Chapter IV…

Chapter IV

CRITICAL NOTES.--+2. Doctrine,+ Literally something received, handed over; the author so describes it because he received it from his father. The Septuagint and the Vulgate translate by +donum,+ "a gift." +3. Tender and only,+ "dearly-beloved"--not that Solomon was Bathsheba's only son (1 Chron. iii. 5). +5. Get,+ Heb. "acquire or buy"--spare no cost. The repetition of the verb makes the injunction more imperative. +Forget+ is a word in Hebrew that takes the preposition from. In the idea of forgetting there is naturally involved that of turning aside or away from the object to be remembered. +6.+ Miller translates the last clause: "Love her, and she shall stand sentry over thee." +7.+ The first clause of this verse contains only four words, viz.: +Beginning,+ or "principal thing;" +Wisdom; get wisdom.+ Its terseness has led to various translations. Hitzig and others read: "The highest thing is wisdom." Miller translates: "As the height of wisdom, get wisdom." Delitzsch--The beginning of wisdom is: "Get wisdom." +With,+ not to be taken in the sense of "in connection with," but "by means of," or "at the price of." +8. Exalt+ or "esteem." +9.+ Last clause, or "she shall compass thee with a crown of glory." +10.+ As is all other instances (see Notes on Chap. iii. 2), Miller translates the promise: "And they shall grow greater to thee through years of life." +14. Go not.+ The Heb. is literally "to go straightforward;" also, "to pronounce happy." +15. Avoid,+ "Let it go," "reject it." +Turn from it,+ i.e., even if thou hast entered, turn back. +16.+ Miller here reads: "For the mere reason that they sleep not, rest assured they do mischief; and that their sleep is stolen, rest assured they occasion stumbling:" and understands it to mean that the more sleepless the industrious impenitent, the faster he is carrying everything to eternal ruin. But all other commentators of importance read as in the English version. +18. Shining light,+ Lit. "the light of dawn that grows and brightens even to the establishment of the day." +19. Darkness,+ "thick darkness," the gloom of midnight. +22. Health,+ or "healing." +23.+ "Above all other watching, keep thy heart," some read: "Keep thy heart with all (kinds of) keeping." Issues--"currents," "outgoings." +24. Froward mouth,+ Lit., "distortion," "crookedness." +26. Ponder,+ "make level, or straight."

NOTE ON VERSE 20.--There is an aspect of sameness in these beginnings. But they are beginnings. One of the characteristics of Scripture is a division, like Childe Harold into cantos, or separate sonnets. They are most conspicuous in the prophet Isaiah; and, like grapes upon a bunch, each wrapped in its individual rind, but all clustered on a common stem. If we ventured a conjecture, it would be that this suited the Israelitish worship. The synagogue would take one of these cantos and use it for the day. They were of irregular length, but that would allow variety. They have some repetitions, but so have missals and breviaries, that allow of choice on different occasions. There was an aim to provide most of the points for recitation on each occasion. What for one reading would seem very same, for many readings would seem wonderfully diversified.--Miller.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses 1-4.

THE RECIPROCAL DUTIES OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN.

+I. Parental Duty.+ "He taught me." Solomon, and all children, have many claims upon their parents to receive from them instruction in the revelation of God. 1. Parents are responsible for the existence of their children. They are the instrumental cause of their child's being in the world, and his being in that state of probation upon which hang such "infinite possibilities." 2. The child is so absolutely ignorant of the life into which he comes. Unavoidable ignorance has always a claim upon knowledge, and the claim is assuredly increased in proportion as those who know and those who do not know are related to each other by a divinely constituted bond. "I am a stranger in the earth" is the claim which every child puts in as a reason why he should be instructed and taught in a way which he should go. "Hide not God's commandments from me" is the appeal which the child's ignorance makes to those who have had some experience in the world. 3. Children claim instruction because of their future relationship to others. The neglect of a child's education is a sin against more than himself. He will come, in his turn, to influence others. Upon his character will depend, in a great degree, the characters and eternal destinies of many in generations yet to come. 4. Children have a claim upon their parents because they belong to God. If a proprietor of land hands over to the cultivator a piece of virgin soil, he does not relinquish his own claim thereby--he demands that his property shall be restored to him increased in value by being brought under cultivation. The child is given to its parent by God in its undeveloped moral condition, but God retains His own inheritance in the gift. He looks for nurture, for cultivation; He demands from the parent such a fulfilment of parental duties as will ensure to Him that His gift shall grow of more and more worth in the moral universe. A day of reckoning on this matter will assuredly come. Solomon recognises the claim which children have upon their parents by recording his own parents' conduct in relation to himself and by giving us an example of his own method of instructing his children.

+II. Filial Duty.+ "Hear, ye children." Parents have claims upon their children. 1. From the simple fact of the relationship. A good father claims the obedience of his son because he is that child's ordained guide and ruler. He is to his son God's viceregent so long as his commands are in accordance with God's law. 2. From their larger experience. They have trodden the path which the youth has yet to traverse, they have climbed the hill which rises yet before him, they have tested the worth of the things which will allure him. Their superior knowledge entitles them to say, "Hear the instruction of a father." 3. From the self-denial which, as parents, they have exercised. All that a good mother and father have done and suffered in order to advance the welfare of their children, their toil and forbearing love, constitutes a powerful claim to their children's grateful, reverential, attention and love. Solomon here gives an example of the honour in which every child should hold godly parents.

A PARENT'S MOST PRECIOUS GIFT.

+Good Doctrine.+ Verse 2. 1. Because without it there can be no good character. There can be no right feelings towards God unless there has been right teaching about Him. True views of God can only come from true doctrine concerning Him. Without a right view of God there is no motive power to form character. A man must know God as He is before he can begin to follow Him. There must be a true mirror to give a correct reflection. 2. Because if there is not the beginning of a good character, there will be an increasingly bad one. When men have no right doctrine concerning God, in other words, when they do not know Him as He is, they invariably make a God after their own conceptions. They bring God down to their level. "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself" (Psa. l. 21), has been the fatal mistake of men in all ages. If a man falls overboard from the deck of a vessel, he will not remain long at the level of his first fall. If he is not rescued he will sink to such a depth as will be out of all comparison with it. He will go lower and lower till his body finds the bottom of the ocean. Man's first fall from obedience to disobedience was a great fall, but he has not been content with this moral distance between himself and his Maker, he has tried to drag God down with him and thus has brutalised and demonised the divine that was still within him. In more than a material sense he has "changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible man" (Rom. i. 23). This changing of the truth of God into a lie will always take place where there is an absence of the right conceptions of God, and the result must always be the moral deterioration which Paul gives as the result in Rom. i. 26-32. There is as much relation between "good" or "right" doctrine and good and holy character as there is between good bread and pure water and a healthy body. Good bread will make good muscles and sinew, bad bread will not nourish the human frame. Pure water is indispensable to health, stagnant water will breed a hundred diseases. And mistaken views about God must be fruitful of soul disease. Results prove this to be the case. National and individual history prove the truth of it. "By their fruits ye shall know them" (Matt. vii. 20). As we can foretell what the quality of the harvest will be from the seed sown, so can we tell what has been the character of the seed from that which it brings forth.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS.

Verse 2. The common cry is "Who will show us any good?" and every man will lend both ears to a good bargain. The doctrine here delivered is good every way, whether you look to the author, matter, or effect of it.--Trapp.

God's commandments are not like the commandments of any other, which are directed to the benefit of the commanders: but God's commandments do only bring good to him that is commanded. . . . What is there so absurd, as to despise His commands who doth command that He may have matter for rewarding: for God doth not want our obedience, but we do want His commanding. Therefore it is said, "As the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their master, and the eyes of a maiden to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God until he have mercy upon us," that is, until He command us something, and that, thou, O David, callest mercy.--Jermin.

Good. +I. In itself.+ It is most majestic, as containing not trivial and common sentences, but high parables and extraordinary mysteries. It gives the highest direction in the greatest things. +II. It is good to us.+ Good for profit and pleasure. Good for soul and body (1 Cor. xv. 2; Deut. xxviii. 1). Good for this life and the life to come (1 Tim. iv. 8). Good when it pleaseth us (Psa. cxix. 7). Good when it crosseth us (Isa. xxxix. 8).--Francis Taylor.

Verse 3. Noteworthy is the prominence given to the mother's share in the training of the child. Among the Israelites and the Egyptians alone of the nations of the old world, was the son's reverence for the mother placed side by side with that which he owed to his father.--Plumptre.

Verse 4. Training, discipline, not foolish indulgence, is the truest evidence of affection to our tender and beloved ones (chap. xiii. 24; with 1 Kings i. 6).--Bridges.

"He taught me." The prayer of Solomon, at Gibeon, for wisdom, as the principal of God's gifts, was suggested to him by his father David, just before his death. (See 1 Chron. xxviii. 9, xxix. 19).--Wordsworth.

Here Solomon again commands the involuntary, because he has shown the steps to it. We cannot, of all other things in the world, live by a voluntary act, but we can "keep watch over the commandments." I mean, we can, as it is a voluntary act, if God makes us willing. But we cannot live as a voluntary thing except through some form of anterior obedience.--Miller.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses 5-13.

THE ONE THING NEEDFUL.

+I. Human nature has many needs.+ 1. There are the needs of the body, which begin upon our entrance into life, and never cease until the day of our death. These are common to all men, and keep every man in an attitude of getting all through his life. It is the demand of these needs--the effort to get what will supply them--that is the motive-power which keeps the world of men in motion. 2. Men's needs are multiplied in proportion to the greatness of their sphere and their intellectual activity. The needs of a judge upon the bench are more than those of a crossing-sweeper. Both have some wants in common, but the intellectual and social position of the former has multiplied his needs far beyond those of the latter. The needs of a master in a house of business, or of a mistress in a family, are more than those of their servants. They have more claims to meet--more responsible positions to fill. But the aim of each individual man, woman, or child is to supply their natural or acquired--their real or their supposed--wants, whether material, or intellectual, or spiritual.

+II. There is one need above all other needs--one thing to be gotten before all other gettings--viz.: Wisdom, taking the word to mean godliness.+ The husbandman finds that the field that has been given him to till needs many things before it will yield him a golden harvest. But there is one thing, among others, that is indispensable, viz.: the sunlight. He will plough, and harrow, and sow in vain if this want is not supplied. So all a man's gettings will fail to bring him a harvest of soul-satisfaction if this primal element be wanting.

+III. The blessings which follow the getting of godliness.+ They have already been enumerated in chap. iii. 21-26. See homiletics on that paragraph. On verse 9 see homiletics on chap. i. 9.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS.

Verse 5. We cannot do it directly, but there immediately follow the rules to be observed, "forget not," etc. It is astonishing how much is made of attention. It is the only voluntary thing, not muscular.--Miller.

For so much a man learns as he remembers. The promise also of salvation is limited to "keeping in memory what we have received" (1 Cor. xv. 2).

1. Because of the excellency of it. Things of high birth are excellent. This wisdom is from above (James iii. 17). Things rare are precious. True wisdom is not found in many. 2. Because of the pleasure of it (chap. iii. 17). No content in the world like that wisdom gives. 3. Because of the profit of it. Every trade will tell you that wisdom thrives, and folly beggars men. So in spiritual things. 4. Because of the necessity of it, which is the strongest argument. Without it die, nay be damned.--Francis Taylor.

Verse 6. Jerome wrote to a friend, "Beg now for me, who am grey-headed, of the Lord, that I may have Wisdom for my companion, of which it is written, 'Love her and she shall keep thee.'"

Forsake her not, and thou will love her, for love is bred by continuing together; love her and thou will not forsake her, for love liketh not of parting. The manner of speech seemeth to intimate a union of marriage, and indeed Wisdom is a fit spouse for man's noble soul.--Jermin.

We turn an eye to Wisdom, and she turns an eye to us. We watch and she watches. In our ungodly state we cannot think of Wisdom that she does not turn and step back to us by common grace. And, if we think so long, and strive so earnestly as that she comes to us and is full in sight, then each new fondness fascinates her and brings her close. Each wise thing that we do makes us wiser.--Miller.

It is worse with him that leaves good, than with him that never did it (2 Pet. ii. 21). One goes blindfold to hell and hath less pains there; another, seeing, hath more.--Francis Taylor.

Verse 7. Make religion thy business, other things do by the bye. As Cæsar, swimming through the waters to escape his enemies, carried his books in his hand above them, but lost his robe.--Trapp.

It can have no place if it has not the first place. If it be anything it will be everything.--Bridges.

The mistake of the principal thing is that which maketh the principle disorder in man's heart. . . . But as that is light which showeth the light unto us, so that is the principal thing which showeth the principal thing unto us, even wisdom alone.--Jermin.

I. What we are to acquire. Both divine and human learning, which differ as means do from the end. Were there no Divine learning, human learning would lose great part of its value: limited to the present life, it must terminate on the confines of the grave. And had we no human learning, now that the days of inspiration have passed, we should not be able to attain that which is divine. II. How we are to acquire it. We must be taught by those who were in the world before us. Weeds and thistles only will be the spontaneous produce if the ground is not broken up and good seed sown. III. Why we are to acquire it. The pleasures of wisdom exceed all others--in kind, degree, and duration.--Bishop Horne.

The world's maxim, on the contrary, is--money is the principal thing; therefore get money; and with all thy getting, get more.--Fausset.

Amidst all thy other acquisitions acquire this, without which all others will be useless and even hurtful.--Menochius.

"With," rather "by means of" (see "Critical Notes"). We are to turn all our gettings into the channel of more grace. We are to use all our properties for growing wiser. We are to grind up all our corn into the bread of spiritual nourishment.--Miller.

Venture all for wisdom rather than miss it. 1. What we lose is transitory, what we get is durable. A fee-simple is better than a leaf. 2. What we lose is hollow and empty, what we get is full and substantial. A sound timber tree is better than one hollow within, though the latter make a bigger show. 3. What we lose is vain, what we get is profitable. A piece of gold is better than a counter. 4. What we lose is often matter of danger, what we get is matter of safety and security.--Francis Taylor.

Verse 8. Of this recommendation of religion it is the more necessary to fix our attention because it is often refused to it by men of the world. Their notions of honour are apt to run in a very different channel. . . . A distinction must be made between fame and honour. The former is a loud and noisy applause; the latter a more silent and internal homage. Fame floats on the breath of the multitude; honour rests on the judgment of the thinking. Fame may give praise while it withholds esteem; but honour implies esteem mingled with respect. The one regards particular distinguished talents; the other looks up to the whole character. It follows, therefore, that in order to discern where man's true honour lies, we must look at the whole of what forms a man. A mind superior to fear, to selfish interest, and corruption; governed by this principle of uniform rectitude, the same in prosperity as in adversity, such is the mind which forms the distinction and eminence of men. And such a character is formed solely by the influence of true religion. II. The honour which man acquires by religion and virtue is independent and complete. It is independent of anything foreign or external. Wherever fortune is concerned it is the rank which commands our deference. Where some shining quality attracts admiration, it is only to a part of the character that we pay homage. But with goodness, it is the whole man whom we respect. III. This honour is divine and immortal. It is honour not only in the sight of man, but of God, whose judgment is the standard of truth and right. It enters with man into a future state; and continues to brighten through eternal ages.--Blair.

Not only "get," "keep," and "love" her, but also "exalt her." We are apt to think less of those things which we have, however precious, after the novelty has worn off. Beware of this feeling in religion. Religion richly repays in kind all that we can do to "embrace" her. She exalts them who exalt her (Psa. xxx. 1), and gives them fresh reason for exalting her (Psa. xxxvii. 34).--Fausset.

Verse 9. She is the diadem which bindeth up the shattered thoughts of man's understanding: she it is which covereth and succoureth the broken cracks of man's invention: she it is which delivereth the authority of sovereignty to the head, and maketh the head to be the head, in bearing rule and commanding the inferior affections and lusts of the heart and other members.--Jermin.

Crowns were anciently given to many sorts of persons as tokens of general favour and esteem. 1. To wise men and learned; to those who excelled in the arts and sciences. Godly-wise men deserve them much better. 2. To men famous for justice and other moral virtues; to good lawmakers and judges. Godly-wise men excel in theological virtues, which are far more excellent. 3. To conquerors. A wise man is a conqueror over his passions and affections, which make other men, and great ones too, very slaves. 4. To bridegrooms when they were married. A wise man is married to Wisdom, the fairest bride in the world. 5. To kings on their coronation day. So shall godly men be crowned when they die. They know how to rule their own souls here, and to direct others, and to get an eternal crown in Heaven. A beggar being once asked what he was, answered: "I am a king!" "Where is thy kingdom?" "It is in my soul. I can so rule my external and internal senses that all the faculties of my soul are subject to me." And who doubts that this kingdom is better than all the kingdoms of the world?--Francis Taylor.

Verse 11. He may boldly call to be heard who himself doth what he teacheth. Christ placeth doing before teaching (Matt. viii. 19), for good doing leading the way, though teaching doth not follow, yet good works can, as clear as the light, teach those that look upon us. Paul saith, "We have received grace and apostleship to the obedience of faith;" one would have thought he should have said rather to the government and direction of faith, but he saith, obedience, because examples do direct and govern better than words.--Jermin.

The two branches which constitute the sum of parental tuition--instruction and direction--teaching truth and guiding to duty. The one part relates to knowledge, the other to practice. In all rightly conducted education, the two should never be disjoined. To teach duty without truth is to teach action without motive--virtue without its principle. To teach truth without duty is to teach motive without the practice to which it should lead. They are both partial, and, if kept asunder, both worthless.--Wardlaw.

Verse 12. Having a good mixture of zeal and knowledge; so that thy zeal doth quicken thy knowledge, and thy knowledge guide thy zeal.--Trapp.

The way of wisdom is indeed narrow, but in a narrow way there may be large steps; for though our feet may be straightened from going aside, yet they are not straightened from going on apace.--Jermin.

As "goest" refers to the ordinary course, so "runnest" refers to extraordinary undertakings, wherein the believer has to put forth more than common energy.--Fausset.

The word straightened seems to express the case of one in difficulty and perplexity--contradictory impulses and obstacles pressing and hindering him on every side, perpetually producing embarrassment and apprehension--hedging up the way, and hemming us in, and destroying the freedom and comfort of advancement. Such is the case of a man who walks according to a worldly and carnal policy. He is ever at a loss. As circumstances are ever shifting, he is ever shifting his principles and plans to suit them. But the "wisdom from above" inspires a simplicity and a unity of principle by which a vast amount of this painful and agitating perplexity is taken away.--Wardlaw.

Verse 13. Often a ship's crew at sea are obliged suddenly to betake themselves to their boats, or abandon the sinking ship. Such a case was recently reported of an American whale-ship in the South Seas. The huge leviathan of the deep, wounded by the art of man, ran out the distance of a mile by way of getting a run-race, and thence came up with incredible velocity against the devoted ship. She began to fill. . . . The word was given. All hands went to work, and soon all the seaworthy boats were loaded to the gunwale with the prime necessaries of life. The deck was now nearly level with the water, and the boats shoved off for safety. After they had pulled a hundred yards away, two resolute men leaped from one of the boats into the sea, and made towards the ship. They disappear down a hatchway. In a minute they emerge again, bearing something in their hands. As they leap into the water the ship goes down; the men are separated from each other and their burden in the whirlpool that gathers over the sinking hull. They do not seem to consult their own safety. They remain in that dangerous eddy until they grasp again the object which they had carried over the ship's side. Holding it fast, they are seen at length bearing away to their comrades in the boat. What do these strong swimmers carry, for they seem to value it more than life? It is the compass! It had been left behind, and was remembered almost too late. Now they have taken fast hold of it, and will not let it go. Whatever they lose, they will at all hazards keep it, for "it is their life." When shall we see souls, shipwrecked on the sea of time, take and keep such hold of the truth as it is in Jesus?--Arnot.

Fasten and do not let slack. One rough grapple is not enough. Wisdom insidiously glides away if we give time to the arch deceiver. We are like a child trying to wake: he grasps the apple that one gives, but slackens as drowsiness creeps back.--Miller.

+I. Because many thieves lie in the way to rob us of what wisdom teaches.+ 1. The devil steals away the seed of the word (Matt. xiii. 9). 2. Wicked men also, by seducing us. Sometimes by persecuting us to make us forsake the truth (Matt. xiii. 21). 3. The world with its cares and profits seek to take this treasure from us (Matt. xiii. 22). The flesh presents many pleasures to us which drown our wits. +II. Because we may lose wisdom ourselves by negligence.+--F. Taylor.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses 14-19.

CONTRASTED PATHS AND OPPOSITE CHARACTERS.

+I. The just man's path.+ 1. It is a pre-ordained one. The path which the sun takes through the heavens, the path in which our earth encircles the sun, are the paths which God has pre-ordained for them. They are the only paths which they could take and preserve the harmony of the system to which they belong. They are the orbits which are exactly adapted to the fulfilment of the end for which God created them. So the path--the manner of life--of the godly man is the path in which God intended man to walk when He created him. He called him into being in order that he might "walk before Him and be perfect" (Gen. xvii. 1). "The highway of holiness" is the God-ordained path of man, the old way which was trodden by His creatures for ages before man had any existence. 2. It is a blessing-dispensing path. The sun, by keeping God's pre-ordained path, is a blessing to the world. Its rays possess a quickening power which develops the hidden life of the plant, and so clothes the earth with beauty and fruitfulness. Without its heat and light our globe would be a great Sahara--a vast wilderness of black barrenness. It likewise brings into operation a sense in man which would otherwise be dormant. The light of the body is the eye, but where would sight be without sun? Creatures who have lived for years in darkness appear to lose the power of sight, even if light shines upon their eye-balls. The constant contact of the eye with light keeps alive the power of vision. So with the just man's path. Without the godly this world would be a moral wilderness. All the beauty of goodness there is in it comes from the life of the children of wisdom. "They that dwell under his shadow shall return; they shall revive as the corn and grow as the vine; the scent thereof shall be as the wine of Lebanon" (Hosea xiv. 7). And He keeps alive the inner eye of man--the conscience. It, too, needs external light to play upon it to keep it alive. And the holy walk of the godly does this for the ungodly, it prevents the conscience from being utterly stifled by sin. 3. It is a progressive path. It shines more and more. The light of dawn has glories all its own, but it is not strong enough to do the work of the noon-day rays, its heat is not able to penetrate beneath the surface of the earth and wake up the life out of the seed-corn hidden there; its brightness touches the mountain-tops, but does not scatter the shadows in the valleys. But when the sun reaches its meridian "there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." So with the children of wisdom. When they first set out upon their journey their godliness is not so manifest to others, nor does it yield so much comfort to themselves as when they have trodden the path for years. But it must, from a necessity of nature, go on unto perfection. "Just men will be made perfect" (Heb. xii. 3). "They go from strength to strength" (Psa. lxxxiv. 7). They come "to the perfect day."

+II. The wicked man's way.+ It is in every point the converse of that which has just been sketched. 1. It is his own way (chap. i. 31): not God's way, not the way in which he was destined to walk. It is an old way (Job. xxii. 15), but not the oldest way; it is a path cast up by the will of man and pre-Adamite sinners. 2. It is a way of darkness, because it is a way of blindness. Blindness puts a man in the dark, and, being in the dark, he has only the experience that springs from darkness. Wickedness puts out the eyes of the soul, and, like a blind Samson, it sits in darkness and the shadow of death. A state of blindness is a state of ignorance. A blind man cannot avoid objects that come in his way, and when he falls in consequence, he knows not the object that caused him to fall. So the wise man here describes the ungodly as one "who knows not at what he stumbles" (verse 19). He has no realisation of the real character of his tempters, no insight into the sinfulness of sin; the lack of a guiding principle turns his walk into a series of stumblings. It follows of necessity that such a path is one of danger. It is more dangerous to walk in the night than in the day. The footpad or the highwayman can hide himself from our view in the darkness, and come upon us unawares. We may fall over the precipice at night that we could easily avoid in the day. So it is in a course of sin. A man who shuts his eyes to the light within him, and rejects the light which is to "lighten every man" (John i. 9), will, unawares, be overtaken by retribution, and fall into depths of remorse upon which he little counts. 3. Like the path of the just, it is a progressive path. No man stands still in it. The darkness thickens as the blindness increases, and the blindness grows the longer men refuse to "come to the light" (John iii. 20). Men do not at once come to the height or descend to the depth of iniquity described in verse 16, when, unless they have done some iniquitous act, they feel that they have lost a day. The merchant may feel he has lost a day when he has failed to make a good bargain; the scholar feels it when he has not added to his stock of knowledge; the heathen emperor reckoned a day lost when he had not benefited some one; but for a man not to sleep except he has done a mischief, surely expresses as "perfect a night" as it is possible for human nature to attain to. Surely he then proves himself to be a child of him whose business it is to "go about seeking whom he may devour" (2 Pet. v. 8). 4. It is a path which is destructive to others. As the good man, by walking in God's path, blesses his fellow-creatures as well as himself, so the wicked man, in his path of darkness, is a curse to others as well as himself. The force of evil example alone is pernicious to all who surround him, but although he may begin in this negative way, he soon advances to positive acts of sin, until he lives upon the misery of others. It becomes his meat and drink to drag others to destruction with him, or, failing that, to do them as much injury as he can (verses 16 and 17).

+III. The means of escape from this path of darkness and ruin.+ "Enter it not," and, to make sure of not entering it, give it a wide berth--"pass not by it, turn away" (verses 14, 15). When we see those whom we love in danger, we multiply words of warning, and are not careful to avoid repeating words which may have little or no difference in their meaning. So Solomon's anxiety shows itself here in the repetition of his exhortations. But there is some gradation observed in them. 1. We are not to enter the paths, not even to set one foot upon the forbidden way. Men may be tempted to venture a step or two just to take a glance, and intend to turn back as soon as they have done so, but it is enchanted ground, and it is more than likely if they are once upon the track they will go further than they at first intended. But if they do not enter it, they cannot walk in it. 2. If you have already entered, do not persevere another moment, turn from it at once. If the captain of a ship becomes all at once aware that he is steering his vessel upon the rocks, he puts about at once. The next best thing to not going wrong at all is to turn back--in Bible language, to repent, to put the face in the opposite direction, to turn the whole man back to the opposite goal. 3. In order to escape the danger of entering at all, or of re-entrance after having once forsaken it, avoid its very neighbourhood, pass not by it, go not in the way of temptation. If a youth has been induced to gamble, and has resolved to give up the habit, let him not go near the gambling house--let him give up all intercourse with gamblers; if he has been once under the fatal influence of strong drink, he must taste it no more--not even "look upon the wine when it is red" (ch. xxiii. 31). He must "flee youthful lusts" and the most certain method of doing this is to strike out another course--to "follow after righteousness" (1 Tim. vi. 11, 12), to get well into the way of wisdom, to know from experience the blessedness of the path of the just. Men must have a "way" in life, there is no neutral ground; or if some men seem for a time to be living in the border-land, a time will come when they must declare for one side or the other.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS.

Verse 14. We must all "enter" somewhere. We are all travelling. We all necessarily follow something. Don't take the path of the wicked for it. That is the doctrine.--Miller.

Sin is like a whirlpool. He who once ventures within the circle of its eddying waters in the self-sufficient assurance that he may go a certain length, and then turn at his pleasure and stem the current back, may feel the fancied strength of the sinews of his moral resolution but weakness in the moment of need, and may--nay, almost certainly will--be borne on further and further, till, all power of resistance failing, he is carried round and round with increasing celerity, and sucked into the central gulf of irrecoverable perdition.--Wardlaw.

Jortin, in his remarks upon Ecclesiastical History, relates the story of a colloquy between a Father of the second century and an evil spirit in a Christian, whom he sought to expel. Upon inquiring how he dared be so impudent as to enter a Christian, the evil spirit replied, "I went not to church after him, but he came to the playhouse after me, and, finding him upon my own ground, I sought to secure him for myself." Whatever becomes of the story, the moral of it deserves attention.--Leifchild.

We pray to be kept from temptation, and our practice ought not to contradict our prayers; otherwise, it is evident that we mock God by asking from Him what we do not wish to have.--Lawson.

Verse 15. This triple gradation of Solomon showeth, with a great emphasis, how necessary it is to flee from all appearance of sin. . . . Entireness (friendship) with wicked consorts is one of the strongest chains of hell, and binds me to a participation of both sin and punishment.--Brooks.

Come not near. 1. Because our corruption is so great that, if we come near it, we will both smell it with delight and smell of it. 2. Because wicked men stand upon the edge of their way to draw others into it, as thieves watch for their prey. 3. We may stumble into that way ourselves, if we be not pulled into it by others. He that walks on the brink of a river may fall in. There is but a narrow bridge between lawful and unlawful. And that which is lawful to-day may, by a circumstance, be made unlawful to-morrow.--Francis Taylor.

It would not be complaisance, but cowardice--it would be a sinful softness which allowed affinity in taste to imperil your faith or your virtue. It would be the same sort of courtesy which, in the equatorial forest, for the wake of its beautiful leaf, lets the liana, with its strangling arms, run up the plantain or orange, and pays the forfeit in blasted boughs and total ruin. It would be the same sort of courtesy which, for fear of appearing rude or inhospitable, took into dock the infected vessel, or welcomed, not as a patient, but as a guest, the plague-stricken stranger.--Jas. Hamilton.

Verses 16 and 17. The devil, their taskmaster, will not allow them time to sleep, which is very hard bondage.--Trapp.

The character of the wicked is here drawn in their father's image--first sinners; then tempters. . . . Judas with his midnight torches (John xviii. 3); the early morning assembly of the Jewish rulers (Luke xxii. 66); the frenzied vow of the enemies of Paul (Acts xxiii. 12); and many a plot in after ages against the Church--all vividly pourtray this unwearied wickedness.--Bridges.

The fearful stage of debasement when the tendency to sin is like the craving for stimulants, as a condition without which there can be no repose.--Plumptre.

The trouble of others is the rest of the wicked.--Jermin.

Just as bread forms the flesh, and makes it grow, according as it is eaten, so wickedness is the food of the spirit. "My meat is," says Christ, "to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work" (John iv. 34). "Thy words were found, and I did eat them" (Jer. xv. 16). So in chap. i. 31. "Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way"--the meaning being, that a man's way, spiritually considered, is all that forms him. He feeds upon it. If it is righteous, it nourishes him in life. If it is wicked, it nourishes him in death. He feeds on food of wickedness, and grows exactly in proportion as he sins. His very life is in its very self a deadly self-banqueting.--Miller.

They sin, not of frailty, but of malice; not by occasion, as it were, but by an insatiable desire of committing wickedness.--Muffet.

Verse 18. He sets forth betime in the morning and travels to meet the day.

The sun is an emblem, not of the just, but of the Justifier. Christ alone is the light of the world. The just are those whom the Sun of Righteousness shines upon. . . . When any portion of the earth's surface begins to experience a dawn diminishing its darkness, it is because that portion is gradually turning round towards the sun, the centre of light fixed in the heavens. When any part of the earth lies away from the sun, and in proportion to the measure of its aversion, it is dark and cold, in proportion as it turns to him again its atmosphere grows clearer, until in its gradual progress it comes in sight of the sun, and its day is perfect then. So is the path of the just. Day is not perfect here in the believer's heart . . . but the machinery of the everlasting covenant is meantime going softly and silently as the motion of the spheres; and they that are Christ's here, whatever clouds dim their present prospect, are wearing every moment farther from the night, and nearer to the day.--Arnot.

There is a day to be which shall be a day indeed, without cloud, without night, without morning, without evening. Unto this day leadeth the path of the righteous, and which going on, shineth more and more, until at last when it seemeth to go out, it shall be received into that light which never goeth out.--Jermin.

Light is emblematical of knowledge, holiness, and joy. The three bear invariable proportion to each other--holiness springing from knowledge, and joy from both. . . . "The entrance of God's word gives light." But the entrance of this light into the mind is often, like the early dawn, feeble, glimmering, uncertain. . . . But it does not abide so. . . . He who is enlightened from above is eager for more of the blessed light. He thirsts for knowledge, and is on the alert to obtain it. . . . With growth in knowledge there is growth in holiness. At the first dawn of spiritual light some faint desires are felt after God and sanctity. These progressively increase, and they show their influence in the increase of practical godliness. . . . And joy is the natural attendant of spiritual illumination and inward sanctity. It, too, is progressive. Like the sun in every stage of his diurnal course, it may be overcast by occasional clouds. But as the sun appears the brighter on his emerging from the cloudy veil, so the trials of the just serve to give lustre to their virtues.--Wardlaw.

Verse 19. It is interesting to note the resemblance between these words and those of our Lord (John xi. 10; xii. 35).--Plumptre.

Strange enough: it is a confessed darkness. There is a sort of common light that tells a man that impenitence is darkness. And yet it does not teach him better. Like mere physical light at times, some chemical ray is absent. The darkness that remains is a darkness that may be felt. It constitutes our eternal chains (2 Pet. ii. 4); it binds a man on the car of ruin. And like a Christian, who, in his partial light, may fail to know what is blessing him, so the sinner in his absolute darkness, takes industry for virtue, and family love for wholesome righteousness; and does not know the incidents of life that are stumbling blocks to eternal ruin.--Miller.

Sinners are in such darkness that they are insensible to the objects that are leading them to ruin, thus they stumble--1. At the great deceiver. 2. At one another. 3. At Divine Providence. 4. At their common employments. 5. At the nature and tendency of their religious performances. 6. At the preaching they hear. 7. At the blindness of their hearts.--Emmons, from Lange's Commentary.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses 20-27.

THE PATH OF SAFETY.

For Homiletics on Verses 20-22, see chap. ii. 1-5, etc.

Verses 23-27. +I. A man's most precious and real possession.+ "Thy heart." The heart here, and in other parts of Holy Scripture, is that part of a man for which the Bible exists, that in man to which the revelation of God appeals, that which places a great gulf between him and all other creatures in the world, that which links him to the angels of God, that which entails upon him responsibilities and endows him with capabilities which will last throughout all the ages to come. It is that spiritual nature which our Lord calls a man's "own soul" (Matt. xvi. 26), which Paul speaks of as the "inner man" (Ephes. iii. 16).

+II. The need of "keeping," or "guarding" the heart.+ There are elements of evil as well as good in it. In any kingdom where there are bad subjects as well as good, there must be a watch kept over those out of whom submission to law is not to be got voluntarily. They must be guarded lest they get the upper hand and overpower and tyrannise over the peace-loving obedient citizens. In every human body there is some organ which is more prone to disease than others. While some are strong and vigorous, others are more or less delicate; therefore a man needs to exercise care over his body. So in the heart of the child of wisdom there is an evil element as well as a good one. "I see another law in my members," says Paul, "warring against the law of my mind" (Rom. vii. 23). Every godly man has a tendency to moral weakness, some opening in his spiritual armour, some weak part in his moral constitution. Therefore it behoves him to keep guard over, to watch vigilantly, the lawless, rebellious, or diseased elements within him, lest sin have dominion, if only for a time, where grace ought to rule.

+III. The importance of keeping the heart.+ "Out of it are the issues of life." The physical heart of man is well defended by nature, because it is the spring of our bodily life. From it, as from a well, issues life-blood, which flows into every part of the body, and without which a man ceases to live. The strong ribs and the inner coverings of the heart which so well defend it show the necessity there is that it should be free to do its work without let or hindrance. "A sound heart is the life of the flesh," says Solomon (chap. xiv. 30). If the heart is healthy, the benefit is felt to the extremities of the body; if it is diseased, the whole physical frame suffers. Out if it are the issues of animal life. A man who has charge of a well of water is bound to keep it covered and secured against the entrance of anything that might poison or even defile it. Upon its safe keeping depends, perhaps, not only the health of himself and his household, but that of an entire district. It is a centre of health if pure, of disease if impure. So upon the condition of the inner man depends the character of the outward life. It is a well-spring of life in the sense that it determines the character of the life. The streams which issue from it are the actions of man, actions repeated are habits, and habits form character; and character influences other lives. What a man is blesses or curses those around him, and entails blessing or curse upon generations to come. A good man in a neighbourhood is like a well of living water, he diffuses and preserves moral health all around him.

+IV. The way to keep the heart.+--The vigilance of a sentinel is manifested by his notice of the distant motion of the grass under cover of which the enemy is creeping towards the citadel. He is ever on the look-out for the distant enemy. The watchful general notes the first symptom of mutiny in the army, and treads out the spark before it becomes a flame. So the watchful heart-keeper takes notice of the first movement of rebels within. The thoughts take their rise in the soul under the eye of none but God and the keeper, and he must be on the alert at the first motion. And as when the sentinel sees the first movement of the enemy he never thinks of advancing to fight him alone, but communicates with one who has the power to overthrow him, so when a man becomes aware of the first motion of evil in his heart, God must receive the information--He must be called upon to exercise His power to disperse or take prisoners the thoughts before they can become actions. Keeping of the heart includes a guarding of every inlet of temptation, a watchfulness over the senses, and any organ of the outward man which might lead us into temptation. Hence Solomon exhorts his son to guard his eyes and his feet. It has been asserted by some that there is nothing in the mind which has not first been in the senses; and though this is a disputed point, we are quite sure that there is much in the heart, both of good and evil, which entered by those gates. There are thoughts there which have been kindled by what we have seen, as Achan's covetous desires were created by the sight of the goodly spoils of Jericho. The eye of David was the entrance-gate of the thought which ended in adultery and murder. And the feet may lead us in forbidden paths--into the way of temptation--into the society of those whose words, finding entrance by the ear, may sow seeds of impurity within.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS.

Verse 20. Still he calls for attention. It fares with many of us as with little children, who, though saying their lessons, must needs look off to see the feather that flies by them.--Trapp.

The former verse having spoken of hearing God's Word, this speaketh of reading it. For the beginning of obedience is to be willing to know what is commanded, and it is a part of performance to have learned what is to be performed. . . . Let God's Word be in our heart, it will be in the midst of it. For the heart hath no outside, all is the midst there: the heart hath no outward show, all there is inward truth.--Jermin.

Verse 21. The terms of this verse may be compared, for illustration, with those of Deut. vi. 6, 8: "And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes." Amongst the Jews there was a sad propensity to take the latter injunction literally and externally. Hypocrites and formalists satisfied themselves with having little scraps of the law written on parchment, and worn as frontlets on the forehead. But this was a delusion. The laws of God are never rightly "before the eyes" unless they are "in the heart." The meaning of the former clause of the verse is, that the commandments of God should be kept constantly in view as the guides of the whole conduct. And this will be the case when they are kept "in the midst of the heart."--Wardlaw.

Verse 22. Some medicines are good for one part of the body, some for another. This is good for all the body, and all the soul.--Cartwright.

Verse 23. That thou mayest keep thy heart sincere, to use the similitude of a castle, for so the heart is,--1. Repair and fortify it diligently. Weak walls are soon broken down. Breaches give occasion for an enemy to enter. Thou wilt find something to mend every day in the understanding, or conscience, or memory, or will, or affections, if not in all of them. 2. Victual this fort, else it cannot hold out against a siege. Feed it with good meditations from the creatures, and out of the Scriptures. Starved soldiers cannot defend a fort. 3. Set up a regiment in thy soul. No fort can be kept without government; soldiers, else, will rebel and betray the fort. Commit that charge to a well-informed conscience; submit all thoughts, and words, and deeds to it. 4. Get arms in it to keep out enemies; to wit, God's prohibitions and threats in His Word. This is the sword of the Spirit (Ephes. vi. 17).--Francis Taylor.

The man is as his heart is. The heart is the spring and fount of all natural and spiritual actions, it is the primum mobile, the great wheel that sets all other wheels agoing; it is the great monarch in the isle of man, therefore, keep it with all custody and caution, or else bid farewell to all true joy, peace, and comfort. When the heart stands right with Christ He will pardon much and pass by much. . . . Therefore we should keep our heart as under lock and key, that they may be always at hand when the Lord shall call for them. . . . The word heart is here put comprehensively for the whole soul, with all its powers, noble faculties, and endowments, together with their several operations, all which are to be watched over. . . . It is a duty incumbent upon every Christian to keep his own heart. Thou mayest make another thy park-keeper, thy housekeeper, thy shopkeeper, thy cash-keeper, but thou must be thy own heartkeeper. "With all diligence." Some understand this of all kind of watchfulness. 1. As men keep a prison. How vigilant are they in looking after their prisoners. 2. As they keep a besieged garrison, or castle, in time of war. A gracious heart is Christ's fort-royal. Against this fort Satan will employ his utmost art, therefore it must have a strong guard. 3. As the Levites kept the sanctuary of God and all the holy things committed to their charge (Ezek. xliv. 8-15). Our hearts are the temples of the Holy Ghost, and therefore we should keep a guard about them, that nothing may pass in or out that may be displeasing, grieving, or provoking to Him. 4. As a man keeps his life. The same word (shamar) is used in Job. x. in reference to life. With what care, what diligence, do men labour to preserve their natural lives. 5. As men keep their treasures. There are few men who know how to value their hearts as they should. It is that pearl of price for which a man should lay down his all. 6. As spruce men and women do their fine clothes. They won't endure a spot upon them. Let not others be more careful to keep their outsides clean, than you are to keep your insides clean.--Brooks.

The fountains and wells of the East were watched over with special care. A stone was rolled to the mouth of the well, so that "a spring shut up, a fountain sealed," became the type of all that is most jealously guarded (Song Sol. iv. 22). So it is here. The heart is such a fountain--out of it flow "the issues of life." Shall we let the stream be tainted at the fountain head?--Plumptre.

Keep the heart. 1. Because it falls directly under the inspection of God. Man can judge only by what is external, but "I, the Lord, search the heart." 2. Because of the influence the heart has upon the life. He that is concerned about making the tree good will probably make the fruit so. 3. Care in keeping the heart is greatly to be regarded for itself. Is there nothing pleasant, nothing honourable in being masters at home--in being possessors of our own spirits? Is it nothing that the peace of the kingdom is broken, even though the constitution of it be not overthrown?--Doddridge.

A heart purified by the grace of God, and firmly rooted in truth as its ground, is the source and common fountain for the successful development of all the main activities and functions of human life, those belonging to the sphere of sense, as well as to the psychical and spiritual realms, and this must more and more manifest itself as such a centre of the personality, sending forth light and life.--Lange's Commentary.

Though to keep the heart be God's work, it is man's agency. Our efforts are his instrumentality.--Bridges.

All vital principles are lodged there, and only such as are good and holy will give you pleasure. The exercises of religion will be pleasing when they are natural, and flow easily out of their own fountain.--John Howe.

Although Solomon repeats himself, he always advances upon the thought. There is always some characteristic novelty: and that novelty is the hinge of the purpose, and imbeds its meaning in the life of the passage. Here it is the function of the heart. It circulates life. Give it good blood, and it will throw off disease; give it bad blood, and it will produce disease. Give it health enough, and it will throw off incipient mortification; give it no health, and it will produce mortification. Solomon weaves this into experimental godliness. . . . Guard the great central guard-post, and no out-station will be cut off. If it be, for a time, the heart will win it again.--Miller.

Verse 24. While we speak, we should never forget that God is one of the listeners. . . . Take the principle of Hagar's simple and sublime confession, accommodated in thought to the case at hand "Thou, God, hearest me." If our words were all poured through that strainer, how much purer and fewer they would be.--Arnot.

It is true that vigilance over the heart is vigilance over the tongue, inasmuch as out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. . . . There is no surer index of the state of the "inner man." As is the conversation, so is the heart.--Wardlaw.

While a fire is confined to one man's house, even if it burns that house to its foundation, all other dwellings are unharmed; but when it lays hold of surrounding buildings, all the city is endangered. When an evil thought is confined to a man's own spirit, kept within the limits of thinking or desiring, though it may char his own soul with the blackness of perdition, the evil ends with himself. But when he allows his thought to become words, he kindles a fire outside himself which may go on burning even after he has forgotten it himself.

Verse 25. Let them be fixed upon right objects. . . . Be well skilled in Moses' optics (Heb. xi. 27). Do as mariners do that have their eye on the star, their hand on the stern. A man may not look intently upon that he may not love.--Trapp.

Like one ploughing, who must not look back.--Cartwright.

Had Eve done so she would have looked at the command of God, not at the forbidden tree. Had Lot's wife looked straight before her instead of behind her, she would, like her husband, have been a monument of mercy. . . . In asking the way to Zion, be sure that your faces are thitherward (Jer. i. 5). The pleasures of sin and the seductions of the world do not lie in the road. They belong to the bye-paths. They would not, therefore, meet the eye looking right on.--Bridges.

Verse 26. Lift not up one foot till you find firm footing for another, as those in Psa. xxxv. 6. The way of this world is like the vale of Siddim, slimy and slippery.--Trapp.

The habit of calm and serious thinking makes the difference between one man and another.--Dr. Abercrombie.

The feet of the soul are generally understood to be the affections. And surely we have need to ponder the path of them before we give away to them. St. Bernard maketh the two feet to be nature and custom, for, indeed, by them we are much carried, and great need we have to ponder the path of them, so that they do not lead us amiss.--Jermin.

The best time to ponder any path is not at the end, not even in the middle, but at the beginning of it.--Arnot.

Verse 27. It is as if the royal way was hemmed in by the sea, and a fall over either side were danger of drowning. Some are too greedy; others ascetic. Some are too bold; others too diffident. Some neglect the one Mediator; others seek more mediators than one. Some flee the cross; others make one. Some tamper with Popery; others, from dread of it, hazard the loss of valuable truth.--Cartwright.

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Chapter V

CRITICAL NOTES.--+2. Discretion,+ Lit. "reflection," "prudent consideration." +3. Drop as an honey-comb,+ "distil honey." +4. Wormwood.+ In Eastern countries this herb, the absinthum of Greek and Latin botanists, was regarded as a poison. It has a bitter and saline taste. +6.+ This verse is rendered in two ways. The forms of the two verbs may be in the second person masculine, and so apply to the tempted youth, or in the third person feminine, and so be understood to refer to the harlot. Most modern commentators take the latter reading. Delitzsch translates: "She is far removed from entering the way of life: her steps wander without her observing it." Stuart: "That she may not ponder the path of life, her ways are become unsteady, while she regards it not." The rendering in Lange's Commentary is, "The path of life she never treadeth, her steps stray, she knoweth not whither." The Authorised Version is, however, supported by Rosenmuller and Michaelis. +9. Honour,+ or "power," "bloom," or "freshness." +11. Mourn,+ or "groan," "at the last," lit. "at thine end." +14.+ Readings here again vary. Miller translates: "I soon became like any wicked man." Lange's Commentary: "A little more, and I had fallen into utter destruction." The renderings of Stuart and Delitzsch are substantially the same as the Authorised Version. +16.+ In order to make the idea in this verse agree with those preceding and following it, Stuart and other commentators insert a negative: "Let (not) thy fountains," &c. Lange's Commentary considers this needless, and retains the same idea by conceiving the sentence to be an interrogative indicated, not by its form, but by its tone: "Shall thy fountains?" etc. So also Hitzig. Holden, Noyes, Wordsworth, Miller, &c., read as in the Authorised Version. +19. Be ravished,+ lit. "err," used in the next verse in a bad sense, and in chap xx. 1, and Isa. xxviii. 7, of the staggering gait of the intoxicated. It seems to express a being transported with joy. +21. Pondereth,+ or "marketh out." +22. Shall be holden,+ rather "is holden." +23. Without,+ "for lack of."

ILLUSTRATION OF VERSE 19.

Here we have started up, and sent leaping over the plain, another of Solomon's favourites. What elegant creatures those gazelles are, and how gracefully they bound. We shall meet them all through Syria and Palestine, and the more you see of them the greater will be your admiration. Solomon is not alone in his partiality. Persian and Arab poets abound in reference to them. The fair ones of these fervid sons of song are often compared to the coy gazelle that comes by night and pastures upon their hearts. They are amiable, affectionate, and loving, by universal testimony, and accordingly no sweeter comparison can be found than that of Prov. v. 19.--Thompson's Land and the Book.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses 1-20.

BITTER AND SWEET WATERS.

+I. A wrong relation.+ The relationship here forbidden is wrong. 1. Because it is a sin against the tempter. The tempter in Eden had his load of iniquity increased by the yielding of the tempted one to his persuasion. He increased his crime when he made another a partaker of his disobedience. Satan, doubtless, becomes worse every time that he persuades another to sin. The gambler's guilt and misery is increased in proportion to his success in bringing others to ruin. The young man in the text increases the guilt of the "strange woman" by yielding to her enticements. He burdens her with new guilt and intensifies her iniquity, and therefore helps to treasure up for her a greater remorse when her conscience shall awake and arise from the grave of sensuality. 2. Because it is a sin against a man's own body. That which is our own is generally valued by us, and there is nothing material which is ours in a more exclusive sense than our bodily frame. It is nearer to us than any other material possession, and to sin against it is to sin against that which stands in the nearest relation to our personal moral individuality. There are sins done in the body by the mind which are purely mental, from which the body does not suffer; but adultery forces the body into a relation which brings misery and disease upon it, and in due season consumes and destroys it like a devouring flame. "Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body" (1 Cor. vi. 18). 3. Because it is a sin against human nature in general, and national life in particular. Human nature is like the human body, every man is linked to his fellow-men as the several members of the body are parts of one whole. This solidarity--this union of interest--is more obvious when considered in relation to a particular community or nation; and, as no member of the human body can be disfigured without bringing the whole frame into a state of imperfection and loss of dignity, so no man can degrade himself without bringing degradation upon the whole race. The fornicator is a plague-spot upon the body of humanity; and although other sinners bring disfigurement upon the body universal, there is none who defiles it as he does. God has written His mark upon the crust of the earth against this enormous sin (Gen. xix. 24, 25). 4. Because it makes God, in a sense, to bear the iniquity with the transgressor. The youth who spends the money his father gives him in furthering his own wicked purposes makes his father an unwilling partaker of his crimes, because the money was supplied by him. God made this complaint against sinners in the olden time. The good gifts of the earth which God bestowed upon the Hebrew people were used by them in their debasing idol-worship. God gave them the means of honouring Him, and they used His gifts in dishonouring His name. So God gives to every man power to glorify Him and to bless himself and the world by the formation of right relations. When the power thus given is used in an unlawful manner, God's own gift is used against Himself. The sinner turns the Divine gift against the Divine Giver; and while in God he lives, and moves, and has his being, he lives and moves but to sin against his Maker. Thus in Scripture language God "is made to serve" with the sinner, while He is "wearied with his iniquities" (Isa. xliii. 22-24).

+II. The bitter waters which flow from this wrong relation.+ (Verse 4.) 1. The loss of honour. (Verse 7.) To some men this is dearer than life. The captain would rather go to the bottom of the sea with his ship than live with a shadow upon his good name and reputation. The man who has lost his honour in the eyes of others has lost his honour in his own eyes, and the loss of self-honour or self-respect is a calamity that is very bitter to the soul. The man who will indulge in unlawful intercourse, will find that he not only loses the respect of others, but he will be unable to respect himself, and this loss is the greatest that a man can sustain on this side of hell. It is a draught which, although there might be pleasure in the drawing, will be very bitter in the drinking. 2. The loss of manhood's vigour and opportunities. He will "give his years to the cruel, his strength to the stranger." The loss of youthful strength and energy is the loss of years, the youth becomes old before he is a man. The vessel or the mansion that is charred by fire before it is completed presents a strange contrast. The newness and freshness of the walls or the timbers that have escaped make the destruction of the rest more lamentable. The building has been marred just upon the verge of completion, the ship has been spoiled when she was all but ready for the voyage. It is sad to see an old tree blasted by the lightning, but it is a greater misfortune when the tree is in its prime, when it is laden with fruit about to come to perfection. But these are faint shadows of the sad spectacle which is presented by a youth who has become prematurely old by unlawful indulgence before he has reached his prime. He is unfit to battle with the sea of life at the very time when he ought to be setting out on his voyage. He falls short of fulfilling the demands of God and man at the moment when he ought to be bringing forth abundant fruit. Surely such a consciousness must be as bitter waters to the spirit. 3. The action of conscience and memory in a dying day. "And thou mourn at the last," etc. (Verse 11.) The lamp that hangs from the stern of the vessel throws a light upon the wake of the ship and reveals the path that she has travelled. Memory is such a lamp to the human soul. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus we find memory throwing such a light upon the past, and enabling him to look back upon the path which had brought him to his present abode. Conscience sat in judgment upon it and united with memory to make his present cup a bitter one. The bitterness that is always mingled with the life of the profligate becomes doubly bitter at the end. Memory throws her light upon his past, and shows him the strength, and honour, and opportunities of life squandered in licentiousness, and conscience anticipates future retribution and makes him feel the truth of the word of warning. "Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge" (Heb. xiii. 4). The bitterness is increased by the reflection that the sin was committed in defiance of counsel to act differently. And thou say, "How have I hated instruction and my heart despised reproof" (verse 12). Those who sin against the light of nature only, find a recompense which is terrible, yet which an inspired Apostle declares to be "meet" (Rom. i. 27). The sins here mentioned are sins against nature, and nature asserts her right to punish her broken law and leave her mark upon the fornicator. But when revelation, and instruction, and good example are added to the light of nature, the cup contains ingredients of tenfold bitterness. "Whoso breaketh one hedge, a serpent shall bite him" (Eccles. x. 8). How much sharper will be the sting if a double--a threefold--hedge is broken through.

+III. Sweet waters flowing from a right relationship.+ The waters are sweet or living--1. From a consciousness that a chaste wife belongs to him alone (ver. 15). The profligate can lay no such claim for the woman of his choice; she is, by her own consent, common to all. The husbandman has a very different feeling concerning his own field, which he alone has a right to till, and the common land which is open to all comers. So the true husband has a feeling towards his wife to which the licentious man is an entire stranger. 2. Because such a life is in harmony with the rights of society. The brooks and rivers of the land cannot be pure if the springs are defiled. The social life of a nation can only be healthy while the purity of the marriage relation is maintained. God has written his doom whenever and wherever this sacred bond has been violated. The consciousness of being a blessing to the world swells the stream of satisfaction which arises from a faithful observance of this relationship. 3. Because a true marriage is man's completion. The sinless man in Eden felt a want until Eve was given to him, even though God had created him in His own image. How much more does man now feel the need of a "helpmeet for him," such as he finds only in a faithful wife. 4. The waters are further sweetened by the reflection that this relationship is used to symbolise that existing between Christ and His Church. Christ is the Head of His Church for her good. The true husband feels that he is the head of the wife for the same end. The relationship becomes doubly blessed when looked at from this point of view.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS.

Verses 1 and 2. When the Word of God enters the heart, it will banish all pollution from the tongue.--Lawson.

Perhaps painful experience (1 Kings xi. 1-8, Eccles. vii. 26) had given the wise man wisdom and understanding. Therefore let us attend to it with fear and trembling.--Bridges.

God allows us to call that knowledge ours which originally is His. 1. Because God give it us, and that he gives a man land allows him to call it his. 2. Because it is given for our good as well as other men's. We are not like the builders of Noah's ark, that could not be preserved in it.--Francis Taylor.

Verse 3. The "strange woman" occurs so often in this book, that it is not probably she is introduced simply to denounce licentiousness. Indeed, she so stands twin picture to wisdom, that we come to a firm belief that she is introduced as the picture of impenitence.--Miller.

To hear her one would suppose that she was possessed of the most generous and disinterested spirit. Her tongue is taught by him who betrayed Eve to paint the vilest sin with the most beautiful colours.--Lawson.

Verse 4. The wise counsel of the father puts those things together, in his words which the folly of sinners putteth far asunder in their thoughts, the beginning and end of lustful wantonness. He that by foresight shall taste the bitter end will never lick the honeycomb. He that by a wise consideration shall feel the sharp edges of the issues of it, will never delight to smooth himself with the flat sides of the sword.--Jermin.

Verse 5. Possession of hell is taken by the wicked before they come into it; the devil giveth them that when he by wickedness possesseth their hearts. There is no more to be done than to set up their abode in it.--Jermin.

Verse 6. The words, if taken to refer to the woman, describe with a terrible vividness the state of heart and soul which prostitution brings upon its victims; the reckless blindness that will not think, tottering on the abyss, yet loud in its defiant mirth, ignoring the dreadful future.--Plumptre.

Verse 7. Let no one think what he will do when he is in danger, and how he will get from her, when once she hath got him to her, but hear now what ye are to do to keep out of danger.--Jermin.

Verse 8. The devil will tempt you enough without your own help. To tempt is his business. As you love your life and your own soul, give him no assistance in the work of destruction.--Lawson.

He that is the farthest from fire is safest from the burning of it; he that is most remote from the way and course of the river is in less danger from the overflowing of it. It argues too much mind to be in the house, for anyone to come near the door of it. It is more safe not to be in danger of perishing, than being in danger not to perish. Chrysostom, speaking of Joseph, saith, "It doth not seem so wonderful to me, that the three children in the furnace overcame the fire, as that Joseph, being indeed in a more grievous furnace than that of Babylon, came forth untouched."--Jermin.

1. Because of thy proneness to evil. Straw will quickly take fire. Gunpowder is no more pat to take fire than our corrupt nature to be provoked to this sin. 2. Because flight is the best fight here. No struggle comparable to a safe retreat.--F. Taylor.

Verse 10. It is said that Demosthenes gave this answer to a harlot who desired to seduce him from the path of virtue, and demanded a hundred talents for her hire: "I will not buy repentance so dear."--Jermin.

One keenest torment of the damned will be to find that they are working hard in the very pit of the universe; submitting to the sentence (Matt. xxv. 28), "Take, therefore, the talent from him and give it to him that hath ten talents." The adulterer might make himself a bankrupt, and get himself sold for his transgression; but that is a trifle compared with the sweeping surrender that must be made of all by the finally impenitent.--Miller.

Verse 12. The climax goes on. Bitterer than slavery (ver. 9); poverty (ver. 10); disease (ver. 11) will be the bitterness of self-reproach, the remorse without hope, that worketh death.--Plumptre.

Though in respect of God's infinite mercy, it be never too late in this life, yet take heed how we stay too long. It is true that the thief on the cross found mercy at the last hour; but it hath been well remarked, "It was not the last hour, but the first, of the thief's knowing God; as soon as he knew Christ he was converted." If, therefore, thou hast long known Christ, and hast not repented, do not presume too rashly of mercy at last.--Jermin.

There are no infidels in eternity, and but few on a death-bed.--Bridges.

Verses 11, 12. Dying regrets. +I. The subject of these regrets.+ It is a man who has disregarded through life the means employed to preserve or reclaim him. What instructors has a man living in a country like this? First, Your connections in life. You may have been a member of a pious family, or had an instructor or a reprover in a brother, friend, or religious neighbour. Second, The Scriptures. Third, Ministers. Fourth, Conscience. Fifth, Irrational creatures. Can you hear the melody of the birds and not be ashamed of your sinful silence? Can you see the heavenly bodies perform unerringly their appointed course and not reflect on your own numberless departures from duty? Sixth, The dispensations of Providence. God has chastened you with sickness. You have stood by dying beds. +II. The period of these regrets.+ It is a dying hour. It is "at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed." Such a period is unavoidable. The last breath will expire, and the last Sabbath will elapse, and the last sermon will be heard. Such a period cannot be far off. "For what is our life? It is a vapour that appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away." It is a flood. It is a flower. It is a tale that is told. It is a dream. Such a period may be very near. Such a period is sometimes prematurely brought on by sin. +III. The nature of these regrets.+ This mourning is (1) dreadful. A dying hour has been called an honest hour. The world then recedes from view. The delusions of imagination give way. Criminal excuses vanish. Memory goes back and recalls the guilt of the former life, and conscience sets the most secret sins in the light of God's countenance. (2) It is useless. Not as to others, but as regards the individuals themselves. We are to describe things according to their natural and common course, and not according to occasional exceptions. And in this case exceptions are unusual. And we are borne out in this assertion (1) By Scripture. There we find only one called at this hour. (2) By observation. We have often attended persons on what seemed their dying bed: we have heard their prayers and their professions; we have seen their distress and their relief, and, had they died, we should have presumed on their salvation. But we have never known one of these, who, on recovery, lived so as to prove the reality of his conversion! We have often asked ministers concerning the same case, and they have been compelled to make the same awful declaration.--Jay.

Verse 14. In a spiritual sense this may be applied to those who "hold the truth in unrighteousness" (Rom. i. 18), and who, although they dwell in the midst of holy men in the Church of God, set their example at defiance by evil lives.--Bede.

Verse 15. Desire after forbidden enjoyments naturally springs from dissatisfaction with the blessings already in possession. Where contentment is not found at home it will be sought for, however vainly, abroad. Conjugal love is chief among the earthly gifts in mercy granted by God to His fallen creatures. . . . Whatsoever interrupts the strictest harmony in this delicate relationship, opens the door to temptation. Tender domestic affection is the best defence against the vagrant desires of unlawful passion.--Bridges.

Do not steal water from others. Although the strange woman saith, "Stolen waters are sweet," yet remember that the dead are there (ch. ix. 17, 18). The wife is called a vessel in 1 Pet. iii. 7. These words also have been expounded by ancient interpreters in a spiritual sense, which may well be present to the reader's mind; and they have been applied to the pure waters of Divine wisdom, a sense which is suggested by Jer. ii. 13.--Wordsworth.

If God had laid all common, certainly Man would have been th' incloser: but since now God hath impaled us, on the contrary, Man breaks the fence, and every ground will plough. O what were man, might he himself misplace! Sure to be cross he would shift feet and face.--George Herbert.

+Spiritual Self-helpfulness.--I. Man has independent spiritual resources.+ He has a "cistern," a "well" of his own. First: He has independent resources of thought. Every sane man can and does think for himself. Thoughts well up in every soul, voluntarily and involuntarily. Secondly: He has independent resources of experience. No two have exactly the same experience. Thirdly: He has independent powers of usefulness. Every man has a power to do a something which no other can--to touch some soul with an effectiveness which no other can. Wonderful is this well within--inexhaustible and ever active. +II. Man is bound to use these resources.+ "Drink waters out of thine own cistern;" do not live on others. Self-drawing--First: Honours our own nature. Secondly: Increases our own resources. Self-helpfulness strengthens. The more you draw from this cistern the more comes. Thirdly: Contributes to the good of the universe. The man who gives only what he has borrowed from others adds nothing to the common stock. The subject--First: Indicates the kind of service one man can spiritually render another. To priest, rabbi, sectary, I would say--Man does not require your well; he has a cistern within. What he wants is the warm gospel of love to thaw his frozen nature, and to unseal the exhaustless fountain within, to remove all obstructions from its out-flow, and to make it as pure as the crystal. The subject--Secondly: Suggests an effective method to sap the foundation of all priestly assumptions. Let every man become self-helpful, and the influence of those who arrogate a lordship over the faith of others will soon die out. The subject--Thirdly: Presents a motive for thankfully adoring the Great Creator for the spiritual constitution He has given us. We have resources not, of course, independent of Him the primal fount of all life and power, but independent of all other creatures. We are not like the parched traveller in the Oriental desert, who, because he cannot discover water, dies of thirst. Spiritually, we can walk through sandy deserts bearing an exhaustless spring within.--Dr. David Thomas.

Verse 18. It is not only to feed and clothe her, and refrain from injuring her by word or deed. All this will not discharge a man's duty nor satisfy a woman's heart. All the allusions to this relation in Scripture imply an ardent, joyful love. To it, though it lie far beneath heaven, yet to it, as the highest earthly thing, is compared the union of Christ and His redeemed Church. Beware where you go for comfort in distress, and sympathy in happiness. The Lord Himself is the source of all consolation to a soul that seeks Him; yet nature is His, as well as redemption. He has constructed nether springs on earth and supplied them from His own high treasures; and to these He bids a broken or a joyful spirit go for sympathy. To "rejoice in the wife of thy youth"--this is not to put a creature in the place of God. He will take care of His own honour. He has hewn the cistern, and given it to you, and filed it, and when you draw out of it what He has put in, you get from Himself and give Him the glory.--Arnot.

Verse 19. In a spiritual sense, this imagery, derived from the limpid fountains and beautiful animals of the natural world, is regarded by the ancient expositors as descriptive of the delicious refreshment and perfect loveliness of Divine truth, and the infinite blessings which it bestows on those faithful souls which are united to it in pure and unsullied love.--Wordsworth.

Verse 20. A rare instance in which a canto does not begin with "My son," but with "Why." The question is intended to be pressed. The commerce with "the strange woman" is so plainly mad that the rightly educated impenitent cannot possibly answer the wise man's question.--Miller.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses 21-23.

THREE REASONS FOR AVOIDING THE WAY OF SIN.

These verses contain three reasons why the way of sin should be avoided, and the way which God has appointed should be followed.

+I. Because there is no place secret enough to commit sin.+ The sinner often comforts himself with the thought that what he has done, or is in the habit of doing, is not known--that the actors of the deed were the only persons privy to it. The text declares that there is no such thing as a secret place, because there is no place where the eyes of the Eternal do not penetrate. God is a witness of every crime committed in secret. He is not only a witness after the deed, but of the deed. Therefore there is no place secret enough to be a place of sin. The thought of the ever-present God should deter the sinner. 1. Because the Divine presence is a pure presence. People who are in the habit of committing the sin against which the whole of this chapter is directed, would possibly shrink from being guilty of it in the presence of a pure man or woman. How much more should they be deterred by the fact that the eye of the pure and holy God is upon them. 2. Because the presence of God is the presence of One who has authority to punish. The presence of the chief magistrate of a nation would be sufficient to prevent the most hardened criminal from committing crime. A thief would not steal before the face of the man whom he knew could punish him. The presence of God is the presence of the highest authority in the universe, of One who is irresponsible to any other for His acts (Job. ix. 12), of One who hast power most terrible, of One who has always visited this sin with penalty. The presence of such an Authority ought surely to make the adulterer quake at the very thought of his sin.

+II. Because, though the sinner may not be apprehended by human law, he shall be laid hold of and bound by his own deeds+ (verse 22). Many sinners of this kind go at large in the world, and are never reached by human law. No officer of justice will ever lay his hand upon them, and no material chains will ever bind them. But they are already taken and imprisoned by their own evil habits, which have bound them in chains of increasing thickness as the acts of sin have been repeated. This is a thraldom from which escape can come in only two ways. A man must either cease to be, or he must repent, before he can be free. Annihilation would set him free, because in ceasing to be he would cease to sin. But the repentance demanded by God is the only thing which will break his chains and permit him to retain his existence. We have no proof that there will ever be any way of escape by the first means, but we have abundant proof that the second is open to all men on this side of death.

+III. Because the unrepentant adulterer will die as he has lived--a fool+ (ver. 23). A fool is a man without knowledge, one who acts from impulse rather than from reason. The sinner here pourtrayed is not a fool because he had not had instruction, but because he has not heeded it. Nature, History, Revelation and Conscience were his instructors, but he has disregarded them all. If he had listened to them he would have gained an experimental knowledge of the blessedness of godliness and purity, of which he must now go out of the world as ignorant as he entered it.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS.

Verse 21. Practical atheism is the root of human depravity. The eye, even of a child, is a check upon a man, but the thought of an all-seeing God inspires no alarm.--Bridges.

The sin is not against man, nor dependent on man's detection only. The secret sin is open before the eyes of Jehovah. In the balance of His righteous judgement are weighed all human acts, this not excepted. There is a significant emphasis in the recurrence of the word used of the harlot herself in verse 6: "She ponders not, but God does."--Plumptre.

Because the ways of a sinful man are not before his own eyes, therefore are they before the eyes of God: because sinful man doth not ponder his goings, therefore the Lord pondereth them; because man doth not look on his ways with the eye of care, therefore the Lord looketh on them with the eye of wrath; because man doth not weigh his goings in the balance of due consideration, therefore God doth weigh them in the balance of severe justice. The opening of our eyes over our sins is the shutting of God's eye towards them; the shutting of our eyes upon them is the opening of God's eyes against them. For though we hide our ways from ourselves, we cannot hide them from God. We hide Him from ourselves; we do not hide ourselves from Him.--Jermin.

The meaning is, that directly in God's eyes are the ways of every man, as though there were no other creature in the universe; as though the wise man were saying, "Why, because the way seems smooth, and you seem helped in your folly, do you go on in your impenitency, and embrace the bosom of this wanton?" "For" the way of every man is directly in the sight of God. He takes the most emphatic interest in our schemes, whether we are doing well or ill. He helps us either in sinning or doing right, for "He levels all (one's) paths" (see Critical Notes). Not that we are to involve Him in the folly of any sin, but if a man desires to drink, He levels the way for Him. If he wishes liquor, He gives it; if he desires to steal, He gives the eye and the nerve. . . . The Divinity seems to help the struggling, whether saint or sinner, but the impenitent must not therefore imagine that it is righteous to go on.--Miller.

Verse 22. The licentious flatter themselves that in old age, when the passions are less fiery, they will easily extricate themselves from the dominion of their lusts, and repent and seek salvation. But Job xx. 11 declares that the old sinner's "bones are full of the sins of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the dust." Augustine, after experience, says: "While lust is being served the habit is formed, and whilst the habit is not being resisted necessity is formed."--Fausset.

Verse 23. Surely it is most just that he who lived without following instruction should die without having instruction; he that in his life would not do as he was instructed, deserveth that at death he should not be instructed what to do.--Jermin.

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Chapter VI

CRITICAL NOTES.--+1. With+ a stranger, rather, "for" a stranger. +3. When thou art come,+ rather, "for thou hast come." +Humble thyself,+ literally "let thyself be trodden under foot." +Make sure,+ "importune," "urge." +11. One that travelleth,+ "a highwayman," "a footpad." +Armed man,+ literally, "a man of the shield." +12. A naughty person,+ "a worthless man." +13. Teacheth,+ "motions." +14. Frowardness,+ "perverseness." +16.+ Six, yea, seven. "A peculiar proverbial form, for which Arabic and Persian gnomic literature supply numerous illustrations." Elster probably gives the simplest and most correct explanation, deriving it "purely from the exigencies of parallelism." "The form of parallelism could not, on account of harmony, be sacrificed in any verse. But how should a parallel be found for a number? Since it was not any definite number that was the important thing, relief was found by taking one of the next adjacent numbers as the parallel to that which was chiefly in mind" (Lange's Commentary). +17. A proud look,+ literally, "haughty eyes." +21. Continually,+ "for evermore." +22.+ Lange's Commentary translates into the imperative form, "+let+ it lead thee," etc. +24. Evil woman,+ literally "the woman of evil." +26.+ Last clause means "an adulteress allures to that which may cost a man his life" (Stuart). +30. Despise.+ Some translators render this word "scorn," others "disregard." Stuart, Wordsworth, and others adopt the former and understand the words to mean "men do not despise the thief, they do despise the adulterer." Noyse and others, adopting the latter rendering, take the sentence to mean "men punish even a thief, how much more an adulterer." +32.+ Last clause, literally "Whoso will destroy his life, he does it." +34. Jealousy,+ i.e., of the injured husband.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses 1-5.

SELF-IMPOSED BONDAGE.

+I. Man's highest glory may become the chief instrument of his trouble.+ The human tongue, or rather the power of speech, is a gift that stands preeminent among the good gifts of God to His creatures. It is man's most potent instrument of good or evil. The tongue of the statesman, when used wisely, may bring blessings on millions, but when it is made the tool of ambition it may entail misery upon generations. The tongue of a Christian, when used wisely, may be the means of bringing others into the way of life, but his unguarded words may be a stumbling-block in the way of many. The warning of the text reminds us that when the tongue is not kept in check by reason and consideration the glory becomes the means of ensnaring the whole man. The horse is a most useful servant to man, but the creature must be under proper control or he may be the means of inflicting the most serious injury upon his rider. If the rudder of a vessel is left to the guidance of the waves, the vessel is very likely to find herself upon the rocks. So with the tongue of man, it must be under the control of reason or it may bring its owner into danger and disgrace. When a man binds himself by solemn promises to a stranger of whose character he must be ignorant, he is very likely to involve himself and those dependent on him in much trouble, and perhaps in dishonour. A promise hastily made without due consideration of the consequences has often entailed upon a man years of suffering.

+II. The same instrument which, thoughtlessly used, brings a man into a snare, may, when rightly guided, be the means of his deliverance.+ The promise made by Herod to Herodias (Matt. xiv. 7) was one which ought never to have been made. The king was ensnared by allowing his tongue to utter rash words, of which even he upon reflection repented. In his case, without doubt, it would have been a much less sin to have broken his promise than to keep it. But in the case before us, the advice given by Solomon to his pupil is, not to break his word, but to use the same instrument by which he bound himself, to obtain, if possible, a release. This he is to do--1. By means purely moral. There are other means which a man might try. He might use threatening; he might employ falsehood; but these would be sinful. The only lawful means are those here implied, viz., words of persuasion and entreaty. 2. Without delay. He must endeavour to rectify his error at once; every day that passes over his head may be bringing nearer the day when he may be called upon to redeem his promise, and so he is to give "no sleep to his eyes nor slumber to his eyelids."

+III. This advice is to be followed as a matter of duty.+ The man who has acted imprudently is bound to endeavour to deliver himself by lawful means. He is not to allow pride to hinder him (ver. 3). He is bound to try and prevent his life from being marred in the future--perhaps to its very close. For a man who is fettered by a promise which ought never to have been made, is like a creature born to enjoy freedom who has been taken captive by the hunter or the fowler. And as it is more than lawful for the roe or the bird (ver. 5) to try to regain its freedom, so is it the duty of man to use all right means to the same end.

ILLUSTRATION OF VERSE 1.

The custom of striking hands at the conclusion of a bargain has maintained its ground among the customs of civilised nations down to the present time. To strike hands with another was the emblem of agreement among the Greeks under the walls of Troy, for Nestor complains, in a public assembly of the chiefs, that the Trojans had violated the engagements which they had sanctioned by libations of wine and by giving their right hands. (Iliad, Book II. i. 341, see also Book IV. i. 139). The Roman faith was plighted in the same way; for in Virgil, when Dido marked from her watchtowers the Trojan fleet setting forward with balanced sails, she exclaimed, "Is this the honour, the faith, En dextra fidesque?" Another striking instance is quoted by Calmet from Ockley's History of the Saracens. Telha, just before he died, asked one of Ali's men if he belonged to the Emperor of the Faithful, and being informed that he did, "Give me, then," said he, "your hand, that I may put mine into it, and by this action renew the oath of fidelity I have already made to him." (Calmet, vol. iii). See also Job xvii. 3; 2 Kings x. 15.--Paxton's Illustrations of Scripture.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS.

Verse 1. The two characters are carefully distinguished. 1. The companion, on whose behalf the young man pledges himself. 2. The stranger, probably the Phœnician money-lender, to whom he makes himself responsible.--Plumptre.

God graciously directs our temporal affairs by His providence, and condescends, in His word, to give us instructions concerning them. If we regard not these, we need not be surprised though His providence convince us, by dear-bought experience, of our folly and sin.--Lawson.

The son has just been warned against the deadly wound of a stranger. He is now cautioned against a hurt from in imprudent friend. . . . Our God, while he warns against suretyship, has taken it upon Himself. He has given His word, His bond--yea, His blood--for sinners: a security that no powers of hell can shake.--Bridges.

Solomon, on different occasions, condemns the practice of suretyship. This condemnation is general. It does not follow, however, that what he says is to be taken as an unqualified prohibition, to which there are no circumstances that can constitute an exception. . . . There are cases in which it is unavoidable; and there are cases in which the law requires it; and there are cases in which it is not only in consistence with law, but required by all the claims of prudence, justice, and charity. These, however, are rare. And it may be laid down as a maxim regarding the transactions of business, and all the mutual dealings of man with man, that the less of it the better. In such cases as the following, it is manifestly inadmissible, and may even, in some instances, involve a large amount of moral turpitude. +I. It is wrong for a man to come under engagements that are beyond his actually existing means.+ Such a course is not merely of imprudence, but there is in it a threefold injustice. First, to the creditor for whom he becomes surety. Secondly, to his family, if he has one, to whom the requisition of payment must bring distress and ruin. Thirdly, to those who give him credit in his own transactions, with the risks of his own trade. +II. The same observations are applicable to the making of engagements with inconsideration and rashness.+ The case here supposed is evidently that of suretyship for a friend to a stranger. And the rashness may be viewed either in relation to the person or to the case.--Wardlaw.

It may at first excite surprise that Solomon should have thought it needful to dwell so much as he does in the Proverbs on the evil of suretyship (xi. 15; xvii. 18; xx. 16; xxii. 26; xxvii. 13), and that in his lessons of moral prudence he should assign the first place to cautions against it. The reason is probably to be found in the peculiar circumstances under which the Proverbs were written, and the special design of the author in writing them; although, doubtless, Solomon had a general and universal purpose in composing them, and the Holy Spirit, who employed his instrumentality in the work, looked far beyond Solomon and his times, and extended his view to all ages and nations of the world. . . . But the occasion which gave rise to the writing of the Proverbs was a personal and national one. Many strangers resorted to Jerusalem in the days of Solomon from all parts of the civilised world, for the purpose of commerce and trade. Borrowing and lending money was much in vogue; and many shrewd and crafty adventurers speculated on the credulity of rich capitalists. Solomon addresses his son Rehoboam (ver. 3). He was born before his father's accession to the throne, and Solomon reigned forty years. We hear nothing of him until his ripe maturity, and then we are told of an act of egregious folly. It was evident he was just the person to be the dupe of licentious spendthrifts and griping usurers. The courtly parasite who desired to find means for paying his own debts, or indulging his own vices, and the avaricious money-lender, would find a victim in the princely heir to the throne, whom they would flatter with eulogies on his generosity, and would puff up with proud notions of the exhaustless wealth to which he was the aspirant.--Wordsworth.

Verse 2. In the passage before us the warning is not so much against suretyship in general as merely against the imprudent assumption of such obligations, leaving out of account the moral unreliableness of the man involved; and the counsel is to the quickest possible release from every obligation of this kind that may have been hastily assumed. With the admonitions of our Lord in His Sermon on the Mount, to be ready at all times for the lending and giving away of one's property, even in cases where one cannot hope for the recovery of what has been given out (Luke vi. 30-36: comp. with 1 Cor. vi. 7), this demand is not in conflict. For Christ also plainly demands no such readiness to suffer loss on account of our neighbour, as would deprive us of personal liberty, and rob us of all means of further beneficence.--Lange's Commentary.

For bills and obligations do mancipate the most free and ingenuous spirit, and so put a man out of aim that he can neither serve God without distraction nor do good to others, nor set his own state in any good order, but lives and dies entangled and puzzled with cares and snares; and after a tedious and labourious life passed in a circle of fretting thoughts, he leaves at last, instead of better patrimony, a world of intricate troubles to his posterity, who are also taken "with the words of his mouth."--Trapp.

Verse 3. This appeal is not, obviously, to the bond-giver, who has seduced us to endorse him, and is as helpless as we to get anybody off; but the bond-holder, for a securityship is to beg off in the most unspeakable abjectness, and to press and to urge the credit to release our name. Now, I say, this is not simpliciter, the gist of the inspiration. But if we introduce the Gospel; if we see in this a great picture of our guilt; if we see in the bond-holder the Friend to whom we are to appeal; if we see in the bond-giver sin in all the seductive forms in which it has come down to us from the original transgressor; if the grip of the suretyship is the law, and the form of the law is the broken covenant; if the act of our "striking hands" is the way we have accepted the curse of Adam, and the way we have volunteered under this stranger's burdens, then the whole passage becomes complete, and we are ready for the appeal, "Go, humble thyself," &c. That is the very Gospel.--Miller.

St. Gregory, Bede, and other ancient expositors, apply these injunctions in a spiritual sense. "To be a surety for a friend is to take upon thee the charge of looking to another's soul," says St. Gregory, who also, reading the latter clause of the verse in the sense of "urging" and "importuning" (see Critical Notes), explains it thus: "Whosoever is set before others for an example of their living is admonished, not only to watch himself, but to rouse up his friend: for it sufficeth not that he doth watch well, if he do not rouse him also over whom he is set from the drowsiness of sin."

Verse 4. Has this precept any connection with our spiritual interests? It has. It is a part of the eighth commandment, and though men regard it rather as a loss than as a sin to endanger their outward estate, it is both a sin and a temptation. Men who once seemed upright in their dealings have brought reproach upon religion by living and dying in other men's debt, and by having recourse to unjustifiable methods, suggested by distress, to relieve themselves. The effect of suretyship, even with the most upright men, has often proved hurtful to their souls, embittering their days, and unfitting them for the cheerful service of religion. We are the servants of Christ, and must not disqualify ourselves for His service by making ourselves needlessly the servants of men.--Lawson.

Verse 5. It is evident, however, that the language implies, If, with all your efforts, you are unsuccessful in obtaining your discharge you must stand to your engagement. Treachery would be a much greater loss in character.--Wardlaw.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses 6-11.

INDUSTRY AND INDOLENCE.

A contrast. +I. The industrious insect.+ 1. Nature is intended to be a moral teacher to man. The most saintly natures of ancient and modern times have regarded God's works in this light, and God Himself has led the van in so often pointing man to animate and inanimate Nature for instruction and comfort. He first announced this truth when He said to Noah, "I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a token of a covenant between Me and the earth" (Gen. ix. 13). This is the first record of the enlistment of Nature as a helper to the human soul, the first recorded instance of God's pointing out to man what He intended all natural objects to become to his spiritual nature. Here the son of Solomon is exhorted to gain instruction--to be stirred up to a sense of duty--from a study of one of God's inferior creatures. 2. Nature becomes the instructor of those only who consider her ways. The existence, within a man's reach, of the most beautiful painting in the world will be of no advantage to him unless he studies it. It is only as he considers it that it will convey to him the thought of the painter. The works of God are within the reach of men, but they must be looked at and considered if they are to be to him what God intended them to be. God placed the bow in the cloud and the tiny ant upon the ground to be subjects of meditation. The Psalmist considered the heavens before he was moved with a sense of his own littleness and God's majesty (Psalm viii.). Solomon's precept is, "Consider the ant." 3. The lessons which are to be learned from the study of the ant. Industry, improvement of opportunities, and individual action. The amount of work done by this insignificant insect ought to be enough to shame an indolent man into activity. Her care in embracing present opportunities is a loud rebuke to those who would put off until to-morrow what, perhaps, can only be done to-day. She says, by her diligent use of present hours, "I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day; the night cometh, when no man can work" (John ix. 4). Especially her individual effort is held up as worthy of imitation (ver. 7). While some men wait for another to take the initiative, to clear the path for them, she puts forth her own individual effort without guide, overseer, or ruler. Each man must do his own work in the world, each one has responsibilities of his own which will not admit of being discharged by proxy. He must find out his individual duty, and not try to shift the burden upon the shoulders of another, or wait for another to go before him in the way.

+II. The indolent man.+ 1. He does the right thing at the wrong time, or indulges to excess in a gift of God which is intended to be used in moderation. Sleep is one of God's most precious gifts to man in his present condition. It is a necessity of human nature. The prophet Elijah had an angel of God to watch over him while he slept. God saw that it was the medicine he most needed in that hour of bodily fatigue and mental depression. But if he had been sleeping at the hour of evening sacrifice, when the nation had to choose between God and Baal on Mount Carmel, he would have been guilty of a great sin against himself, his nation, and his God. Israel was promised the land of rest after they had fought their way through the desert. Rest is the reward of labour and not to be substituted for it. And although intervals of rest are necessary and right, life is meant for work, and the motto of every man ought to be that of the famous coadjutor of the great William of Orange, St. Aldegonde, "Repos ailleurs" (rest elsewhere). The sin of the sluggard is the abuse of a great blessing, the doing of a right thing at the wrong time. 2. The consequence of such conduct. This can be abundantly illustrated from human experience. If the farmer rests when, regardless of cold and storm, he ought to be ploughing or sowing, poverty will be coming upon him when his barns ought to be filled with plenty. The man who lets slip his spiritual opportunities through soul-indolence, will find himself in a state of soul-poverty at the end of life. When he ought to be reaping an abundant harvest of soul-satisfaction from a life whose energies have been used to bless himself and others, he will find himself in a state of soul-destitution. The rich man said to his soul, "Take thine ease," when he ought to have aroused it to prepare for the future which was coming up to meet him. But for the neglect of this God branded him as a "fool" (Luke xii. 20).

ILLUSTRATIONS OF VERSES 6-8.

When I began to employ workmen in this country, nothing annoyed me more than the necessity to hire also an overseer, or to fulfil this office myself. But I soon found this was universal, and strictly necessary. Without an overseer very little work would be done, and nothing as it should be. The workmen will not work at all unless kept to it and directed in it by an overseer who is himself a perfect specimen of laziness. He does absolutely nothing but smoke his pipe, order this, scold that one, discuss the how and the why with the men themselves, or with idle passers-by. This overseeing often costs more than the work overseen. Now the ants manage far better. Every one attends to his own business and does it well. In another respect these provident creatures read a very necessary lesson to Orientals. In all warm climates there is a ruinous want of calculation and forecast. Having enough for the current day, men are reckless as to the future. . . . Now the ant "provideth her meat in summer." All summer long, and especially in harvest, every denizen of their populous habitation is busy. As we ride or walk over the grassy plains, we notice paths leading to their subterranean granaries; at first broad, clean and smooth, like roads near a city, but constantly branching off into smaller and less distinct, until they disappear in the herbage of the plain. Along these converging paths hurry thousands of ants, thickening inward until it becomes an unbroken column of busy beings going in search of or returning with their food. I read lately, in a work of some pretension, that ants do not carry away wheat or barley. This was by way of comment on Prov. vi. 8. Tell it to these farmers, and they will laugh at you. Ants are the greatest robbers in the land. Leave a bushel of wheat in the vicinity of one of their subterranean cities, and in a surprisingly short time the whole commonwealth will be summoned to plunder. A broad, black column stretches from the wheat to the hole, and, as if by magic, every grain seems to be accommodated with legs, and walks off in a hurry along the moving column.--Thompson's Land and the Book.

Solomon's lesson to the sluggard has been generally adduced as a strong confirmation of the ancient opinion, that ants have a magazine of provisions for winter; it can, however, only relate to the species of a warm climate, the habits of which are probably different from those of a cold one; so that his words, as commonly interpreted, may be perfectly correct and consistent with Nature, and yet be not at all applicable to the species that are indigenous to Europe. But Solomon does not affirm that the ant laid up in her cell stores of grain, but that she gathers her food when it is most plentiful, and thus shows her wisdom and prudence. The words thus interpreted will apply to the species among us, as well as to those that are not indigenous.--Kirby and Spence's Entomology.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS.

Verse 6. We may infer Rehoboam's character from such exhortations as these. And these and following precepts derive much interest from what we have reason to believe was his character. His position bore some resemblance to that of our own Charles II., at the voluptuous court of Versailles, before his accession to the throne, and the character of the one was in some respects similar to that of the other. The unhappy example of his own father Solomon, in his old age, was more potent for evil than the precepts of the Proverbs were for good. At the age of forty-one Rehoboam was a feeble libertine. The warnings of the Icón Basiliké fell flat on the ears of the royal author's own son, and Rehoboam derived little benefit from the book of Proverbs.--Wordsworth.

Verses 6 to 8. Our whole present life is the time for action; the future for retribution, which shall be ushered in by the judgment: the latter is the harvest (Matt. xxv. 3, 4).--Fausset.

How is man degenerated from the nobility of his creation, that an insect must be a pattern unto him. He that goes well without a guide is fit to be a guide, he that does well without an overseer is fit to be an overseer, he that orders himself well without a ruler is fit to be a ruler. Let the ant, therefore, be a guide unto the sluggard, and teach him to guide himself, who guides herself so carefully. Let the ant be his overseer, which he sees to overgo himself so much in pains and labour. Let the ant be his ruler, and by her example command him to work which rules herself so well in working.--Jermin.

First, as the ant in summer gathereth whereupon to live in winter, so every Christian in a time of quietness should gather out of God's word, that in trouble and adversity he may have wherewith to live spiritually. Secondly, we ought to labour by the example of the ant, that we get the fruit of good works, in the harvest of this present life, so sedulously and diligently, that in the time of winter and judgment we perish not with hunger.--St. Augustine.

These precepts have a spiritual meaning and are to be applied to the soil of the heart and mind. As Bede says here, "The present life is compared to summer and harvest, because now, in the heat of trials, we must reap and lay up for the future, and the day of death and judgment is the winter for which we must prepare, and when there is no more any time for preparation."--Wordsworth.

Man, that was once the captain of God's school, is now, for his truantliness, turned down into the lowest form, as it were to learn his A B C again; yea to be taught by these meanest creatures. . . . Let no man here object that word of our Saviour, "Take no thought for the morrow." There is a care of diligence, and a care of diffidence; a care of the head and a care of the heart; the former is needful, the latter sinful.--Trapp.

Verse 9. Much more loudly would we call to the spiritual sluggard--thou that art sleeping away the opportunities of grace; not "striving to enter in at the strait gate" (Luke xiii. 24); taking thy salvation for granted; hoping that thou shalt "reap where thou has not sown, and gather where thou hast not strawed" (Matt. xxv. 26); improve, after this pattern, the summer and harvest season--the time of youth, the present, perhaps the only moment. The ant hath no guide. How many guides have you?--conscience, the Bible, ministers! She has no overseer. You are living before Him "whose eyes are a flame of fire." She has no ruler calling her to account. "Every one of us must give account of himself to God."--Bridges.

Epaminondas, finding one of his sentinels asleep, thrust him through with his sword; and, being chidden for so great severity, replied, "I left him but as I found him." It must be our care that death serve us not in like sort, that we be not taken napping. . . . Our Saviour was up and at prayer "a great while before day" (Mark i. 45). The holy angels are styled "watchers" (Dan. iv. 10), and they are three times pronounced happy that watch (Luke xii. 37, 38, 43).--Trapp.

Verse 11. Two things are denoted in this imagery. 1. That idleness will quickly bring poverty. 2. That it will come as a destroyer.--Stuart.

I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide, for the man is effectually destroyed, though the appetite of the brute may survive.--Lord Chesterfield.

God will not support thee without work, but by work, that is His holy ordinance (Gen. iii. 19): Do thy part, and God will do His.--Egard.

A most dreadful simile! One who has waited for a fight knows how slowly the armed men seem to come up. They may be hours passing the intervening space. There is no sound of them. They are not on the roads, or on the air, either in sight or echo; and yet they are coming on! The intervening time is the sluggard's sleeping time; and it seems an age. But his want will come. . . . All slothfulness is, no doubt, rebuked; but especially that which has all heaven for its garnered stores; all hell for its experience of want; all time for its season of neglect; and all eternity to break upon its sleep.--Miller.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses 12-19.

A STUDENT OF INIQUITY.

+I.+ We have in these words a picture of a man so wicked that he makes it his study how to commit sin. The sin of many men, perhaps of most men, arises from thoughtlessness, weakness, or slothfulness (see verses 9, 10), but there are others who make sin their business, and apply themselves to it with as much diligence as the merchant gives to his trade, or the man of letters to his pursuit of knowledge. "He deviseth mischief" (verse 14), "his heart deviseth wicked imaginations" (verse 18). 1. Those who wish to compass any particular end must think upon the means by which they can accomplish it. Progression in iniquity is not always accomplished without thought, and wicked men have to plan much and think deeply sometimes before their malicious devices are ripe for execution. The thief has to study his profession before he can become an accomplished burglar. The sharper must spend much time in acquiring the skill by which he preys upon less experienced gamblers. The murderer must ponder deeply how he is to do his bloody deed without detection. It cost Haman a good deal of thinking before he could devise a scheme likely to injure Mordecai. The chief priests and scribes held many consultations before they compass the death of Christ (Mark xi. 18, xiv. 1-55, etc.). The wicked man of the text is a student of ways and means. 2. He is constant in his studies. If a man professes to make any branch of knowledge his particular study and only applies himself to it by fits and starts, we know he is not much in earnest about it, but if he is constant in his application, he demonstrates by his perseverance that he intends, if possible, to excel. The wicked man here pictured by Solomon has made up his mind not to fail through lack of continuous application, "he deviseth mischief continually" (ver. 14). If one plan fails, he begins to form another; when one scheme has brought the desired end, he at once sets to work at a fresh one; as a natural consequence--3. He makes progress, "he walks with a froward mouth" (ver. 12), his feet become "swift in running to mischief" (ver. 18). The man who is always in the practice of any art can hardly stand still in it. He can hardly fail to become more and more of an adept. He sees where he might have done better yesterday and supplies the deficiency next time. And this is true of the work of wickedness as of any other work, "practice makes perfect." There are men, for instance, who from constant practice "lie like truth." The more the man studies how to injure his fellow-creatures, the more easily he can plan; the oftener he plans, the easier he finds it. 4. In order to carry out his designs he invents an original language (ver. 13) There is no member of the body which cannot become a medium to convey thought. The eye is very eloquent in this work, the hand, the lip, the finger, the whole body may do this to some extent, and are sometimes blessedly so employed when affliction has shut out our fellow-man from hearing the human voice, but this man of wickedness makes his whole body a medium for the conveyance of his evil plans and desires. He yields his "members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin" (Rom. vi. 13). The common every-day language of outspoken honest men will not do to convey his thoughts, because his thoughts are against the welfare of his fellow creatures. This compels him to use a language which is comprehended only by those who are like himself. The eye can be used in this way as a more safe and swift instrument than the tongue. A look may embody a thought that would need many words to express. The glance of one wicked man to another has often been the sentence of death to many. And so, in a less degree, perhaps, with the foot and the hand, as Matthew Henry says, "Those whom he makes use of as the tools of his wickedness understand the ill meaning of a wink of his eye, a stamp of his feet, the least motion of his fingers. He gives orders for evil-doing, and yet would not be thought to do so, but has ways of concealing what he does, so that he may not be suspected."

+II. The end of such a man.+ (Verse 15.) 1. His very success will bring his ruin. The man who makes it the business of his life to lay plans against the comfort of his fellow-creatures may succeed for a time, but by-and-by he will find himself so famous, or infamous, that a reward may be offered for his person, and his very success in deceiving others in the past will possibly so throw him off his guard as to make him an easy prey to those who now lie in wait to bring him to justice. But if he escape the messenger of human retribution, he is sure of the Divine Nemesis. God's law and the universe are against him. In sowing discord in the world, he has sowed destruction for himself, and he must reap it. However cleverly he may have outwitted his fellow-men, he has not deceived God, and His law is that "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap" (Ephes. vi. 7). 2. The punishment will come when least expected. "Suddenly shall he be broken" (verse 15). The thief makes it his study to find an entrance into his victim's house when he least expects him, and he finds himself one day repaid in his own coin. When he is enjoying his fancied security an officer of justice visits him, and suddenly he is summoned to answer for his crimes. This we find is generally the case with retribution; it not only comes certainly, but at a time when it is least looked for. 3. His ruin will be complete. "He shall be broken without remedy" (verse 15). The crime of murder is regarded by our code of law as one which deserves the extremest penalty which man can inflict upon man. The murderer, as a rule, is visited with a punishment which, so far as his earthly existence goes, cuts off all hope for the future. The man who is pictured to us in these verses is one who appears to have completed his character as a sinner. The number seven is often used in Scripture to denote perfection--completion; and this student of iniquity appears to have succeeded so well in his studies that there is no vice which is not found in one of the seven things which go to make up his character. His pride leads him to refuse God's yoke, and to carve out for himself a way without reference to the will of Him in whom he lives and moves. But his lying tongue betrays a sense of weakness. He fears that his plans, though so skilfully laid, may not succeed, and therefore he has recourse to deception to help him out with them. And so cruel is he that he shrinks from no misery that he may bring upon others in the furtherance of his own designs; neither the character nor the life of his victims is spared. He is "a false witness that speaketh lies and soweth discord," his "hands shed innocent blood." For so diseased a member of the body politic there seems nothing left but amputation. So complete a sinner must suffer a complete ruin. Finally, that such a character should be an abomination to the Lord (verse 16) is most natural, if we consider how entirely it is at variance with what God is Himself. Like seeks and loves like. The musical soul seeks and delights in those who love music. The courageous Jonathan delights in the courageous David. God is humble. He makes a right estimate of Himself and others. This is true humility. "Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwelleth on high, who humbleth Himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth"? (Psa. cxiii. 5, 6). How great a contrast is He in this respect to the man of "proud look"? God is a "God of truth" (Psa. xxxi. 5), it is a blessed impossibility with Him to lie (Titus i. 2). How can He do other than abominate a "lying tongue"? He is the Saviour of men (1 Tim. iv. 10); this sinner seeks to destroy them. He is the Author of peace and the lover of concord; this man's aim has been to "sow discord" even "among brethren."

ILLUSTRATION OF VERSE 13.

It should be remembered that, in the East, when people are in the house they do not wear sandals, consequently their feet and toes are exposed. When guests wish to speak so as not to be observed by the host, they convey their meaning by the feet and toes. Does a person wish to leave the room in company with another? he lifts up one of his feet; and should the other refuse, he also lifts up a foot and suddenly puts it down again. When merchants wish to make a bargain with others without making known their terms, they sit on the ground, have a piece of cloth thrown over the lap, and then put a hand under, and thus speak with their fingers. When the Brahmins convey religious mysteries to their disciples, they teach with their fingers, having the hands concealed in the folds of their robe.--Roberts, in Biblical Treasury.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS.

Verse 12. He who is nobody in deeds is often strong in words. He whose hands are idle has a tongue anything but idle; and he tries by words suited to men's humours to win that favour which he cannot by deeds.--Cartwright.

"Walketh" implies progress in evil, as the tendency of all sin is to grow more and more inveterate.--Fausset.

Every idle man is a "naughty" man; is, or ere long, will be, for by doing nothing men learn to do evil. And "thou wicked and slothful servant," saith our Saviour (Matt. xxv. 26). He putteth no difference between the idle person and the wicked person. The devil will not long suffer such an one to be idle, but will soon set him to work. Idleness is the hour of temptation.--Trapp.

Verse 13. He conveys his meanings, and carries on his scheme, and promotes his ends, in every sly, covert, unexpected way.--Wardlaw.

Not speech only, but all other means by which man holds intercourse with man, are turned to instruments of fraud and falsehood. The wink which tells the accomplice that the victim is already snared, the gestures with foot and hand, half of deceit, half of mockery--these would betray him to anyone who was not blind.--Plumptre.

Verse 14. The wise man had showed before the outward rivulets, now he shows the inward fountain, a corrupt heart. This is added lest we should think that only outward signs and gestures are evil. If neither by outward signs nor gestures a wicked man dare express himself, yet his heart is evil.--Francis Taylor.

As the agriculturist applies himself wholly to the ploughing and sowing of his land, so the froward gives himself wholly to iniquity, seeking his harvest of gain, or of enjoyment of malignity, in traducing or lying, or in praising with words whilst all the time traducing by signs.--Fausset.

Where frowardness soweth the field, what can grow but contentions only? But these are first sown in the heart by mischievous devices, and their being come to a ripeness, then are they gathered, and are again sown in the outward actions of discord, one harvest serving to bring on another until they bring the seedsman to the harvest of destruction. The force of the verse is, that when wickedness is silent outwardly, it is devising mischief inwardly, that it may practice it the more abundantly.--Jermin.

Verse 15. Therefore, if a thing be so ruinous; if it be a fountain of sin; if it be sending forth corruption in such a manner as to increase the mass of it, and never diminish it; if it be putting forth causes of quarrel both with God and man, then that thing must be crushed. We would expect a sharp, clean end. If it be a root, it must be threaded to its very eye, and all the life of it must be traced and crushed quite out of it in the soil.--Miller.

The word "suddenly" shows the vanity of the sinner's hope that he shall have the time or the gift of repentance (Job. xxi. 17, 18; Psa. lxiii. 19).--Fausset.

It were pity such a villain should go without his reward. The wise man, therefore, doth not leave him without his judgment denounced, and it is a grievous one. For he that spendeth time to devise mischief shall not have time at last to devise help for the preventing of his own sudden mischief. He that by plots maketh the breaches of strife, shall at length be broken suddenly into pieces, without hope of piecing himself together again. . . . Of Satan it is said that he fell like lightning from heaven, the fall whereof is most sudden, and so that it never riseth again. And so cometh the calamity of malicious, froward hearts: such is the breaking fall of their destruction.--Jermin.

Verse 16. This, curtly, is a restatement of the picture just passed; not exactly, but ripened a little, and advanced into a more mature expression.--Miller.

It is an evidence of the good-will God bears to mankind, that those sins are in a special manner provoking to Him which are prejudicial to the comfort of human life and society.--Henry.

The things which God hateth are the things which the devil maketh. He cannot be the author and hater of the same thing. And therefore it is not man, but the wicked things in man, which God abhorreth, and which, did not man love, God would still love man, although He hateth them.--Jermin.

Verse 17. A proud look or "lofty eyes" might seem to have little to do with a "worthless man" (see Critical Notes on verse 12), but a man is a man of emptiness solely because he is depending, in divers ways, upon himself. Humility is the very first lesson towards salvation. A man could not live a whole long life taking "a little more sleep" if he was not arrogantly depending upon something within himself. "Hands that shed innocent blood:" The movements of such a man are all deadly. The amiable may be fairly stung by such rude speech, but the wise man intends to imply that a deceived impenitence deceives and festers all about it. The worldly father that misguides his son sheds his blood. It is astonishing how much there is in the Bible of this cruel language (Psa. v. 9; Isa. i. 21, &c.).--Miller.

Verse 18. The heart underlies the seven vices which are an abomination to God, and in the midst, because it is the fountain from which evil flows in all directions.--Starke.

Verse 19. If the heavenly "dew descends upon the brethren that dwell together in unity" (Psa. cxxxiii.), a withering blast will fall on those who, mistaking prejudice for principle, "cause divisions" for their own selfish ends (Rom. xvi. 17, 18). If we cannot attain unity of opinion, "perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment" (1 Cor. i. 10), at least let us cultivate unity of Spirit (Phil. iii. 16).--Bridges.

Verses 12-19. As respects the arrangement in which the seven manifestations of treacherous dealing are enumerated in verses 16-19, it does not perfectly correspond with the order observed in verses 12-14. There the series is--mouth, eyes, feet, fingers, heart, devising evil counsels, stirring up strifes; here it is eyes, tongue, hands, heart, feet, speaking lies, instigating strife. With reference to the organs which are named as the instruments in the first five forms of treacherous wickedness, in the second enumeration an order is adopted involving a regular descent; the base disposition to stir up strife, or to let loose controversy in both cases ends the series. . . . The six or seven vices, twice enumerated in different order and form of expression, are, at the same time, all of them manifestations of hatred against one's neighbour, or sins against the second table of the Decalogue; yet it is not so much a general unkindness as rather an unkindness consisting and displaying itself in falseness and malice that is emphasised as their common element. And only on account of the peculiarly mischievous and ruinous character of just these sins of hatred to one's neighbour, is he who is subject to them represented as an object of especially intense abhorrence on the part of a holy God, and as threatened with the strongest manifestations of His anger in penalties.--Dr. Zöckler, in Lange's Commentary.

Verses 16-19. There is one parallel well worthy of notice between the seven cursed things here and the seven blessed things in the fifth chapter of Matthew. In the Old Testament the things are set down in the sterner form of what the Lord hates, like the "Thou shalt not" of the Decalogue. In the New Testament the form is in accordance with the gentleness of Christ. There we learn the good things that are blessed, and are left to gather thence the opposite evils that are cursed. But, making allowance for the difference in form, the first and the last of the seven are identical in the two lists. "The Lord hates a proud look" is precisely equivalent to "Blessed are the poor in spirit;" and "He that soweth discord among brethren" is the exact converse of the "peacemaker." The coincidence must be designed. When Jesus was teaching His disciples on the Mount He seems to have had in view the similar instructions that Solomon had formerly delivered, and, while the teaching is substantially new, there is as much of allusion to the ancient Scripture as to make it manifest that the Great Teacher kept His eye upon the prophets, and sanctioned all their testimony.--Arnot.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses 20-23.

On verses 20 and 21, see Homiletics on chap. i. 7-9, and iv. 1-4.

THE LAW OF GOD'S WORD.

+I. The Divine law as a lamp.+ 1. It is like a lamp because it is portable. A light that cannot be carried from place to place will be useless to a man who has to find his way home in the dark on an uneven road. Life is such a journey, and the commandment of the Lord can be carried in man's memory and heart: "Thy Word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against Thee" (Psa. cxix. 11). 2. Its existence declares that men need light from a source outside themselves. A man's eyes on a dark night are not sufficient to enable him to find the right road. If he depends simply upon them he will find that the "light within him is darkness" (Luke xi. 35). He must have external help. The existence of God's revelation in the world proves that man has not enough light within him to guide his feet into the way of peace. His own spiritual perception will not enable him to find his way through the night to eternal day. 3. It is in constant requisition. The position and relation of our globe to the sun makes it certain that night will constantly succeed the day. And while the night continues to follow day the lamp will be needed to illumine the darkness. The Divine lamp will never be out of use while temptation, and doubt, and sin, and ignorance beset the path of man, as certainly as the revolution of the globe brings the night.

+II. The commandment as a guide.+ "When thou goest, it shall lead thee" (verse 22). Where leading is promised ignorance is implied. The man who trusts to another to guide him acknowledges by the act that the guide knows more than he does. Scripture takes for granted that man is ignorant. Its existence implies that man needs information and direction concerning his life.

+III. The commandment as a guard.+ "When thou sleepest, it shall keep thee." A keeper, or guard, implies danger in general, and in this instance in particular. There is a general danger in times of pestilence, and there is a special danger in some places and under some circumstances. There is a danger common to all vessels when sailing the ocean, but there are some parts which are especially dangerous. So it is with men in relation to sin. There is the general liability to fall into sin common to all men, but there are dangers which more especially beset youth and inexperience, and there is one sin above all others which is terrible in its effects and ruinous to the whole man. The text applies to a general keeping from the common danger and to a special keeping from this special danger (verse 24).

+IV. The commandment is a keeper, a guide, and a lamp to those only who keep it.+ A man binds his sandal upon his foot and it keeps his foot, because it has itself been kept in its right place. There is a mutual keeping. There can be no keeping by the word unless there is a keeping of the word. A greater than Solomon has told us this truth. Our Lord, in His parable of the sower, reminds us of those wayside hearers who, not keeping the word, were not kept by it, and of those who, like the rocky or thorny ground, kept it only for a while and were only kept by it until the time of temptation scorched them, and their profession withered away (Matt. xiii. 1-7). And our Lord Himself used the commandment in the hour of His temptation to keep Him. To all the advances of the tempter he replied, "It is written."

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS.

Verse 20. The first feature that arrests attention in this picture is, that effects are attributed to the law of a mother which only God's law can produce. The inference is obvious and sure. It is assumed that the law which a mother instils is the Word of God dwelling richly in her own heart, and that she acts as a channel to convey that Word to the heart of her children. To assume it as actually done is the most impressive method of enjoining it. Parents are, by the constitution of things, in an important sense mediators between God and their children for a time. . . . Your children are, by grace, let into you, so as to drink in what you contain. The only safety is, that you be by grace let into Christ, so that what they get from you shall be, not what springs within you, but what flows into you from the Springhead of holiness. To the children it is the law of their mother, and therefore they receive it; but in substance it is the truth from Jesus, and to receive it is life.--Arnot.

We have already noticed (ch. i. 8) the fifth commandment as comprehending the first five; just as the tenth commandment comprehends the latter five. They ought to be painted so in churches. Handed down so, we verily believe, to Moses, each table must have carried five commandments. Honouring our father, in all the broad meaning of that term, is the first commandment "in," not "with" (as in Eng. version), "promise" (Eph. vi. 2).--Miller.

Verse 21. "Bind them continually" signifieth such a care of firm binding as when one, to be sure of binding strong, doth as it were always hold the strings in his hands, and is continually pulling them. And surely we had need so to bind continually God's commandments and law to our hearts and necks, for they are but loose knots which the best of us make, and they are ever and anon slipping back, unless our diligence be still pulling hard to keep them close. To bind that to our hearts which bindeth us to godliness, is to loose ourselves; to tie that about our necks which ties us to religion, is to free ourselves. A good father's commandment, a good mother's law, doth tie us in observance unto God's law; if, therefore, we shall bind the one upon our hearts continually, if we shall tie the other about our necks, this will give us the freedom of true sons, both with God and man. This hearty binding, and willing tying of ourselves, taketh away all burdensome feeling of any tie or binding for us.--Jermin.

Bind them upon thine heart "for ever," because through all eternity these commandments will be the very highest objects of affection. Holiness will be the greatest treasure of the blessed. And, second, "tie them about thy neck" for a still higher reason Holiness is a bright ornament. It is precious on its own account. It is worthy, not on account of what it does, or of what it seems, but of what it is. That is, if we neither had joy in it or won profit by it, it would be glorious like a necklace upon the blind, intrinsically, and on its own account.--Miller.

Verse 22. No such guide to God as the Word, which, while a man holds to, he may safely say, "Lord, if I be deceived, Thou hast deceived me; if I be out of the way, Thy Word has misled me." If thou sleep with some good meditation in thy mind it shall keep thee from foolish and sinful dreams and fancies, and set thy heart in a holy frame when thou awakest. He that raketh up his fire at night shall find fire in the morning. "How precious are Thy thoughts unto me, O God" (Psa. cxxxix. 17). What follows? "When I awake, I am still with Thee" (verse 18).--Trapp.

+I. The thing to be done.+ The Word of God is to talk with us. A man's character is obviously much influenced by his habitual talk. Sentiments received in conversation powerfully affect the mind. . . . The idea of dealing with the Holy Scripture as a conversible companion is implied in the very name, "The Word of God," and in the statement that "God, who in sundry times, and in divers manners, spoke to the Fathers, by the prophets, has spoken to us by His son" (Heb. i. 1). 1. The Word of God will talk to us instructively. No part is addressed to mere speculation or curiosity. It has always in view the object of furnishing the mind with that which shall be useful in the highest sense, and for the longest duration. 2. It will talk without flattery. Our best friends seldom dare to tell us all that is thought of us. But the Word of God tells us what we actually are, and where our faults and danger lie. 3. It will talk with us affectionately. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend," yet they may be "wounds" after all, to minds too susceptible. But there is a depth of love even in the sternest rebukes of the Word of God. +II. The particular time when the Word of God may talk with us.+ "When thou wakest." 1. To forewarn us. Every day is a little life, and who can say what the coming hour may bring forth. 2. To fore-arm us. There is not an hour in which some temptation may not present itself, or some principle be severely tried. A spiritual armour is therefore necessary, while a part of that armour, which is indispensable, is "the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God" (Eph. vi. 17). 3. To pre-occupy us. "How is it," said a friend to a learned physician, "that amidst such employment and continual exercise of mind you preserve such unruffled tranquillity?" "It is," said he, "because I give the first hour of every morning to the Holy Scriptures and to prayer." Much benefit may well be expected from a pre-occupation of the mind and heart, so entirely consonant to the whole tenor of man's relations to his Maker and perpetual benefactor.--Bullar.

Observe three benefits of keeping instruction, and in each the fit time and the act. A man walking, needs a guide; sleeping, needs a watchman; awaking, needs a friend to talk with him.--Francis Taylor.

Verse 23. The reproofs of the law may alarm and terrify, but they are not to be less valued on that account. The threatenings of hell guard the way to heaven, and strongly urge us to keep the King's highway, the only way of safety.--Lawson.

The parallelism with Psalm cxix. 105, deserves special notice. The alliteration, "the law is light," like the Vulgate, "lex, lux," reproduces a corresponding paronomasia in the Hebrew.--Plumptre.

He that hath the word of Christ richly dwelling in him, may lay his hand upon his heart and say, as dying Ecolampadius did: "Here is plenty of light." Under the law all was in riddles; Moses was veiled; and yet that saying was then verified. There was light enough to lead men to Christ "the end of the law" (Rom. x. 4). "Reproofs of instruction," or "corrections of instruction." A lesson set on with a whipping is best remembered.--Trapp.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses 24-35.

A SPECIAL SIN AND ITS PENALTIES FROM WHICH HE WHO KEEPS GOD'S LAW WILL BE KEPT.

+I. From the huntress of souls.+ The animals of tropical jungles are compelled at intervals to forsake their safe retreats and come down to the brink of the river to quench their thirst. This necessity of their life involves them in danger. The instinct of the lion tells him that the antelope will be compelled, by the cravings of his nature, to come to the place of water, and therefore he lies in wait there to make him an easy prey. And the hunter, being fully aware of the same fact, crouches by the river-side and takes both the lion and his prey. Thus the natural bodily instincts are used as means by which the lives of the creatures are destroyed. The danger of which the young man is here warned arises out of the existence of a God-given and, therefore, lawful desire. The huntress of souls--as she is well named in verse 26--takes advantage of this lawful propensity and uses it as a means of the destruction of her victim. She knows that the young man, from the strength of his lawful desires, is, comparatively, an easy prey to the seducer, hence it is to him that she points her weapons. These weapons are: 1. Flattery. Fair words cost nothing. A score of base coin can be purchased for a copper, and are worth exchanging for one golden piece. The dogs lick the hand of the vendor of their meat, but this not out of any affection for him. They do not use their tongue out of any affection for him, but for what he has. So the adulteress, and so indeed all flatterers. They give the base coin only in the hope of getting gold in return--fair words for real benefits. They will lick the back of the hand in order to get something out of the palm. 2. Her beauty. The beauty of a woman is a powerful weapon, and, if rightly used, may be a means of greatly blessing others. But, alas, how often has it been debased to the vilest purposes, how many times have strong men been cast down by it, how many sons of the mighty has it brought low, even to the dust! The keeping in the heart of the law of God's word will teach the young man to estimate flattering words and mere external beauty at their real worth.

+II. From the inevitable marks left upon both constitution and character by unlawful intercourse+ (vers. 27, 28). A man's raiment cannot be kindled into a flame without its retaining the marks after the fire has been extinguished. The scar of the burn will remain even after the wound is healed. So those who yield to the solicitations of the "strange woman" will find that soul and body will suffer from the effects of the sin long after the action has been committed.

+III. From the deserved contempt of all the pure-minded+ (vers. 30, 31). It is a sin compared with which a theft is a light crime in the eyes of God, and therefore in the eyes of the best men. A thief may make restitution for his crime, but this sin cannot be atoned for by an after act. Gold may be repaid fourfold, but dishonour brought upon a husband by a wife's infidelity is a blot which cannot be effaced. The loss of the poor man's ewe-lamb might be atoned for, but David could not have restored to Uriah an innocent wife. (See 2 Sam. xii. 1-6). Hence the much heavier punishment under the Mosaic law for adultery than for theft. (See Exod. xxii. 1-4; Lev. xx. 10.)

+IV. From the fury of a lawful jealousy+ (ver. 34). Where there is true love there is a jealousy for the honour and reputation of the object loved. The man who is not jealous for the honour of his country is not a patriot. The father who is not jealous for the reputation of his family is not worthy of the name. And so the husband who is not jealous of his own and his wife's honour is a stranger to real love. There is a right and lawful jealousy. God calls Himself "a jealous God" (Exod. xx. 5). There are rights which belong to Him alone, and He is justly displeased if they are given to any other being. Paul tells the Corinthian Church that he was "jealous over them with a godly jealousy" (2 Cor. xi. 2). He was their father in Christ, and he felt that his honour as well as theirs was staked upon their living holy lives. And the righteous jealousy of the injured husband spoken of in the text is to be dreaded, because it is righteous--because it has just grounds for its existence, and because God will see to it that the wrong is avenged.

ILLUSTRATION OF VERSE 25.

This probably refers to the care with which women in the East paint their eyelids, in a great measure in order to captivate the men, who, from the manner in which they are muffled up, can often see no more of their persons than their eyes--which may, indeed, be one reason why so much pains are taken to set them off.

ILLUSTRATION OF VERSE 28.

The image would hardly occur to us, who never go barefoot, and are never or rarely exposed to any liability of treading upon burning coals. If we decided to expose the same sentiment by a similar image, we should say, "Can one handle hot coals and not be burned?" But in the East travelling parties kindle fires in the open air for cooking and for warmth, and a passenger might easily burn his naked foot by treading inadvertently upon the hot but not glowing place of one of their recently quitted fires.--Kitto.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS.

Verse 24. Bound and kept in the heart as a friend, that law will prevail to keep the youth "from the strange woman." Observing a great swelling wave rolling forward to devour him, this faithful teacher imparts to the young voyager on life's troubled sea a principle which will bear him buoyant over it. A slender vessel floats alone upon the ocean, contending with the storm. A huge wave approaches, towering high above her hull. All depends upon how the ship shall take it. If she go under it she will never rise again: if she is so trimmed that her bows rise with the first approaches, she springs lightly over it, and gets no harm. The threatening billow passes beneath her, and breaks with a growl behind her, but the ship is safe. The law and love of the Lord, taught by his mother in childhood, and maintaining its place yet as the friend of his bosom and the ruler of his conscience, will give the youth a spring upward proportionate to the magnitude of the temptation coming on.--Arnot.

That which is said of Jael is true of the strange woman. She brought forth soft words, but a hard nail; in her mouth was a gentle hammer, but in her hand a heavy one. Open force is more easily resisted, but that which is hid in the beginning with fair words in the end stingeth most cruelly.--Jermin.

"Flattery." That constitutes the risk. If impenitence would tell the truth, or even if we would allow the truth, there would be no danger. But hers is an alien tongue in this,--that though we deliberately admit it is a cheat, we accept its flattery.--Miller.

Verse 26. A famine of bread followeth the gluttony of lust, and it is life itself that is destroyed by it. He that is thus brought to a morsel of bread on earth, shall be brought to a drop of water in hell, if repentance do not in time beg a gracious pardon for him. That man's life is precious, the devil himself affirmeth, who seeketh to make it vile; he saith, who laboureth to destroy it, that "Skin for skin, all that a man hath will he give for his life" (Job ii. 4). How unworthy valuers are they therefore of their own lives who esteem them less than the devil does, and who makes them a prey to the adulteress, who as a lion hunteth after them.--Jermin.

Nothing is so bewitching as womanly enchantment. Nothing in esse, when it is base, is so contemptible. Nothing sweeps a man with such a perfect storm of influence. Nothing leaves him so perfectly defrauded and unpaid.--Miller.

Verses 27 and 28. "Fire" is a favourite emblem for wickedness. "Wickedness burneth as the fire" (Isa. ix. 18, see also Isa. lxv. 5). The (1) pain, the (2) waste, the (3) growth, and the (4) small beginnings of sin are all instanced in the fire. "Bosom." Here is just where sin is taken. Sin is not only the inward but the outward enemy, not only the coals in our bosom but the coals (or fierce tempting occasions) in the midst of which we walk.--Miller.

Sin and punishment are linked together by a chain of adamant. "The fire of lust kindles the fire of hell," says Henry. He cannot afterwards plead the strength of the temptation. Why did he not avoid it? Who that knows how much tinder he carries about with him would wilfully light-up the sparks?--Bridges.

Perhaps such an one may think to tread upon coals, thereby to tread them out, but he will first tread the fire into his own feet: perhaps such an one may think to walk in the ways of lust, thereby to walk them out, but he will first walk out the strength of his body and means. The affections are the feet of man's soul, and if they walk upon this fire they will be inflamed suddenly.--Jermin.

Verse 29. Though the plea of a sleepy conscience be not guilty, the sentence of God is, not innocent. It was for this wickedness that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah; it was for it He brought the deluge of waters upon the world, and as it is observed, for no other sin do we read, that God is said to have repented to have made man, but for this.--Jermin.

Verse 30. Compared with an adulterer, a thief is not treated with so much ignominy. The laws of modern society have reversed the maxims of Solomon; and, to the dishonour of Christian nations, an adulterer, who steals what is most precious to a man, and what is irretrievable, is treated by the law with more lenity than a thief, who robs him of what is comparatively of little value and may be easily replaced.--Wordsworth.

Adultery is worse than theft. It is before us in the commandments as the greater sin (Exod. xx. 14, 15). 1. It is a far greater theft. 2. The provocation to theft is greater. What drives the one, wantonness draws the other. One may preserve his bodily life by his sin, the other destroys it. Hunger is a great provocation to evil (ch. xxx. 9). Necessity is a sore weapon.--Francis Taylor.

Verse 33. The three things here mentioned may be referred to three causes. The wound to the devil, the enemy of mankind, the dishonour to God, dishonoured by the adulterer, the reproach to sin, which is the true object of reproach. The devil woundeth out of malice, God dishonoureth in justice, sin reproacheth by nature; and where nature hath fastened the reproach or stain it is not any art that can take it out or wipe it away. He that giveth this good counsel was himself an example of what he writeth. As Jerome saith, Solomon, the sun of men, the treasure of God's delights, the peculiar house of wisdom, blurred with the thick ink of dishonour, lost the light of his soul, the glory of his house, the sweet perfume of his name, by the love of a woman.--Jermin.

What an indelible blot is the matter of Uriah upon David still.--Trapp.

Verse 34. Howbeit he may not kill the adulterer, but if no law will relieve a man, yet let him know that he shall do himself no disservice by making God his chancellor.--Trapp.

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Chapter VII

CRITICAL NOTES.--+2. Apple of the eye,+ the "pupil," literally the "little man" of the eye, referring to the reflected image of a man seen in that organ. +3. Bind them+ "refers to the rings with large signets, upon which maxims were inscribed" (Stuart). +4. Kinswoman,+ rather, "an acquaintance, a familiar friend." +7. Simple,+ "inexperienced." +8. Went,+ "moved leisurely, sauntered." +9. In the black and dark night,+ literally, "in the apple," or "pupil" of the night. +10.+ Literally, "a woman, the attire of a harlot," with no connecting word between, as though the woman were nothing but such a dress. +Subtil,+ "guarded." Wordsworth renders "her heart is like a walled fortress." +11. Stubborn,+ rather "boisterous, ungovernable." +14.+ The offerings here named are those of thanksgiving for blessings received. Of such offering, which, in accordance with the law (Lev. vii. 16), must be eaten by the second day, the guests partook, so that a rich feast is here offered to the young man under the garb of religious usage. +16. With carved works,+ rather, "variegated coverlets of Egyptian linen." +20. The purse, etc.,+ indicating long delay; +the day appointed,+ rather, "the day of the full moon." +22. Straightway.+ "The Hebrew implies that he had at first hesitated, until the fear of his to take the decisive step was overcome by evil appetite, and he now, with passionate promptness, formed the vile purpose and executed it at once, to cut off all further reflection. Here is evidently a stroke in the picture of the profoundest psychological truth" (Lange's Commentary). The latter clause of the verse is literally, "and as fetters for the punishment of a fool." It has been variously rendered. Many expositors read, "As the obstinate fool is suddenly caught and held fast by a trap lying in a forbidden path, so has the deceitful power of the adulteress caught the young man." +23.+ "The +liver+ stands here as representative of the vitals in general as in Lam. ii. 11, as in some instances the heart, or again, the reins" (Psa. xvi. 7; lxxiii. 21, etc.). According to Delitzsch, the liver is here made prominent as the seat of sensual desire. "Since the ancient Greeks, Arabians, and Persians, in fact, connected this idea with the organ under consideration, this view may be received as probably correct" (Lange's Commentary). +Knoweth not that it is for his life,+ i.e. "that his life is at stake."

NOTE ON THE SIGNIFICATION OF THE "STRANGE WOMAN" OF THIS CHAPTER, AND OF MANY KINDRED PASSAGES IN THE BOOK.--Although most modern commentators attach no other meaning to this woman than that which would occur to the general reader, there are some who, as will be seen from the comments, agree with most of the early expositors in attaching to the representation an ideal meaning also. Wordsworth, referring to the original meaning of the word mashal, or proverb (see preface), says, "By a consideration of the proper meaning of this word mashal, used in the title of the book, and by reflecting on the use made of it in the Gospels, we are led to recognise in the Proverbs or Parables of Solomon not only moral apothegms for practical use in daily life, but to ponder deeply upon them as having also a typical character and inner spiritual significance concerning heavenly doctrines of supernatural truth, and as preparing the way for the evangelical teaching of the Divine Solomon, Jesus Christ, in parables on the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven." Following out this principle of interpretation, he continues, "As in Solomon's delineation of Wisdom we recognised Christ, so in the portraiture of the 'strange woman,' who is set in striking contrast to Wisdom in this book, we must learn to see something more than at first meets the eye. Doubtless we must hold fast the literal interpretation, and must strenuously contend for it; . . . but in the gaudy and garish attire and alluring cozenage of the strange woman we may see a representation of the seductive arts with which the teachers of unsound doctrine, repugnant to the truth of Christ, endeavour to charm, captivate, and ensnare unwary souls, and to steal them away from Him. There is a harlotry of the intellect--there is an adultery of the soul, and this harlotry and adultery are not less dangerous and deadly than the grossest sins and foulest abominations. Indeed they are more perilous, because they present themselves in a more specious and attractive form." Hengstenberg, commenting on Eccles. vii. 26, says, "There are strong grounds for thinking that the woman of the Proverbs is the personification of heathenish folly, putting on the airs of wisdom and penetrating into the territory of the Israelites. . . . The key to Prov. ii. 16, 17, is Jeremiah iii. 4-20. In Prov. v. the evil woman must needs be regarded as an ideal person, because of the opposition in which she is set to the good woman, Wisdom. If Wisdom in chap. vii. 4, 5 is an ideal person, her opponent must be also. . . . In chap. ix. again, the evil woman is put in contrast with Wisdom; . . . the explanation is, in fact, plainly given in verse 13. Last of all, in chap xxii. 14, we read, 'the mouth of a foreigner is a deep pit,' etc. That the writer here treats of false doctrine is clear from the mention of the mouth. Nahum iii. 4, presents an analogous instance of such a personification. . . . To the woman here, corresponds in Rev. ii. 20: 'the woman Jezebel,' a symbolical person." Miller, as will be seen in the suggestive comments on chap. ii. 16, looks upon this woman as an emblem of impenitence.

The following comment is by Professor Plumptre: "The strange woman, the 'stranger,' may mean simply the adulteress, as the 'strange gods' the 'strangers' (Deut. xxxii. 16; Jer. iii. 13), are those to whom Israel, forsaking her true husband, offered an adulterous worship. But in both cases there is implied also some idea of a foreign origin, as of one who by birth is outside the covenant of Israel. In the second word used, this meaning is still stronger. It is the word used of the strange wives of Solomon (1 Kings xi. 1-8), and of those of the Jews who returned from Babylon (Ezra x.), of Ruth, as a Moabitess (Ruth ii. 10), of heathen invaders (Isa. ii. 6). Whatever form the sin here referred to had assumed before the monarchy (and the Book of Judges testifies to its frequency), the intercourse with Phœnicians and other nations under Solomon had a strong tendency to increase it. The king's example would naturally be followed, and it probably became a fashion to have foreign wives and concubines. At first it would seem this was accomplished by some show of proselytism. The women made a profession of conformity to the religion of their masters. But the old leaven breaks out. They sin and 'forget the covenant of their God.' The worship of other gods, a worship in itself sensual and ending in the foulest sin, leads the way to a life of harlotry. Other causes may have led to the same result. The stringent laws of the Mosaic code may have deterred the women of Israel from that sin, and led to a higher standard of purity than prevailed among other nations. Lidonian and Tyrian women came, like the Asiatic hetaeræ at Athens, at once with greater importunity and with new arts and fascinations to which the home-born were strangers."

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses 1-4.

THE SOURCE OF TRUE LIFE, ETC.

+I. The true life of man depends upon his relation to the Word of God.+ "Keep my commandments, and live" (verse 2). The life which is given to man upon his entrance into this world is not life in its highest sense, but an existence in which he is to obtain life. "It is not all of life to live." Those who do not keep God's commandments are living existences, but in the moral signification of the word they are dead. It was said by the highest authority--by the Son of God Himself--that "it had been good for Judas Iscariot if he had not been born" (Matt. xxvi. 24). Existence is not a blessing, oftentimes a curse, unless a man is "born again," "not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John i. 13). Christ taught the same truth when He said, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God" (Luke iv. 4). Man is not flesh and blood only, he has not a mere animal existence, but moral capabilities and needs, which must be nourished by the thoughts of God. If this is not done, he has no life worth the name.

+II. The relation that a man should have to the Word of God is like that which a rich man has to his banked money.+ "Lay up my commandments with thee." The best place for money which the merchant wishes to use constantly is a safe bank, from which he can draw out at any time of need. So the Word of God must be laid up in the mind ready for constant use. The Word of God must "dwell in us" (Col. iii. 16). It must be stored up to furnish us with encouragement and admonition in the unceasing warfare with temptation which we are called upon to wage. It must be at hand at the moment of need.

+III. It is to be guarded with the same care as the eye is guarded by the eyelid.+ "As the apple of thine eye." The eye is carefully protected by nature because it is the organ of a most precious sense--of a sense of which we stand in the greatest need--without which we walk through the world in darkness. The revelation of God in the Holy Scriptures is the only light which enlightens us amid the darkness of ignorance and mystery by which we are surrounded. Without it all our future would be darkness indeed. Hence its preciousness, and hence the value we ought to set upon it.

+IV. It is to hold to us a relation like that of a pure, and tender, and beloved sister.+ "Say unto Wisdom, Thou art my sister." The Word of God is the highest wisdom. The relationship of brother and sister, where it is what God intended it to be, is a very tender and pure relationship, involving willingness to undergo self-denial for the sake of her who is loved, to listen to her advice, to seek her welfare. In this light we must regard the wisdom of God as revealed in the Word of God if existence is to become life to us. We must exercise self-denial for her sake. "I prevented the dawning of the morning, and cried: I hoped in Thy word" (Psa. cxix. 147).

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS.

Verse 2. As God would have us keep His law as the apple of our eye, so He keeps His people (Deut. xxxii. 10), in answer to their prayer, as the apple of His eye (Zech. ii. 8). We guard the eye as our most precious and tender member from hurt, and prize it most dearly. As we guard the pupil of the eye from the least mote, which is sufficient to hurt it, so God's law is so tender and holy a thing that the least violation of it in thought, word, or deed, is sin; and we are so to keep the law as to avoid any violation of it. The law resembles the pupil of the eye also in its being spiritually the organ of light, without which we should be in utter darkness.--Fausset.

The instruction of the Word is the same to the soul which the eye is to the body. For as the body without the sight of the eye runneth upon many things that hurt it, and falleth at every little stumbling-block, so the soul most fearfully runneth into sins if it want the light and direction of the Word.--Muffet.

Man are off and on in their promises: they are also slow and slack in their performances. But it is otherwise here: the very "entrance of Thy Word giveth light" (Psa. cxix. 130), and the very onset of obedience giveth life. It is but "Hear, and your soul shall live" (Isa. lv. 3). Sin is homogeneous, all of a kind, though not all of the same degree. As the least pebble is a stone as well as the hugest rock, and as the drop of a bucket is water as well as the main ocean, hence the least sins are in Scripture reproached by the names of the greatest. Malice is called manslaughter, lust, adultery, etc. Concupiscence is condemned by the law; even the first motions of sin, though they never come to consent (Rom. vii. 7). Inward bleeding may kill a man. The law of God is spiritual, though we be carnal. And as the sunshine shows us atoms and motes that till then we discerned not, so doth the law discover and censure smallest failings. It must therefore be kept curiously, even "as the apple of the eye," that cannot be touched, but will be distempered. Careful we must be, even in the punctilios of duty. Men will not lightly lose the least ends of gold.--Trapp.

In some bodies, as trees, etc., there is life without sense, which are things animated, but not so much with a soul as with a kind of animation; even as the wicked have some kind of knowledge from grace, but are not animated by it. Or rather the wicked do not live, indeed, for life consisteth in action, and how can he be said truly to live whose words are dead? But keep God's commandments, and live indeed, live cheerfully with the comfort of this life, which makes life to be life; live happily in the life of glory hereafter, which is the end for which this life is lent us.--Jermin.

Verse 4. Since, O youth, thou delightest in the intimacy of fair maidens, lo! here is by far the loveliest one, Wisdom.--Cartwright.

Wisdom has been represented as a wife, and here she is called a sister. As Didymus says (in Catenâ, p. 104), "Wisdom is called a mother, a sister, and a wife." She is a mother, because, through her, we are children of Christ; she is a wife, because, by union with her, we ourselves become parents of that which is good; she is our sister, because our love to her is chaste and holy, and because she, as well as ourselves, is the offspring of God. Such is the love of Christ, who is the true Wisdom, and who is all in all to the soul. Compare His own words, applied to every faithful and obedient soul: "The same is my brother, and my sister, and mother" (Mark iii. 35). "Do thou love the true faith with sisterly love, it shall keep thee from the impure love of the strange women of false doctrine" (Bede).--Wordsworth.

Holiness is positive. Sin is negative. The one is to love God, and also our neighbour. The other is not to love God or our neighbour. The one shows itself in a positive delight in the abstract holiness; the other not in a positive delight in the opposite, viz., in an abstract sin, but a delight in women, a delight in money, a delight in praise, a delight in everything except moral purity, and therefore a delight in things which are innocent when in limits, and that are only guilty when the soul is let in upon them without curb of superior affection. If a man calls Wisdom his kinswoman, then he may love wine or love without moral danger.--Miller.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses 5-27.

A PICTURE DRAWN FROM LIFE.

The woman depicted here has been before us twice before. (See on chap. ii. 16-19 and vi. 24.) We will therefore confine ourselves in this chapter to the picture of her dupe. He fully justifies his right to the title here given to him, viz., "a young man void of understanding."

+I. Because he did not wait for temptation to seek him, but went where he knew it would meet him.+ Those who carry gunpowder upon their persons ought never to go into a blacksmith's forge, ought never even to approach the door lest some sparks fall upon them. How much more foolish is he who, knowing that there is a tendency to sin within him, seeks out the place where the spark will be fanned into a flame. This young man is found "near the corner" of the house of his temptress, "he went the way to her house."

+II. He goes to ruin with his eyes wide open.+ The woman's character is plainly written upon her dress and upon her face. There is no pretence at disguise. She boasts of her infidelity to her husband. Yet he yields to her invitation; yet he believes her professions of attachment to himself. The most silly fish that swims will not bite if the steel hook gleams through the bait, but this simpleton takes the hook without any bait. The ox resists when he feels that he is being driven to death, but this fool goes deliberately to the house of death. He walks into the snare which he knows has been the death of myriads of his fellow creatures. The remedy for this folly is found in vers. 1-4.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS.

Verses 5-27. From the earlier and copious warnings against adultery the one now before us is distinguished by the fact, that while chapter v. contrasted the blessings of conjugal fidelity and chaste marital love with unregulated sexual indulgence, and chapter vi. 20-35 particularly urged a contending against the inner roots and germs of the sin of unchastity, our passage dwells with special fulness upon the temptations from without to the transgression of the sixth commandment. It also sets for the folly and the ruinous consequences of yielding to such temptations, by presenting an instructive living example. . . . Aside from the fact that it is nocturnal rambling that delivers the thoughtless idle youth into the hands of temptation (verse 9), and aside from the other significant feature that after the first brief and feeble opposition, he throws himself suddenly and with the full energy of passion into his self-sought ruin (verse 22, comp. James i. 15), we have to notice here chiefly the important part played by the luxurious and savoury feast of the adulteress, as a co-operating factor in the allurement of the self-indulgent youth (verse 14 seq.). It is surely not a feature purely incidental, without deeper significance or design, that this meal is referred to as preceding the central or chief sin; for, that the tickling of the palate with stimulating eats and drinks prepares the way for lust is an old and universal observation (comp. Exod. xxxii. 6, 1 Cor. x. 17, as also similar passages from the classical authors).--Lange's Commentary.

Apart from the external blandishments which are portrayed in this passage, there belongs to them a power of internal deception the most fallacious and insinuating--and this not merely because of their strength, and of their fitness to engross the whole man when once they take possession of him, and so to shut out all reflection and seriousness--those counteractives to evil passions; but because of their alliance with, and the affinity which they bear to, the kindly and benevolent and good feelings of our nature. As the poet says--himself a wild and wayward, and most dangerously seductive writer--the transition is a most natural one, from "loving much to loving wrong." Let all such affections be sedulously kept at bay, and the occasions of them shunned and fled from, rather than hazarded and tampered with. Let them never be wilfully encountered, or presumptuously braved and bid defiance to, lest the victory be theirs; and no sooner do they win the heart than they war against the soul.--Chalmers.

Verse 5. This woman not only represents the harlot and the adulteress literally, but it is also a figure of whatever seduces the soul from God, whether in morals or religion, and whether in doctrine and practice, or in religious worship.--Wordsworth.

Strange, indeed, if she alienate us from the very God that made her, and stir the jealousy of the very Being that gives us our power to love her. (Hosea ii. 8.)--Miller.

Verse 6. God is ever at His window, His casement is always open to see what thou dost.--Jermin.

Verse 8. Circumstances which give an occasion to sin are to be noticed and avoided. They who love danger fall into it. The youth (as verse 21 shows) did not go with the intention of defiling himself with the "strange woman," but to flatter his own vanity by seeing and talking with her, and hearing her flatteries. It is madness to play with Satan's edged tools.--Faussett.

The beginning of the sad end. The loitering evening walk, the unseasonable hour (Job xxiv. 15; Rom. xiii. 12, 13); the vacant mind. "The house was empty," and therefore ready for the reception of the tempter (Matt. xii. 44, 45), and soon altogether in his possession. How valuable are self-discipline, self-control, constant employment, active energy of pursuit, as preservatives under the Divine blessing from fearful danger.--Bridges.

Verses 7-9. The first character appears on the scene, young, "simple" in the bad sense of the word; open to all impressions of evil, empty-headed and empty-hearted; lounging near the place of ill-repute, not as yet deliberately purposing to sin, but placing himself in the way of it; wandering idly to see one of whose beauty he has heard, and this at a time when the pure in heart would seek their home. It is impossible not to see a certain symbolic meaning in this picture of the gathering gloom. Night is falling over the young man's life as the shadows deepen.--Plumptre.

Verse 9. He thought to obscure himself, but Solomon saw him; how much more God, before whom night will convert itself into noon, and silence prove a speaking evidence. Foolish men think to hide themselves from God, by hiding God from themselves.--Trapp.

Verse 10. A careless sinner shall not need to go far to meet with temptation. The first woman met with it almost as soon as she was made, and who meets not everywhere with the woman Temptation?--Jermin.

Verse 14. Though I indulge in amours, do not think I am averse to the worship of God; nay, I offer liberally to Him: He is now therefore appeased, and will not mind venial offences.--Cartwright.

It is of course possible that the worship of Israel had so degenerated as to lose for the popular conscience all religious significance; but the hypothesis stated above (see note at the beginning of the chapter), affords a simpler explanation. She who speaks is a foreigner who, under a show of conformity to the religion of Israel, still retains her old notions, and a feast-day is nothing to her but a time of self-indulgence, which she may invite another to share with her. If we assume, as probable, that these harlots of Jerusalem were mainly of Phœnician origin, the connection of their worship with their sin would be but the continuation of their original cultus.--Plumptre.

An awful portraiture of the mystery of iniquity. It is applicable also to corrupt churches, especially to the spiritual harlot described by St. John in the Apocalypse. She professes zeal for God's house and service, while she is offending Him by heretical doctrine, and insulting Him by the fascinations of idolatrous worship, with which she beguiles unwary souls to commit spiritual fornication with her. (See Rev. xvii. 1-5; xviii. 9.) As Bede says, following in the steps of Basil and others: All the description which is here given is true, in a literal sense, of the meretricious allurements of an adulteress; but it is to be interpreted also spiritually. False doctrine tricks herself out with the embellishments of worldly rhetoric and spurious philosophy, and is ever lurking at the corners of the streets, to allure and deceive the simple, and to caress them with her embraces; and she makes religious professions. She has her couch adorned with heathen embroidery, and yet sprinkles with the odours of spiritual virtues; but Christ says of her in the Apocalypse, "I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into the great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds" (Rev. ii. 22).--Wordsworth.

The immoral devotionist. 1. The absurd conduct of those who indulge in immorality, and think to compound with God for so doing, by paying Him outward forms of worship. 2. All external observances vain and useless unless they are accompanied with purity of heart, and real goodness of life. True religion is an end, and all external observances are only means leading to that end. (See Micah. vi. 5.) Agreeably to this St. Paul assures us that the end of the Christian revelation is to teach men to "live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world" (Titus ii. 12). And Christ assures us that no ceremonious method of atonement without practical goodness will entitle us to the rewards of Christianity (Matt. vii. 21). All duties enjoined by God can be enjoined by Him only for the good they do us. "Can a man be profitable unto God, as he that is wise is profitable to himself?" (Job xxii. 2). And in which way can we possibly conceive how an immoral man can reap any benefit from the mere forms and ceremonies of religion? Is there any reason to think that God will accept this religious flattery instead of purity of life? No, rather it is an aggravation of his crimes. (See Isa. i. 11.)--N. Ball.

Verse 15. O how diligent is wickedness, thinking that thing never done soon enough which is too soon done at any time! O how diligent a helper is Satan of wickedness, administering all opportunities for it! And, therefore, as the harlot seeketh diligently, so she findeth readily. Which is the shame of religion in many that profess it, and who are so slow in the performance of religious duties, as if they were both servants and masters, and had the commandments of God at their own command, to do them at their pleasure; which is a great reason that they are so ill observed. But if they would use their own diligence, they should find God much more diligent to give a blessing to it.--Jermin.

Verse 16. Her coverings of tapestry could not cover her naughtiness, her carved work could not embellish her own deformed work, her white Egyptian linen could not make white her black Egyptian soul.--Jermin.

Verse 17. This might have minded the young man that he was going to his grave, for the bodies of the dead were so perfumed. Such a meditation would much have rebated his edge--cooled his courage.--Trapp.

Verse 18. But what if death draw the curtains, and look in the while? If death do not, yet guilt will.--Trapp.

Verse 19. Instead of saying, "My husband," she contemptuously calls him "the goodman," as though he were unconnected with her.--Fausset.

Man may not be at home, but God is always at home, whose house is the world: man may be gone a far journey, but God's journey is at once to be everywhere; His farthest off, to be present always. . . . She talketh that the goodman was not at home, but the good woman was not at home either; she saith that her husband was gone a far journey, but she herself was gone much farther from her duty. If she had been at home, to have heard her conscience the home reprover of wickedness, the goodman, though not at home, had not been so much wronged; if she had not gone far from her covenant, her husband, though gone far, had still been near and present in her heart.--Jermin.

Our hearts must be guarded against the admission of sin by stronger motives than the fear of detection and disgrace, for artful solicitors to evil will easily baffle such restraints as these. Joseph might have expected his master's favour by complying with the wishes of his mistress, but the motive that induced him to decline her company was irresistible,--"How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?"--Lawson.

Verse 22. He goeth to the slaughter when he thinketh he goeth to the pasture; or as those oxen brought forth by Jupiter's priests, with garlands unto the gates, but it was for a slain sacrifice (Acts xiv. 13).--Trapp.

The butcher's yard would show the meaning of this first similitude. In every sort of way the ox may be coaxed, and apparently to no purpose. But though he may stand, ox-like, like a rock, yet the experienced herdman knows that he will suddenly start in. This is his nature. One inch may cost a hurricane of blows; but at a dash, as the butcher expects, he will suddenly rush in to his doom.--Miller.

Verse 25. Cut off the beginnings of desire. The first trickling of the crevasse is the manageable, and therefore, more culpable, period of the difficulty.--Miller.

Verse 26. As Solomon himself subsequently was (Neh. xiii. 26). So Samson and David previously. It is better to learn by the awful example of others than by our own suffering. Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.--Fausset.

The house of the harlot had been compared before to the grave, to the world of the dead; now it is likened to a battle-field strewn with the corpses of armed men. The word speaks rather of the multitude than of the individual strength of those who have perished.--Plumptre.

In a figurative sense, some of the greatest teachers of Christendom have been seduced by the allurements of heresy, and have been cast down from their place in the firmament of the Church, like stars falling from heaven.--Wordsworth.

The valour of men hath oft been slaved by the wiles of a woman. Witness many of your greatest martialists, who conquered countries, and were vanquished of vices. The Persian kings commanded the whole world, and were commanded by their concubines.--Trapp.

The secret thought that one can saunter toward her house (verse 8), and at any time turn back, is cruelly met by most discouraging examples. The whole passage is the more impressive, if we consider it as a warning against confidence in strength, and particularly grand, if we mark the second clause. . . . All men are strong, and strong in the most substantial sense. All men, saved, are princes (Rev. i. 6); and they are offered the second place in God's kingdom (Isa. lxi. 7.) All men are bone of Christ's bone; all men are born with a birthright to be kings and priests, if they choose to be, and brothers of Emmanuel.--Miller.

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