bite more than bigger. “The poor are gospelised,” saith our Saviour. Smyrna was the poorest, but the best of the seven churches.—Trapp.
Several ways whereby God addresses Himself to man. How different the method which God uses towards the rational from that which He uses toward the material world. In the world of matter God has not only fixed and prescribed certain laws according to which the course of nature shall proceed, but He is Himself the sole and immediate executor of those laws.… It is to Himself that He has set those laws, and it is by Himself that they are executed. But He does not deal so with the world of spirits. He does not here execute the laws of love, as He does there the laws of motion. He contents Himself to prescribe laws, to make rational applications, to speak to spirits. He speaks to them because they are rational, and can understand what He says, and He does but speak to them because they are free. And this He does in several ways.
1. By the natural and necessary order and connection of things. God, as being the Author of nature, is also the author of that connection that results from it between some actions and that good and evil that follows upon them, and which must therefore not be considered as mere natural consequences, but as a kind of rewards and punishments annexed to them by the Supreme Lawgiver, God having declared by them, as by a natural sanction, that ’tis His will and pleasure that those actions which are attended with good consequences should be done, and that those which are attended with evil consequences should be avoided. Not that the law has its obligation from the sanction, but these natural sanctions are signs and declarations of the will of God.
2. By sensible pleasure and pain. A thing which everybody feels, but which few reflect upon, yet there is a voice of God in it. For does not God, by the frequent and daily return of these impressions, continually put us in mind of the nature and capacity of our souls, that we are thinking beings, and beings capable of happiness and misery, which because we actually feel in several degrees, and in several kinds, we may justly think ourselves capable of in more, though how far, and in what variety, it be past our comprehension exactly to define.
3. By that inward joy which attends the good, and by that inward trouble and uneasiness which attends the bad state of the soul. This is a matter of universal experience. It is God that raiseth this pleasure or this pain in us, and that thus differently rewards or punishes the souls of men, and thus, out of His infinite love, is pleased to do the office of a private monitor to every particular man, by smiling upon him when he does well, and by frowning upon him when he does ill, that so he may have a mark to discern, and an encouragement to do his duty.—John Norris.
Proverbs 8:5. A man may be acutely shrewd and yet be a fool, and that in the very highest sense. Nor is this a mere mystic sense. He must be a fool actually, and of the very plainest kind, who gives the whole labour of a life, for example, to increase his eternal agonies.—Miller.
The heart is frequently used, simply for the mind or seat of intellect as well as for the affections; so that “an understanding heart” might mean nothing different from an intelligent mind. At the same time, since the state of the heart affects to such a degree the exercise of the judgment, “an understanding heart” may signify a heart freed from the influence of those corrupt affections and passions by which the understanding is perverted, and its vision marred and destroyed.—Wardlaw.
Proverbs 8:6. The discoveries of Wisdom relate to things of the highest possible excellence; such as the existence, character, works, and ways of God; the soul; eternity; the way of salvation—the means of eternal life. And they are, on all subjects, “right.” They could not, indeed, be excellent themselves, how excellent soever in dignity and importance the subjects to which they related, unless they were “right.” But all her instructions are so. They are true in what regards doctrine, and “holy, just, and good” in what regards conduct or duty. There is truth without any mixture of error, and rectitude without any alloy of evil.—Wardlaw.
Right for each man’s purposes and occasions. The Scriptures are so penned that every man may think they speak of him and his affairs. In all God’s commands there is so much rectitude and good reason, could we but see it, that if God did not command them, yet it were our best way to practise them.—Trapp.
The teaching is not trifling, though addressed to triflers. “Right things”—things which are calculated to correct your false notions, and set straight your crooked ways.—Adam Clarke.
Proverbs 8:9. If aught in God’s Word does not seem to us right, it is because we, so far, have not found true knowledge. “To those who have bloodshot eyes, white seems red (Lyra). He who would have the sealed book opened to him must ask it of the Lamb who opens the book (Revelation 5:4-9.—Fausset.
The first part of this verse wears very much the aspect of a truism. But it is not said, “They are plain to him that understandeth them;” but simply to him that “understandeth.” It seems to signify, who has the understanding necessary to the apprehension of Divine truth—spiritual discernment. “He who is spiritual discerneth all things.” “They are all plain” to him who thus understandeth. It may further be observed, how very much depends, in the prosecution of any science, for correct and easy apprehension of its progressive development to the mind, on the clear comprehension of its elementary principles. The very clearest and plainest demonstrations, in any department of philosophy, will fail to be followed and to carry conviction—will leave the mind only in wonder and bewildering confusion, unless there is a full and correct acquaintance with principles or elements, or a willingness to apply the mind to its attainment. So in Divine science. There are, in regard to the discoveries of the Divine Word, certain primary principles, which all who are taught of God know, and which they hold as principles of explanation for all that that Word reveals, They who are thus “taught of God,” perceive with increasing fulness the truth, the rectitude, the unalloyed excellence of all the dictates of Divine wisdom. All is “plain”—all “right.” The darkness that brooded over the mind is dissipated. They “have an unction from the Holy One, and know all things” (1 John 2:20).—Wardlaw.
When a man gets the knowledge of himself, then he sees all the threatenings of God to be right. When he obtains the knowledge of God in Christ, then he finds that all the promises of God are right—yea and amen.—Adam Clarke.