Bible Commentaries

Proverbs 19:2

The evils of ignorance compared with the evils of blindness.

I. To be blind is, first, to be destitute of the pleasure of the enjoyment of light, and to be afflicted with the pain of darkness. What sunlight and the want of it are to the body, such are knowledge and the want of it to the mind.

II. Just as the blind man is insensible to the beauties of colour and form, and has no share in the pleasures which others derive from the sight of the rainbow, for instance, or the starry firmament, or the flowery meadow, or the smiling infant; so is the ignorant man insensible to the beauties of knowledge, and has no share in that refined pleasure which the man of science and cultivated taste enjoys.

III. A blind man can be but partially employed in business; he is liable to be imposed on; he lives in a state of almost continual apprehension, imagining danger at every sound; and when his alarm is just, he knows not how to escape; though he be put in the right way, he stumbles on the stones, or falls into the ditch, or over the precipice, and is destroyed. An ignorant man is in danger of all this and much more.

IV. Blindness disqualifies a man for giving counsel and direction to others. "If the blind lead the blind, they will both fall into the ditch." So correctly graphic are these words, when applied metaphorically, that it was in relation to the evils of ignorance they were originally used by our Lord. Especially let the pious man reflect how ignorance disqualifies him for pleading the cause of God; let the patriot reflect how it disqualifies him for benefiting his country; let the philanthropist reflect how it disqualifies him for advancing the interests of humanity.

V. The counsel of all wisdom is that we first acquire for ourselves, and that, professing to be benevolent men, we communicate to others that knowledge which is necessary for our own and their well-being for eternity; which will enable us and them to lay up treasure for the heavenly kingdom; that knowledge of God, His Son, that science of salvation, without which all other scholarship and all other science are the emptiest vanity.

W. Anderson, Discourses, p. 280.

References: Proverbs 19:2.—J. Budgen, Parochial Sermons, vol. i., p. 1. Proverbs 19:3.—W. Jay, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 85. Proverbs 19:4-15.—R. Wardlaw, Lectures on Proverbs, vol. ii., p. 228. Proverbs 19:11-19.—W. Arnot, Laws from Heaven, 2nd series, p. 142.

Proverbs 19:21

The text plainly implies a great disconformity—a want of coalescence between the designs of man and God; an estranged spirit of design on the part of man. And the case actually is so in the world. Many of the designs in men's hearts are formed independently of God; many in contrariety to Him.

I. Independently of Him. In what proportion of men's internal devisings may we conjecture that there is any real acknowledgment of God? One in ten? One in twenty? In beginning to entertain the design, there is no question made, Will this be approved by Him? The whole devising and prosecution are in a spirit just as if there were no such thing as providence to aid or defeat.

II. But even this is not the worst: man's heart entertains many devices in contrariety to God. It can cherish "devices" which must sometimes involve a rebellious emotion of displeasure, almost resentment, that there is a Sovereign Lord, whose counsel shall stand.

III. In adverting to these devices we may observe that the counsel of the Lord is sometimes not to prevent the design taking effect in the first instance. He shows that He can let men bring their iniquitous purposes into effect, and then seize that very effect,—reverse its principle of agency and make it produce immense unintended good.

IV. How important is it, that all the designs of the heart should, in principle, be conformed to the spirit of God's unalterable counsel; that in all our projects we should be conscientiously and solicitously aiming at a general conformity to His will.

J. Foster, Lectures, 2nd series, p. 300.

References: Proverbs 19:21-29.—R. Wardlaw, Lectures on Proverbs, vol. ii., p. 254. Proverbs 19:22.—W. Arnot, Laws from Heaven, 2nd series, p. 147. Proverbs 20:1.—Ibid., p. 152; R. Wardlaw, Lectures on Proverbs, vol. ii., p. 268. Proverbs 20:4.—W. Arnot, Laws from Heaven, 2nd series, p. 164; T. Champness, Little Foxes, p. 60; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. 1., p. 224. Proverbs 20:5, Proverbs 20:6.—W. Arnot, Laws from Heaven, 2nd series, p. 170.