He that handleth a matter wisely shall find good: and whoso trusteth in the LORD, happy [is] he.
Ver. 20. He that handleth a matter wisely shall find good.] Doing things with due deliberation and circumspection, things of weight and importance especially - for here Deliberandum est diu, quod statuendum est semel - we may look for God's blessing, when the best that can come of rashness is repentance. Youth rides in post to be married, but in the end finds the inn of repentance to be lodged in. The best may be sometimes miscarried by their passions to their cost, as good Josiah when he encountered the King of Egypt, and never so much as sent to Jeremiah, Zephaniah, or any other prophet then living, to ask, Shall I go up against Pharaoh or not?
And whoso trusteth in the Lord, happy is he.] Let a man handle his matter never so wisely, yet if he trust to his own wisdom, he must not look to find good. God will cross even the likeliest projects of such, and crack the strongest sinew in all the arm of flesh. The Babylonians held their city impregnable, and boasted, as Xenophon witnesseth, that they had twenty years' provision beforehand; but God confuted their carnal confidence. The Jews in Isaiah, when they looked for an invasion, looked in that day to the armour of the house of the forest, and "gathered together the waters of the lower pool, numbered the houses, and cast up the ditches to fortify the wall; but they looked not all this while to God their Maker," &c. Therefore they had "a day of trouble, and of treading down, and of perplexity, by the Lord God of hosts in the valley of vision." Isaiah 22:5 ; Isa 22:8-10 Where the beginning is creature confidence or self-conceitedness, the end is commonly shame and confusion, in any business. Whereas he that, in the use of lawful means, resteth upon God for direction and success, though he fail in his design, yet he knows whom he hath trusted, and God will "know his soul in adversity." Psa 31:7