He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him.
Withholding corn
The text has to do with owners of corn and dealers in it. In Solomon’s day famines were frequent, and were serious because trade communications between different countries were so uncertain. Then persons would buy up all the corn they could, so as to unduly raise the market-price. In relation to this greed in trade, there is a wonderful reserve of Holy Scripture. Mr. Arnot says, “In this brief maxim no arbitrary rule is laid down to the possessor of corn, that he must sell at a certain period and at a certain price: and yet the hungry are not left without a protecting law. The protection of the weak is entrusted not to small police regulations, but to great self-acting providential arrangements. The double fact is recorded in terms of peculiar distinctness, that he who in times of scarcity keeps up his corn in order to enrich himself is loathed by the people, and he who sells it freely is loved. This is all. There is no further legislation on the subject.” Laws which interfere between buyer and seller, master and workman, are blunders and nuisances. The market goes best when it is left alone, and so in our text there is no law enacted and no penalty threatened, except that which the nature of things makes inevitable. A man may do as he pleases about selling or not, but he cannot escape from the curse of the people if he chooses to lock up his grain. But if it bring a curse upon a man to withhold the bread that perisheth, what a weight of curse will light upon the man who withholds the bread of eternal life.
I. How can this be done?
1. By locking up the Word of God in an unknown language, or by delivering and preaching it in such a style that the people shall not comprehend it. Illustrate by the practice of the Roman Church. But the terms of theology, the phrases of art, the definitions of philosophy, the jargon of science, are an unknown tongue to the young godly ploughmen, or praying shopkeepers. Simplicity is the authorised style of true gospel ministry.
2. By keeping back the most important and vital truths of revelation, and giving a prominence to other things, which are but secondary. Morality brings no food to hungry souls, although it is good enough in its place. Dissuasives from vice are not the bread of heaven, though well enough in their way. We need to have the great doctrines of grace brought forward, for the Word of God is the sword of the Spirit, and it is by preaching the truth as it is in Jesus that souls are won to Him.
3. By want of loving zeal in our labour. That which God blesses to the saving of sinners is truth attended by the earnestness of the speaker. Think of the preaching of Baxter. We are guilty of withholding corn unless we preach with a sympathising, loving, tender, affectionate, earnest, anxious soul.
4. By refusing to labour zealously for the spread of the kingdom of Christ and the conversion of sinners.
5. By refusing to help those who are working for Christ. I cannot understand how a man can love God when he only lives to heap up riches.
II. The blessedness which those possess who break the bread of life. To describe it is altogether beyond my power. You must know, and taste, and feel it. There are many blessednesses in doing good to others.
1. An easy conscience.
2. Comfort in doing something for Jesus.
3. Watching the first buddings of conviction in a young soul.
4. The joy of success.
5. The final and gracious reward.
III. Now I have to open the granary myself. Hungry sinners, wanting a Saviour, we cannot withhold the bread from you! We tell you the way of salvation.
1. It is a satisfying salvation.
2. It is an all-sufficient salvation.
3. It is a complete salvation.
4. It is a present salvation.
5. It is an available salvation. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The right to withhold
The text may be regarded as suggestive of a still higher thought than the one to which it is limited. If men have no right to withhold corn, what right can they have to withhold knowledge? If it is an evil thing to injure the body or expose it to danger, what is it to injure the soul or to expose it to the peril of eternal loss? If it is wrong to keep back bread from the body, what must it be to keep back bread from the soul? An important doctrine is involved in the whole text; there are some things which a man may possess, as it were, for himself, and enjoy without sharing his delight with others; a man may have many precious stones, and may conceal them, and permit no eye but his own to look upon them, or hand to touch them but his own: so be it; the pleasure is a narrow and selfish one, and no great social consequences attend its enjoyment. On the other hand, it would seem as if no man could have private property in corn or in bread, in the sense of saying to the people, “I have it, but you shall not possess it; though you offer double its price I will not allow you to take it from me unless you multiply the price fivefold.” A man may talk thus about diamonds and rubies, but he is not at liberty to talk thus about bread. A man may have great property in pictures, but it is questionable whether he should have any property in land in any sense that makes the people dependent upon his caprice as to whether it shall be cultivated and turned to the highest uses. It would seem as if light and air and land were universal possessions, and that all men were equally welcome to them. In the case of the land, it may be necessary that there should be temporary proprietorship, or some regulated relation to it so as to prevent robbery; but with such regulated relation proprietorship might well terminate. All this issue, however, can only be realised as the result of the largest spiritual education. It is difficult to persuade any great landed proprietor that he ought to surrender his rights for the good of the commonwealth. This can only come after years, it may be even centuries, of education of the most spiritual kind; or if it come earlier by statesmanship, it must also come justly, for even good rights may be created by faulty processes, and by mere lapse of time ownerships may be set up which have no original force. We shall never have a commonwealth founded upon righteousness and inspired by the spirit of patriotism until we are just to every interest which stands in the way of its realisation. (J. Parker, D.D.)