Verse 17. These men are plotting with their eyes wide open. The verse teaches the great doctrine of deliberateness to ruin. Men go to hell when they expect it; at least, they go when it is a trap to them, of which they know the setting. They go open-eyed on into the gin.—Miller.
The great net of God’s judgments is spread out, open to the eyes of all, and yet evil-doers, wilfully blind, still rush into it.—Plumptre.
Verse 18. These couriers of hell, who carry the despatches of the devil, cannot run faster to the hurt of others than they do to their own mischief; they cannot make more haste to shed the blood of others than they do to shed their own blood.—Jermin.
Verse 19. These “ways” are certainly some of the worst. The persons described are of the baser sort; the crimes enumerated are gross and rank. Yet when these apples of Sodom are traced to their sustaining root, it turns out to be greed of gain. The love of money can bear all these. When this greed is generated, like a thirst in the soul, it imperiously demands satisfaction wherever it can most readily be found. In some countries of the world it still retains the old-fashioned iniquity which Solomon has described. In our country, though the same passion domineer in a man’s heart, it will not adopt the same method, because it has cunning enough to know that it will not succeed. Dishonesty is diluted, and coloured, and moulded, to suit the taste of the times. But the ancient and modern evil-doers are reckoned brethren in iniquity, despite the difference in the costume of their crimes. . . . This greed, when full-grown, is coarse and cruel. It has no bowels. It marches right to its mark, trading on everything that lies in the way. If necessary “it taketh away the life of the owners thereof.” Covetousness is idolatry. The idol delights in blood. He demands and gets a hecatomb of human sacrifices.—Arnot.
Midas, the Phrygian king, asked a favour of the gods, and they agreed to grant him whatever he should desire. The monarch, overjoyed, resolved to make the favour inexhaustible. He prayed that whatever he touched might be turned to gold. The prayer was granted, and bitter were the consequences. What the king touched did turn to gold. He laid his hand upon the rock and it became a huge mass of priceless value; he clutched his oaken staff, and it became in his hand a bar of virgin gold. At first the monarch’s joy was unbounded, and he returned to his palace the most favoured of mortals. Alas for the shortsightedness of man! He sat at table, and all he touched turned to gold—pure solid gold. The conviction rushed upon him that he must perish from his grasping wish—die in the midst of plenty; and remembering the ominous saying he had heard, “The gods themselves cannot take back their gifts,” he howled to the sternly smiling Dionysius to restore him to the coarsest, vilest food, and deliver him from the curse of gold.—Biblical Treasury.
main homiletics of the paragraph.—Verses 20–33.
The Cry of Wisdom.
I. The wisdom of God is the voice of God. 1. The wisdom of God in nature, in the heavens which declare His glory and in the firmament which sheweth His handiwork is Divine speech which speaks loudly of eternal power and Godhead. 2. There is a voice of wisdom in the laws and economy of the old dispensation, although that voice gave sometimes but an indistinct sound concerning Divine mercy and judgment. 3. The wisdom of God as displayed in the plan of salvation by Christ is the loudest, the most persuasive and unmistakable voice of God.
II. God’s voice of Wisdom is an earnest voice. Wisdom crieth. The voice of the mother who thinks that her children are in danger rings upon the ear with no uncertain, theatrical sound. When the voice of Paul rang through the Philippian prison and fell upon the man who was about to destroy himself, it was a loud voice, because he was in earnest. God has to deal with his human children who are in danger, and therefore He speaks with earnestness when He says, “Do thyself no harm.” The voice of God in the human conscience sometimes speaks as loudly as the trump of Sinai. He said by His prophets in the days of old, “Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways, for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” (Ezek. xxxiii. 11). The voice of Christ was an earnest voice. His death enforced the earnestness of the appeals which He uttered in His life. It proved the reality of His own and His Father’s desire that “all should come to repentance.” The voice of the Gospel ministry is an earnest voice. Those who have been baptised by the Spirit of God, beseech men to be reconciled to God (2 Cor. v. 20).
III. God’s voice of wisdom has been uttered where men could hear it. Wisdom uttereth her voice “in the streets,” “in the chief places of concourse,” “in the gates.” The merchant brings his silks and diamonds to the crowded cities, because in them he is most likely to find purchasers. The vendors of goods seek the broad thoroughfares, because there they find streams of human beings to whom they offer their wares. God has observed this method in offering His Divine wisdom to the sons of men. The highest wisdom of God—the Gospel—was first proclaimed in the city of Jerusalem, at a time when there were gathered there men “out of every nation under heaven” (Acts ii. 5). The apostles of Christ preached in the chief cities of the civilised world, in Corinth, Athens, Antioch, Ephesus, and Rome. And now the voice of wisdom cried in the principal centres of the population of the world. The fishermen spread their nets where most fish congregate, and the fishers of men are attracted to the places where most human souls are gathered.