Bible Commentaries

The Plowing of the Wicked, Etc.

Proverbs 21:5).

"Every one that is hasty" points to those who the more haste they make the less speed they realise; they do things carelessly or perfunctorily; they wish to get them out of hand; instead of being critical, patient, painstaking, looking into everything carefully with a view of securing exactness, they hurry their work, they drive along with thoughtlessness, anxious only to gain a goal, and utterly careless as to the way through which they pass to its attainment. This policy of life is utterly condemned because of its consequences; there is nothing abiding that is not in itself really good; the harvest depends upon the seedtime; if we have not been correct in our moral basis and just in our moral policy, no matter what our gain may be it will evaporate, or take to itself wings and flee away, or be only an aggravation of our discontent. Only that is done which is well done. Only that is settled which is settled rightly. Only that will bring forth a great harvest which is in harmony with the structure and the purpose of the universe. We must work by the ways of God, and by eternal ordinances: all our short cuts, and ready methods, and accelerated policies, tend to confusion, and disappointment, and want. This is the affirmation of the wise Proverbs 21:8).

The meaning is that if a man himself is bad, all the way or track which he makes in life will be marked by crookedness or sinuousness. The bad man cannot go straightforwardly. When a man is intoxicated he reels from side to side of the road; when a man is carrying a burden that is too heavy for him he cannot keep steadfastly on his feet, and the way which he leaves behind him is marked by irregularity: this is the teaching of the text; if a man is laden with sin he will leave a tortuous track behind him; he will be here and there, he will be unsteady and uncertain; it is impossible for him to go straightforwardly because of the oppression of the weight under which he reels. The contrary is the case with the pure: his work is right or straight; he has nothing burdensome to carry; his eyes look right on and his feet are set down with solidity and precision. If we could mark the way by which the pure man passes through life we should see how comparable it is to a straight line. The bad man is continually dodging, eluding, or evading some real or imaginary danger; the wicked flee when no man pursueth, but the righteous are bold as a lion. The pure man walks straightforwardly, and by the mere force of his pureness he makes a way where there is none, and those who would have opposed him shrink out of his path, recognising in him the representative of truth and honour.

"The righteous man wisely considereth the house of the wicked: but God overthroweth the wicked for their wickedness" ( Proverbs 21:12).

The "righteous man" should rather be the "righteous one," and by that one we are to understand the Almighty himself: the text would then read: The righteous God marks the house of the wicked, and God throws down the wicked for their destruction. Here is the solemn principle of judgment applied to individual life and individual habitation. The picture is that of God seated in the heavens, and marking the house of the wicked Proverbs 21:15).

A curious apposition of sentences. The doctrine is that workers of iniquity cannot do right without being afflicted with a sense of terror. So debased are they by the spirit of evil that even to do right brings with it a sensation of doing wrong, or of drawing too near to God to be safe from the stroke of his lightning. It would seem that wickedness so affects the character and the tone of the whole life that bad men cannot trust divine promises. Bad men cannot commit themselves to spiritual policy or spiritual trust; it is like asking blind men to go into danger without any guidance or protection; bad men feel that if they would live they are bound to be dishonest; it seems utterly impossible to them that honesty can be the best policy, or that truth can bring itself to successful issue and satisfaction. See what ravages are made in the judgment and in the heart by long-continued processes of sin. When a man loves iniquity he cannot love God; he cannot pray; he cannot think aright; the Sabbath is a burden to him; the Bible is a continual offence to his corrupted reason; and the whole way of life seems to be a way of danger and trouble and manifold terror. The bad man can do wickedly as if by a species of right, earned by long custom; but when he opens his mouth in prayer he feels as if he were committing a trespass against himself and the universe.

"The sacrifice of the wicked is abomination: how much more, when he bringeth it with a wicked mind?" ( Proverbs 21:27).

The supposition is that a wicked man feels that he must offer sacrifices, but in the very act of being religious he is secretly imagining himself in a position to make God a confederate in his sin. The idea is that when the wicked man is offering a sacrifice he is buying permission to do wrong. It is as if by going to church occasionally a man earned the right to do selfishly and unjustly all the week long. Or as if a man by giving an alms to poverty earned the right to cheat the simple-minded and overthrow those who put their trust in him. Yet we are told that the doctrine of original sin is a mere phantasy! Can the debasing influence of sin go further than this, that it shall make a merchandise of religion itself, and turn prayer into a species of investment, and draw profits from the very act of attempting to worship God? The picture is that of a man who is offering a sacrifice at the altar, and yet at the same time is plotting future wickedness. He says to himself, All this shall turn to my advantage; I am really not so much at the altar as I am in the mart, or in the exchange, or at the place where merchants most do congregate: all this looks very religious on my part, but I am simply setting up a ladder by which I may scale higher worldly eminence,—all this will presently turn to my advantage; do not imagine me to be superhumanly religious, I am only pre-eminently clever; this is not piety, it is policy; this is not sacrifice, it is elaborate scheming. Can we see these revelations of human nature without asking ourselves how that nature can be vitally changed? And can we consider that great inquiry without feeling that "Ye must be born again" is the only doctrine that is radical, vital, complete, and enduring in its happy effects?

Prayer

Almighty God, we can say with our heart's consent, The Lord is mindful of his own, he remembers his children; like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. Thou hast made us in thine own image and likeness, and towards thyself thou art continually calling us by the whole ministry of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. We are called to bear the divine image in our souls, to be as perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. The call overwhelms us: but where thou dost send the call thou dost send the helpful and needful grace. Thy call is a call of life and love, and thou dost sustain those who obey it, giving them grace upon grace, yea, to fulness of joy and peace, so that in their increase of power they say, We can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth us. Our praise be evermore to Christ! If we forget thee, Immanuel, may our right hand forget its cunning and our tongue cleave to the roof of our mouth. Behold thou art the Son of God; to us thou art God the Son. We cannot tell thy beginning, or thine ending, or the way of thy mediation and sovereignty: but we put our trust in the living Christ, and from him would draw the life we daily need. We have no faith in our own bow and spear and sword; we have renounced our invention and mental fertility, and power of planning ways out of infinite difficulties; and now we stand still, like so many little children, and see the salvation of God, beginning in mystery, showing itself momentarily in a great light, withdrawing for our accommodation, appealing to us in whispers and tender entreaties, and showing us daily the way of deliverance and safety. Blessed be God, this is thy way; we are now led to accept it; we praise God for his redemption in Christ Jesus, and call ourselves men redeemed. We cannot follow the mystery of thy love in the atonement wrought by thy Proverbs 21:10, Proverbs 21:15

Here are men working according to their nature. That is a universal necessity. Here are men who are not only doing evil but desiring to do it; not doing evil in one passionate and hurried Proverbs 21:28-31

The mystery is that there should be such a character in society as a "false witness." We are apt to take the existence of such characters as a matter of course. If, however, we look carefully into the case we shall regard a false witness not only as a curiosity in nature but as an unspeakable monstrosity. Consider how awful a thing it is to violate truth, to trifle with uprightness, to give a false colour or accent to human action or language: what possible motive can there be for such wantonness and profanation? Searching into the matter, we shall find here, as everywhere, that selfishness explains the whole of that mischievous action. The man has some object to gain, either money, fame, influence, or flattery of himself; on the other hand, he may be fearing danger, penalty, loss, or affliction in some form; whatever may be the details of the case, there remains the suggestive and alarming fact, that it is possible for man to tell lies about his brother man and to swear falsely in the very courts of truth and justice. In this direction we find the miracles that ought to astound us. If by familiarity we have become accustomed to the possibility of false-witnessing, that does not at all diminish the awfulness of the act in the first instance. Who was the first liar? Who began the mystery of falsehood? Whose name towers out into a bad eminence as the original witness against the truth and light? Whilst we are searching into the ancestry of the bad man we may possibly overlook the reality of contemporaneous wickedness. We need not go back to the original for false-swearing, inasmuch as each man may find a false witness in his own heart Bad as it is to bear false witness against our neighbour, we should remember that it is possible for a man to bear false witness to himself; he may deceive his own imagination, he may bribe his own conscience, he may over-persuade himself that this or that course is right; he may silence the voice divine which would guide him into the upward way, and for some avowed or unconscious reason he may take the way that ends in death. When a man can bear false witness to himself, there will be no difficulty in his bearing false witness concerning others. The end of the false witness is declared in the text—"shall perish." We know not the meaning of that awful term; it would seem to be more than destruction, even more than annihilation; it is an outgoing and vanishing from the sphere of life, amid sneers, detestation, execration of every kind, as if the universe were glad to be rid of so black and cold and noisome a shadow.

Contrasted with the false witness is "the man that heareth," literally, heareth carefully, and repeats with exactness and precision what he does hear, so that not a word is lost, not a tone is changed, not a single colour is varied; the man speaks constantly, that Proverbs 21:30).

This is a religious philosophy of life. If there is a Lord according to the Biblical revelation and description of his character, it is impossible that he can be opposed with ultimate success. Even if we empty this word "Lord" of its personality, and regard it as a term symbolical of righteousness, judgment, truth, and goodness, it may still be affirmed that in the long run these must prevail over every form of wickedness. It would seem to be impossible that evil should be eternal. From the beginning there has been in human consciousness a hope, yea an assurance, that by-and-by light will expel darkness, and righteousness will occupy the place of wickedness. Account for it as we may, that hope has sustained the human race in all the agony of its transition, in all the battles and storms of its manifold progress. Upon an instinct of this kind is built many a temple of religion and many an altar of sacrifice and service. Religious rites and ceremonies would be too costly and arduous to maintain simply in their mechanical bearings and aspects; there must be under the whole of them something that is stronger than themselves: call it an instinct, a persuasion, a conviction, a consciousness of divine revelation—it is in that depth that we must find the reason of all that is external in religious pomp, circumstance, or simplicity. Men would become weary of doing things that are merely superficial and mechanical; it is the ineffable motive, the profound conviction, that explains all the deepest religious action of life, and that sustains men in the maintenance and defence of their religious purposes. Undoubtedly there is an opposition to everything that is of the quality of purity and nobleness: there are passions in men which clamour for gratification, and those passions are instantly opposed and threatened with destruction by everything that is heavenly and divine. Man grows, and in his growth he undergoes processes of trial which are essential to his development. Many a combat is to be traced, not to the evil that is in a Proverbs 21:31).

Horses had been imported largely from Egypt in Solomon's time, and the importation of horses was a direct breach of the law as laid down in 1 Kings 4:26, and before that in Deuteronomy 17:16. Man has always been trying to be "as God." He has never escaped the first temptation offered by the serpent in Eden,—Do this, and ye shall be as gods; eat this, and your eyes shall be opened; change your point of view, and the whole universe will give up its length and breadth, its depth and height, to your enjoyment. So man has prepared himself a horse, and set the horse in battle, and assured himself that the animal would win the victory; he has laid his hand upon the horse's neck, and declared that neck to be clothed with thunder; he has lifted the horse's hoof, and declared it to be as a flint; he has looked into the horse's eye, and has seen already in the lustre of that eye the assurance of complete triumph over every foe. In all this process man has been looking at the wrong object, or looking in the wrong direction, or making his calculation upon a false basis. In reality, the horse has nothing to do with the battle, nor has the sword of the warrior; in the last result safety is of the Lord, that is to say, only in proportion as a man is right is he safe, only in the degree of his true religion is he assured of prosperity and final peace. But we must be minor gods! Such is the perversity of our will, and such the disease of our imagination, that we continually suppose that we should be able to construct for ourselves a new and better base of action. It would seem impossible to expel this idea from the human mind. By some change of ceremony, by some variation of policy, by some new dream which we are presently to realise, we shall escape all ghostly dominion and enter into the enjoyment of consciously personal mastery over matter and mind; yet age comes after age and leaves behind it unspeakable disappointment and mortification: still we dream, and hope; still we delude ourselves with imaginations of greatness, and thus we continue the tragedy which often becomes farcical, and the farce which often becomes tragical. We shall never be right until we see that we are creatures, not creators; subordinates, not principals: that we are under the direction and inspiration of God, and are not sources and fountains of self-inspiration. We must be brought to the holy resignation which says, "Not my will, but thine, be done: Lord, what wilt thou have me do? Lord Jesus, into thy hands I commend my spirit": in that holy state of resignation and confidence we shall look no longer to the horse, to the helmet, or to the sword, but to the God of battles, and shall find in his direction and consolation all that we need in order to throw down our enemies, and enter into the sanctuary of victory and the temple of peace.