The words of king Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother taught him.
Ver. 1. The words of King Lemuel.] Lemuel's lesson, Bathsheba's catechism. Lemuel she calls him, because God had owned him. "I will be his father, and be shall be my son"; 2Sa 7:14 and was "with him" so long as he was "with God," according to 2 Chronicles 15:2. Indeed, when he grew discinct and dissolute, then God's soul sat loose to him, and was disjointed from him, Jer 6:8 and the rather because he had had the benefit of better education. His father had taught him, and had taken much pains with him. Pro 4:4 His mother a also had counselled and cautioned him early not to give his strength to wine and women; and yet he was most inordinate in his love to these two. Ecc 2:1-26 This was almost as great an aggravation of his sin, that he had been better taught and brought up, as that other, that he forsook the Lord that had "appeared unto him twice." 1Ki 11:9 The "words of King Lemuel" they are called, because, though composed by his mother, yet for his use, in the same sense as Psalms 127:1, is styled "A song of degrees of Solomon," or "for Solomon," though made by his father, who tells him there that which he found true by experience, "Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord," &c., for by all his wives Solomon had none but one son, and him none of the wisest either.
a Aristippus dictus est μητροδιδακτος, quod eum mater Areta docuisset.