The fear of the LORD [is] the beginning of knowledge: [but] fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Ver. 7. The fear of the Lord is the beginning.] Or, The chief and principal point a of wisdom, as the word here signified; yea, wisdom itself. Job 28:28 This Solomon had learned by the instruction of his father, as it is in the next verse, who had taught it him of a child, Pro 4:4 Psa 111:10 and therefore sets it here in the beginning of his works as the beginning of all. As in the end he makes it the end of all, Ecc 12:13 yea, the all of man, b without which he counts him not a complete man, though never so wise to the world ward. Heathen sages, as Seneca, Socrates, &c., were wise in their generation, and had many excellent gifts, but they missed of the main; there was no fear of God before their eyes: being herein as alchemists, who miss of their end, but yet find many excellent things by the way. These merchants found goodly pearls, but "the pearl of price" Mat 13:45-46 they failed of. The prophet calls the fear of God "our treasure." Isa 33:6
But fools despise.] Fools; so are all such as fear not God, "being abominable, disobedient, and to every good work reprobate," or injudicious. Tit 1:16 Evil is Hebrew for a fool; Nebulo of Nabal; fool of Fαυλος. When one highly commended the Cardinal Julian to Sigismund, he answered, Tamen Romanus est; yet he is a popeling. So, yet he is a fool, because void of God's true fear. "Behold they have rejected the word of the Lord, and what wisdom is in them?" Jer 8:9
a The head or firstfruits; the head and height.
b Hoc est enim totus homo.