CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 9:13. A foolish woman, rather, “the woman of folly,” an exact opposition of the personified wisdom of the former part of the chapter. Clamorous, “violently excited” (Zöckler).
Proverbs 9:15. Who go right on their ways. “Who are going straightforward in their paths” (Stuart).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Proverbs 9:13-18
THE FEAST OF FOLLY
That which strikes one upon reading this description is the analogy and the contrast which it presents to the feast of Wisdom.
I. Its analogies.
1. Both appeal to elements in the nature of man. Man is a compound, a complex being. He possesses a moral nature, a conscience, which can be satisfied only with moral truth and goodness, to which Wisdom appeals with her wine and bread of God’s revelation, and whose cravings they alone are able to appease. And he has sinful inclinations and passions which hanker after forbidden things, to which Folly appeals when she sets forth the attractions of her “stolen waters” and her “bread eaten in secret” (Proverbs 9:17). God’s wisdom and love are shown in appealing to the first, and Satan’s cunning and malice are manifested in the adaptation of his appeal to the second.
2. Both invite the same kind of character, viz., the “simple,” the inexperienced, those who have not tasted the sweets of godly living, yet “know not” from experience that the “dead” are in the house of Folly, that “her guests are in the depths of hell (Proverbs 9:18). Two potters may be desirous of possessing the same lump of clay in order to fashion it each one after his own desire. It is now a shapeless mass, but they know its yielding and pliable nature renders it capable of assuming any form, of taking any impress, which they may please to impart to it. The inexperienced in the experimental knowledge of good and evil are very much like potter’s clay; and here Wisdom and Folly, God and the devil, holiness and sin, stand side by side bidding for the clay, the one desiring to fashion out of it a “vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the Master’s use” (2 Timothy 2:21), and the other anxious to make it a “vessel of wrath fitted to destruction” (Romans 9:22).
3. Both invite to the feasts through those who possess powers of persuasion. Though in the first Wisdom herself does not go forth, but sends her maidens, and in the second the woman herself goes out into the streets, yet they both belong to the sex which is, by common consent, allowed to be most skilled in the art of persuasion. History is full of instances of their power to influence for good and evil. There have been many Lady Macbeths, both in public and private life, and many “handmaids of the Lord” whose influence has been as mighty on the side of good. Both Wisdom and Folly possess ambassadors whose persuasive powers are mighty.
4. They utter their invitations in the same places. Wisdom “crieth upon the high places of the city” (Proverbs 9:3). Folly “sitteth at the door of her house, on a seat in the high places of the city” (Proverbs 9:14). They both give invitations where they are most likely to obtain guests. In the places where many congregate are found the greatest variety of characters and those who have the most varied wants, and as in such places those who have wares of any kind to sell are sure of finding some to purchase, so the ambassadors of Divine wisdom and the emissaries of evil are certain, where the multitudes are gathered together, to find some to listen to their respective voices.
5. Both use the same words of invitation, and offer the same inducements. A feast is promised in both cases, i.e., both inviters promise satisfaction—enjoyment—to their guests. If a man coins bad money he must make it look as near as possible like the gold or he would not get anyone to accept it. It is only afterwards that his dupe finds that it lacks the ring of real gold. So the tempter to evil must make the advantages he professes to dispense look as much like real good as he possibly can. The false friend will often-times adopt the phraseology of the true, and will never be wanting in arguments to win his victim. The incarnate wisdom of God reminded His disciples that they might, in this respect and in others, learn something from the “children of this world,” who, in some matters, “are in their generation wiser than the children of light” (Luke 16:8).
6. Both make the invitation wide and free. “Whoso” is the word used by both. The kingdom of darkness, as well as the kingdom of light, is willing to gather of “every kind” (Matthew 13:47). The only condition is “Enter in and partake of the banquet prepared.”
II. The Contrasts.
1. In the character of the inviters. In the one case they are “maidens,” emblematical (as we saw in considering the first feast) of purity; in the other she who invites is evidently a bold and wanton woman, identical with the one described in Chapter s 5 and 7 (compare Proverbs 5:6; Proverbs 7:11-12, with Proverbs 9:13-14). Each one who invites is an embodiment of the principles ruling in the house to which she invites; each one sets forth in her own deportment what will be the result of accepting the respective invitations. So that, although the words used may be similar, the simple might be warned from the difference in aspect and demeanour of those who use them.
2. In the place to which the simple are invited. “In the former case,” says Zöckler, “it is to a splendid palace with its columns, to a holy temple of God; in the latter to a common house, a harlot’s abode, built over an entrance to the abyss of hell.” The first invitation is to the abode of a righteous king, where law, and order, and peace reign; the second is to an abode of lawlessness and self-seeking, and consequently of incessant strife and misery. Those who dwell in the first are ever magnifying the favour by which they were permitted to enter; the inhabitants of the latter are eternally cursing those by whose persuasions their feet were turned into the path which leads to death.
3. Wisdom invites to what is her own; Folly invites to that which belongs to another. Wisdom hath killed her beasts and mingled her wine; she cries, “Come, eat of my bread” (Proverbs 9:2; Proverbs 9:5). Folly saith to her victim, “Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant” (Proverbs 9:17). The first is therefore a lawful meal: its dainties may be enjoyed with a full sense that there is no wrong done to oneself, or to any other creature in the universe, by participating in it. It may be eaten publicly; there is no reason for concealment—no sense of shame. But the guests of Folly are all wronging themselves, and wronging God, and wronging their fellow-men by sitting down at her table. And they feel that it is so even when the waters taste the sweetest, and the bread the most pleasant. Hence their banquet is a secret one, “for it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret” (Ephesians 5:12). Hence they “love darkness rather than light;” they “hate the light, lest their deeds should be reproved” (John 3:20-21).
4. The contrast in the results. There are poisonous fruits which are pleasant to the taste, but which lead to sickness and death. And there are bitter herbs which are not palatable, but which bring healing to the frame. Some of Wisdom’s dishes are seasoned with reproof and rebuke (Proverbs 9:8), but the outcome of listening to her call is an increase of wisdom and a lengthening of days and years (Proverbs 9:9-11). The feast of Folly is sweetened with “flattery” (chap. Proverbs 2:16; Proverbs 7:21). The lips of the tempter “drop as an honey-comb” (chap. Proverbs 5:2), but there is a deadly poison in the dish. Eating of her food brings a man down into a devil; the bread and wine of Wisdom nourishes and strengthens him until he becomes “equal unto the angels of God” (Luke 20:26).
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Proverbs 9:1-18. The prototypical relation of the contents of this chapter to our Lord’s parables founded on banquets (Matthew 22:1-14; Luke 14:16-24) is evident, and therefore its special importance to the doctrines of the call of salvation.—Lange’s Commentary.
Proverbs 9:13. “Clamorous,” that is, so bustling as to allow no time for repentance (see 5, 6), like Cardinal Mazarin, of whom it was said that the devil would never let him rest. The sinner is so hurried along in the changes of life, as apparently to unsettle any attempted reformation. “Knows nothing;” an expression grandly doctrinal. The impenitent is blankly dark. Ecclesiastes 6:5 represents the perishing as like an untimely birth. “He hath not seen the sun, nor known anything.” “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). “Where can Wisdom be found?” says the inspired man (Job 28:14-22). “The depth saith, It is not in me; and the sea saith., It is not with me.” The woman of folly is blankly ignorant; for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and if she has not the beginning, then mental light, if she have any, must be but as “darkness” (Matthew 6:23).—Miller.
A foolish woman is clamorous, and hath many words, but they are words only, for she knoweth nothing; the folly of sin is clamorous, and maketh many promises of pleasure and contentment, but they are promises only, and she performeth nothing.—Jermin.
Proverbs 9:15. Her chief aim is to secure the godly, or those inclined to become so; for she is secure as to others, and therefore takes no great trouble in their case.—Fausset.
Even the highway of God, though a path of safety, is beset with temptation. Satan is so angry with none as with those who are going right on.—Bridges.
Proverbs 9:16. Wisdom sets up her school to instruct the ignorant: Folly sets up her school next door to defeat the designs of Wisdom. Thus the saying of the satirist appears to be verified:—
“Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The devil surely builds a chapel there;
And it is found, upon examination,
The latter has the larger congregation.”—Defoe.
Adam Clark.
Folly does not invite the scorners, because she is secure of them, but only the “simple,” i.e., those who are such in the judgment of the Holy Spirit. Scripture expresses not what she says in outward words, but what is the reality. Whosoever turns in to her is a simpleton. Cartwright takes it that she calls the pious “simple.” Proverbs 9:15 favours this.—Fausset.
Proverbs 9:17. Folly shows her skill in seduction by holding out, in promise, the secret enjoyment of forbidden sweets. Alas! since the entrance of sin into the world, there has been among mankind a sadly strong and perverse propensity to aught that is forbidden, to taste what is laid under an interdict. The very interdiction draws towards it the wistful desires, and looks, and longings of the perverse and rebellious heart.—Wardlaw.
The power of sin lies in its pleasure. If stolen waters were not sweet, none would steal the waters. This is part of the mystery in which our being is involved by the fall. It is one of the most fearful features of the case. Our appetite is diseased.… Oh, for the new tastes of a new nature! “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness.” When a soul has tasted and seen that the Lord is gracious, the foolish woman beckons you toward her stolen waters, and praises their sweetness in vain. The new appetite drives out the old.—Arnot.
Many eat that on earth that they digest in hell.—Trapp.
Indirect ways best please flesh and blood. “Sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence” (Romans 7:8). We take this from our first parents, a greedy desire to eat of the forbidden fruit. All the other trees in the garden, although the fruit were as good, would not satisfy them.… Such is the corruption of our nature, that we like best what God likes worst.—Francis Taylor.
Proverbs 9:18. Of course “he knows not.” If the sinner only knew that he were already dead, he might wake up with a bound to the work of his salvation.—Miller.
All sinful joys are damned up with a but. They have a worm that crops them, nay, gnaws asunder their very root, though they shoot up more hastily and spread more spaciously than Jonah’s gourd.… When all the prophecies of ill success have been held as Cassandra’s riddles, when all the contrary minds of afflictions, all the threatened storms of God’s wrath could not dishearten the sinner’s voyage to these Netherlands, here is a but that shipwrecks all; the very mouth of a bottomless pit, not shallower than hell itself.… As man hath his sic, so God hath His sed.—T. Adams.