The proverbs of Solomon. A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish son [is] the heaviness of his mother.
Ver. 1. The Proverbs.] Properly so called. See Proverbs 1:1. For the nine former Chapter s are a kind of common places, or continued discourses premised as a preface to these ensuing wise and grave sentences, tending much to the information of the mind and reformation of the manners, and containing things profitable for all sorts of people. They are not unfitly compared by a divine to a bag full of sweet and fragrant spices, which shuffled or shaken together, or taken single, yield a sweet odour; or to stars in the firmament, each in itself glorious and independent of another, yet all receive their light from the sun.
A wise son maketh a glad father.] Children are certain cares, but uncertain comforts. a Every son should be an Abner, that is, his father's light; and every daughter an Abigail, her father's joy. Eve promised herself much in her Cain, and David did the like in his Absalom. Sed, fallitur augurio spes bona saepe suo, - they were both deceived. Samuel succeeds Eli in his cross, as well as his place, though not in his sin; and had cause enough to call his untoward children, as Augustus did, tres vomicas, tria carcinomata, - so many ulcerous sores, mattery imposthumes. b Virtue is not as lands, inheritable. All that is traduced with the seed is either evil, or not good. Let parents labour to mend by education what they have marred by propagation; and when they have done all, pray "God persuade Japhet," lest else they be put to wish one day, as Augustus did, Oh that I had never married, or never had children! c And let children cheer up their parents, as Joseph, Samuel, and Solomon did; and as Epaminondas, who was wont to say, Se longe maximum suarum laudum fructum capere quod earum spectatores haberet parentes, d - that he joyed in nothing more than that his parents were yet alive, to take comfort in his brave achievements; for otherwise God will take them in hand, as he did Abimelech, to whom he "rendered the wickedness done to his father"; Jdg 9:5 and as he did Absalom, whom he trussed up in the height of his rebellious practices with his own immediate hand; or else he will punish them in and by their posterity, which shall either be none (Proverbs 20:20, compared with 2Sa 14:7), or worse than none; as he who, when his aggrieved father complained that never man had so undutiful a child as he had, Yes, said his son (with less grace than truth), my grandfather had. e
The heaviness of his mother.] The mother is mentioned (though the father haply as heavy) first, as most faulted if her children miscarry; Pro 24:15 next, as most slighted by them; Pro 15:20 and lastly, as most impatient of such an affliction. Rebekah was weary of her life by reason of the daughters of Heth brought in to her by Esau. Gen 27:46 If they lie idle at home, mothers have the misery of it; if they do worse abroad, the worst is made of it to the mother at home by fame, that loud liar.
a φροντιδες μεγδλαι, ελπιδες αδηλοι. - Plut.
b A purulent swelling or cyst in any part of the body; an abscess.
c Sueton, cap. 6.
d Corn. Nepos.
e Mr Fuller's Holy State.