The Proverbs refer us directly to the government of God on the earth, more entirely, because they are less prophetic, than even the psalms. Prophecy, referring to Christ and the remnant, necessarily looked to His rejection and that of some of them from the earth, and hence, though dimly, brought in light from beyond; telling us at least of the resurrection and ascension of Christ and His session at the right hand of God, to go no further. The proverbs do not enter on such topics. They show us what the practical path of a man is here below, as guided by the moral intelligence which the fear of God and the divine word will give him, what true wisdom will teach him. Only it does show that this wisdom is of God and cannot be really without Him and thus leads us on to Him, though obscurely, who is the wisdom of God and the power of God.
The body of the book consists of details of practice, the first nine chapters more of general principles, and the formal characters of evil to be avoided. What is in contrast with wisdom is self-will. Hence the beginning or principle of wisdom in us is the fear of God—here especially of Jehovah, because that was the name of God in covenant with the people, by whom that fear was to be guided, and which is another element in it. But the repression of our will leads us necessarily to the will of another, and the only true right source of conduct, is God, for it is evident He is sovereign and has a right to will. But He has formed relationships and created duties, and man has acquired the knowledge of right and wrong; but reference to God can alone keep this steady and clear. For first of all, the first of all duties is to Him and looking to Him alone keeps the eye single and clear from self, and as to its other duties. For besides will and lawlessness in itself, the existence of the spirit of independence, and our separation thereby from God has given us necessarily the lusts of other things. We must have something; we have left God, we do not suffice for ourselves; and lusts of other things come in, of the flesh and of the mind. But an immense complicated system has grown up through this, and Satan's power—the world. Hence we need guidance and instruction through this, to know God's will in the midst of it, the application of wisdom to details. For the Christian, following Christ, being an imitator of God is the grand point, but he also has to be “not as fools but as wise, understanding what the will of the Lord is.” Christianity goes higher than Proverbs, for it deals with motives and gives divine ones, Proverbs experience, though of one judging according to the fear of God. Still, such an experience is of great use. This wisdom, as we know, Solomon sought and obtained, and gives us his resulting experience in this book. We have several words used in connection with this: wisdom, a common word, 'hochmah,' practiced, experienced, skilful. The wise men of Babylon are so called and it is constantly used for wisdom which God gives in Daniel. We have again ‘musar,’ instruction, warning, advice used for chastisement too. We have also 'beena,' discernment; we have, as regards the simple one liable to be led by everybody, 'orma' or prudence, used for cunning also; but cunning had by no means originally a bad sense, it meant knowing, as regards the young, knowledge; and ‘mezimma,' discretion, being what we call up to things; and lastly, ‘tachbooloth,' wise plans or counsels. The instruction is said to be in good conduct, righteousness, judgment, and uprightness. We have besides this 'lakach,' the wise will increase or add doctrine, λογος. But this is a matter of attainment: the wise will attain this, and counsels, and to interpret dark sayings and proverbs in which wisdom is shut up. Such are the objects proposed in Proverbs, but not by man's cunning but by beginning with the fear of the Lord and so growing up in discernment. It is always needed to be not as fools but as wise. A true Christian may do something from want of discretion which may put him in difficulties all his life. No doubt there is carelessness in it; still he may be very sincere. But still Christianity seems to me to have a somewhat different character of wisdom— “simple concerning evil, wise concerning that which is good.” The Christian follows obediently Christ; and that is the path of wisdom where he has the light of life. He is so governed by motives, Christ being all to him, that his path is simple, his whole body is full of light having no part dark. This is somewhat a different kind of wisdom, though it make us wise in conduct. There is wisdom, but more simplicity, because governed more by motives, and following Christ.
I now turn to the unfolding of this wisdom in the early chapters of this book. The first object is to know wisdom and instruction. Such is the full and general object of the book; that is, the experience of a wise man, and a man corrected and disciplined, where he needs it, from will in any form: wisdom more as to what is without, instruction as to what is within, and, he adds, to discern things that differ, words of understanding—perceive and understanding have the same force—to get a discerning mind as to what passes before us specially what is said. But the next passage enlarges the thought—gives the object and character of the teaching which this wisdom involves where it has to be taught. Wisdom, instruction, and discernment were the aim of Solomon's proverbs; but what was its character when a person had to receive it? It was good or wise conduct, righteousness, judgment, and uprightness. You then have the simple and the young specially brought forward; and it was to make them intelligent and up to what was passing, what they had to do with, so as not to be misled. There was the giving the sum of wisdom and instruction, the means of receiving instruction, in conduct righteousness, judgment, and uprightness—not merely a complete system, but learning the things that ought to be ourselves, when needed; and lastly, the simple and young made intelligent and to know what they were about, capable of going through the world, undeceived by it.
The last point noticed here (which is an accessory to the rest, and more of intellectual enjoyment, though of a moral character, than the obligations of wisdom) is the capacity to enter into riddles and dark sayings, which clothe moral truth in a form that gives pungency and power to it, and hides it in forms which, when penetrated, give peculiar point to the relationship in which wisdom stands, give deeper and more interior apprehension of the truth, on the one hand, and more vividness on the other. I take a very easy and familiar instance. The bramble said to the cedar in Lebanon, Give thy daughter to my son to wife; and there came by a wild beast in Lebanon and trod down the bramble. How much more that comes home than a precise statement that the king of Judah was feeble! Proverbs and dark sayings, riddles, parables, all come under this class. Spiritual apprehension is often needed to see their application.
This closes the preface: Solomon now enters on his subject. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” —not of wisdom, but of knowledge. A weighty sentence. All true knowledge, all moral knowledge begins by putting God in His own place. Nothing is right or true without that. For to leave Him out falsifies the position and relationship of all. I may know physical facts and what are called laws (that is, abstractions from uniform facts), but that is all, without it. Not that there are no instituted relationships, for there are, as parents, husband and wife, and others now man is fallen. But right and wrong refer to each in its place. But not only is the fear of God a motive, which maintains their authority in the heart, but if I leave God out, what has instituted them and given them their authority is wanting. Each stone has its own place in the arch, but if the keystone be wanting, none can keep theirs. Besides, the fear of God is the setting aside of will. How much that works in reference to constituted natural authority, or even mutual obligation, is evident. I cannot even know physical things fully without the fear of God; because causation necessarily comes in. How the fear of God, He being the Creator, effects that is too evident to dwell upon. The chief theory of antiquity, almost universal, (practically, we may say, universal), was, that there was and could be no creation. The only modification, as far as I know, was the production by an unknown monad of a good and an evil cause—the Bactrian and Persian faith, Zoroastrianism. Others got out of the difficulty by emanations. It was impossible for the supreme God, the monad, to have to say to matter: aeons with some, the logos, demons, something like Zoroastrian Feroers; and the logos, with Platonists, were resorted to by others to solve the difficulty for millions. The monad was alone, and while asleep nothing else was; if he woke, creatures appeared, but it was all maya, illusion; when he went to sleep, they disappeared again. The true philosophy was to find it out, have done with creation, and be absorbed into universal spirit or into the one divine spirit. Modifications there might be; for hundreds of millions thought and think matter eternal, and that true philosophy, or true knowledge, is getting delivered from matter and gaining nirvana, that is, being extinguished as a lamp goes out. Is this knowledge? Spirit is far more real than matter. But God was not known nor feared—gods were, perhaps, consequently, but not God; and gods were temporary creatures, like men, and more so, and knowledge there was none. Deliverance was in knowledge—that all things were nothing. Some would make a Buddha above God, some absorb a man into God; all the rest perished or disappeared, for there was nothing really to perish. Is there nothing like this now, when there is not the fear of God? Nothing in the modern doctrine of development of species, which would tell us that all comes from a scarcely traceable worm which has left its mark upon some lower Siberian or Cambrian rock, or its analogous fellow in some more recent system, or a polypus, or a graptolithe; the apparent ancestor of man being a penguin or an ape, for that is seriously the infidel system of some—opposed, indeed, by others equally infidel, by some other speculation, in which definite and permanent species are recognized?
Is this knowledge? No. The reasoning on facts, even without God, even in that which is the legitimate sphere of experimental science, is only the leaving man to the wandering of his own mind, who never will, and never can, know creation without knowing a Creator; that is, without that faith which believes that the worlds were framed by the word of God, and that the things which are seen were not made of the things which do appear. When we turn to moral things and intellectual philosophy, it is evident there can be no knowledge without the fear of God; for then I enter on the sphere of relationships and obligations; and how can I be right, when I leave out the first and principal one? I cannot think of mind and find it sufficient for itself within itself. In point of fact, it has aspirations, and longings, and thoughts of a being above us, power out of our reach, goodness, good and evil—of an end of our being, which is not apparent. If mind cannot suffice for itself, is it to turn to what is below it and exercise merely its powers? If above, what is God what are my relationships with Him? where do they end, how begin? Will they end? I must know God to be at rest. God must have His place. Now, putting God in His true place—that is the fear of God—is the true beginning of all knowledge.
There is here a modification of this. It is the fear of the Lord; that is, it was a known relationship which man had with God, and it is living in that relationship as so known, e.g., putting Him in mind and conscience in His true place as in that revealed relationship. Inconsiderate persons, running wildly after their own will, despise wisdom and instruction, the experience and judgment of mature, experienced mind, or the warning and discipline which may apply to what is not such. But there is a subordinate principle to the fear of the Lord—subjection in these relationships in which He has established authority in the first instance, and immediately over the movements of man's nature: that is, the father and the mother. God has established this as the first and original bond of authority; will is in subjection and honor, obligation, respect, come in. The parent is the source of the path of the child in contrast with his own will. It is not a law to meet and break his will (if he be not willful), but to instruct, form, guide, but with authority; yet as honored by the child and respected, as holding God's place, and with affections which produce willingness instead of will; still it is authority. Here we have, therefore, instruction, guidance by warning, discipline, and even by chastisement (παιδεια). So he is not to forsake the precepts and admonitions of his mother, those early influences which first bend the mind to good. This is a deeply important principle. It is not like marriage first instituted of all. It begins with authority, but authority in relationship of love, the source that forms and fashions as well as controls the character, the name that God takes in highest grace towards us; not a lawgiver, but an authority, but whose word is law, where it is a question between that and our own will.
This closes the positive side or development of good by which the proverbs are introduced. The evil side is next considered. “My son, if sinners entice thee consent thou not.” Evil is in the world, deceit, and motives for sin. That which is first put forward here is the desire of wealth, and wrong and violence to obtain it. Corruption and violence are the two characters of sin and fruits of will in a fallen world. Here man is not treated as lost and sinful in his nature; he is under influences, he is of and in this world; he is in the world, but there is a way of wisdom in it. The first influences are supposed to be the true healthy ones of father and mother, and the fear of Jehovah. “Train up a child in the way that it should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it,” is its language; and as we may every day see the young growing up and getting out of the influences and shelter of the home of their youth—as of the corrupt woman it is said, the guide of her youth—so they are looked at here. It is not the light of the gospel on man's nature and state, but the path of man as brought up in this world—what is the way of wisdom in it. Hence, after the influence of father and mother, we read of sinners enticing. We are reading of influences for good and evil in the world in which we are; the way of wisdom and folly in it. And he begins with the son as under the healthful and divinely ordered influence of the father. Violence is first treated of, induced by the lust of prosperity in this world; but laying wait for blood thus, is laying wait for one's own soul. With this warning and knowing this, the net is laid in the sight of the bird. That is the effect of true instruction. This leads to the warning itself, the display of the net, for all to hear.
Wisdom speaks with the authority of God and aloud, “she uttereth her voice in the streets.” This is an important principle as regards the results of sin. We have seen the parental care of the young to preserve from evil, but in the ways of God there is another testimony—the public warning and call to sinners which wisdom sends forth amongst them. “Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the street” —in the concourse of men, to the simple and to the scorner, the guilty yet misled ones, and the open and insulting adversary, and calls them to turn at her reproof, and proposes to bring forth to them, and lead them into, the full outpouring of the Spirit's teaching and the words of God. It is not here pouring out the Holy Ghost on them: that is quite another thing; but the Spirit of wisdom was there for them, and the words of wisdom to teach and build them up. The expression is remarkable. You have the Spirit and the word, though the former in the sense of its utterances of truth for blessing, poured forth to them. You have the Lord's complaints in Luke 7, where yet wisdom in all her ways is justified of all her children. But it is in vain. Hence, when in the day of desolation and judgment, they will call, but there is no answer. They may fear the judgment, but there was no love to, no submission to, the truth; they will eat the fruit of their own ways. The ease and prosperity and carelessness they have been in will be their ruin. The passage does not go beyond judgment (but God's final judgment) in this world, and that their peace would be the portion of those who hearkened to wisdom. Nor, be it further remarked, is there any reference to grace or its power in renewing or quickening. It is man in this world dealt with in his responsibility.
The next chapter takes us farther. It takes the ground of the son, the subject and obedient soul receiving the words of counsel, and hiding, keeping up within himself the commandments ministered to him, so that he inclines his ear to wisdom, and the heart applies itself to understanding. If more, if she is sought for as invaluable, and searched out as hid treasure, and avowedly and professedly sought after, the result is the apprehending the fear of Jehovah, and arriving at the knowledge of God. Here, therefore, it is not a call to men which we have, but the heart itself seeking for true wisdom as its portion and treasure, and thus the intelligence of relationship with Jehovah and the knowledge of God are obtained. “For Jehovah gives wisdom.” It is not merely that I by man's understanding get wiser, but Jehovah gives true wisdom. It is what He has said, His word, which gives true knowledge and understanding, and he who seeks it will get it. But there is more. He has laid up treasures of wisdom, His own counsels, for the righteous. And surely there are in His word treasures of wisdom and knowledge laid up for those who walk uprightly. Besides, He is their shield, and protects them in their walk. He watches over His own way, it is a divinely-protected way: the paths of judgment, when men walk in God's fear, are kept and protected by Him; and He preserves the way of His saints, for God's way and their way are the same, as Moses said: “Show me now thy way,” and Jehovah was to go with him. This is a great blessing. It may be a wilderness, in which there is no way, but we have God's way in it, and marked by His own presence. “When he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them.” His word is, Follow me. “If any man serve me, let him follow me.” And then as Moses saw that thus he would practically find grace in God's sight; so here, “then thou shalt understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity,” or rather, uprightness, every good path. Walking uprightly (ver. 7) is consistently with, and in faith of what we know of God (Tohm). What is said of Abraham and of Israel? “Be thou perfect.” Here it is uprightness properly speaking. Walking in God's path before Him, there is the spiritual and growing discernment of what is good and what is upright. This is the positive side, but there is besides this the way in which it guards from evil.
When wisdom enters into the heart, when it forms thus the spirit and mind, and the desires are formed after it, so that it lives in what is good, and it finds this divine knowledge pleasant to the soul, it becomes a discretion which preserves from the evil which is around, and the snares laid for us, keeps watch over us, and discernment shall watch thee, keep thee, as one who watches and keeps, as was said before, the path. That from which they are kept is twofold here: the wickedness of men and corruption.
There is no question of going to join in violence to gain wealth, nor is that, from which we should be kept, the wrong done to us by evil men, but the wisdom and sense of what is right, which the fear of God leads to, keeps us from being led into the path of the wicked man. Wickedness is deceitful; we are apt to get hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. We have need to walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise—wise concerning that which is good. Restraint of heart which walks in the fear of God, lowliness, for it is the opposite of pride, is guided in judgment and sees God's way in the seemingly bewildered concourse of men and circumstances. It has its own way, and has only to follow it; only it depends on God for it. It is the way of the evil man from which the soul is kept here. The servants of Jehovah are supposed to have a path of uprightness, to a certain degree; so has natural conscience. The evil man has left it.
The other character of evil, from which the discretion of wisdom preserves us, is “the strange woman,” the snares and attractions of corruption. These are the two forms of evil, wickedness, and even violence and wrong, that is, leaving the law and seeking to satisfy one's lusts by violence and corruption. So even before the flood; so on to the last days, when the beast and the false prophet represent these two principles. “The strange woman” departed from both the principles we have seen: the fear of God according to the revelation He had given of Himself, and the ministration of care which gave authority over the early thoughts and a place thereby in holy affections and subjection, “Which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God.” All are supposed here to have had to say to God, in known relationship, and to be brought up in His ways—to be in the covenant of God's people. Nature and grace, as I have said, are not contemplated, but the ways of a people under covenant and law. The ways of “the strange woman” are death. The language is stronger here than with robbers before, or wicked men just above; they are bad enough, but the way to “the strange woman” is the way of death. It is corrupting, destructive of heart as well as conscience. True affections disappear and are turned into lusts; self-will seeks full gratification where there is not affection at all, instead of another being an object whom we love and esteem, whatever the relationship. It is self in its lowest and most absolute form. All through into Babylon, its last form, “the strange woman” has the judgment of God against her, and the ruin of man written on her forehead for those who can read it.