A man, being wicked, how shall he expect anything, except that he shall be disturbed? While the saint, though “shaken” in leaf and bough, and storm-tossed, and, perhaps, broken in his branches, yet “shall not be shaken” in his “root.”—Miller.
Ahab strove to establish himself in despite of the threatened curse of God. He increased his family, trained them with care under the tutelage of his choicest nobility. And surely one, at least, out of seventy, might remain to inherit his throne. But this was the vain “striving” of the worm “with his Maker.” One hour swept them all away (1 Kings xxi. 21, with 2 Kings x. 1–7). The device of Caiaphas, also to establish his nation by wickedness, was the means of its overthrow (John xi. 49, 50, with Matt. xxi. 43, 44).—Bridges.
A man shall not be established by wickedness, for he lays his foundation upon firework, and brimstone is scattered upon his housetop: if the fire of God from heaven but flash upon it, it will all be aflame immediately. He walks all day upon a mine of gunpowder; and hath God with His armies ready to run upon the thickest bosses of his buckler, and to hurl him to hell. How can this man be sure of anything? Cain built cities, but could not rest in them; Ahab begat seventy sons, but not one successor to the kingdom. Sin hath no settledness. But the righteous, though shaken with winds, are rooted as trees; like a ship at anchor, they wag up and down, yet remove not.—Trapp.
We shall lose our labour in seeking any sinful helps. We shall but make quicksand our foundation, and mud our stonework, and stubble and reeds our strongest timber. It is time for us to pull down our own ruinous building, lest it should fall upon our heads. For though it be so slight, and as weak as a cobweb, to be a cover over us, yet it is very heavy, and as weighty as a mountain to press us under it.—Dod.
Many are established in wickedness, and cannot be removed from it, but none shall ever be established by it.—Jermin.
main homiletics of verse 4.
A Husband’s Crown.
I. A woman possessed of a quality which time will not destroy or impair. Virtue is not a mere negative good—it is not simply an absence of evil. A virtuous person is one who has overcome evil—one who is prevented from being a worker of evil by being a worker of good. Virtue is a thing of growth—human nature has to struggle to acquire moral excellence—to attain that strength of goodness which we call virtue. It has its seat in the regenerated heart. The river that is always flowing with pure, living water, is not fed from a cistern, but from a living spring which is in communication with the parent of waters. So virtue is not a native of this fallen world—it is of celestial birth—it is derived from the source of all goodness and consequently partakes of the indestructibility of all eternal things. There is no annihilation of virtue. Stabbing cannot kill it. Burning cannot destroy it. It will break the bonds of calumny and rise from the dead. Virtue adorns either sex, but it is especially attractive in a woman. It is her crown, and because she is so crowned, she crowns her husband.
II. Man needs such a woman to complete, or crown his life. Even the first man in his sinless condition, with all the peculiar joys springing from his sinless nature, felt his existence incomplete until God gave him the woman as the filling up—the crown and finish of his life. But this woman was crowned herself with innocence and purity or she could not have crowned her husband. If man in his sinless condition needed a wife to complete his life, how much more does he need now a virtuous woman to be a helpmeet for him. 1. He needs her because he needs help from virtue outside himself. The most perfect of imperfect men must lean upon some human support, and they will consciously or unconsciously do so. A man who has a virtuous wife has ever about him an atmosphere which is strengthening to his own virtue. She will help him to preserve his integrity more effectually than any other person because she is so constantly about his path. She will give him that moral sympathy which is so helpful to men struggling to keep a good conscience in an evil world, which is like oil to the wheels of life, and makes what would otherwise be very difficult easy and pleasant. 2. He needs an intellectual companion. He must have a rational and intelligent spirit in his home if his life is to be what God intended it to be—one with whom he can converse and to whom he can impart his thoughts on things human and divine. He cannot be crowned, in the full sense of the word, unless he has such a wife, and the word virtue may embrace intellectual vigour as well as moral excellence. (See [Comments] on the verse.) When a man has such a wife as we have described his life is completed or crowned. The word among the Hebrews was also symbolic of joy and gladness (Cant. vi. 11), and such a woman is of necessity a joy to her husband.
III. The man who would be thus crowned must be wise in his choice of a wife. The most precious things are not generally to be obtained without some amount of seeking. Pebbles can be gathered upon any shore, but diamonds are only to be had for patient seeking. Pinchbeck ornaments are to be had for a trifle, but a golden diadem costs much money. There are plenty of women who may be won without much seeking, but a wife who is virtuous in the sense of the text is not to be met with every day or in every place. To find such an one he must ask counsel of Him who provided the first man with the woman who supplied his need in this respect. Though we have no record that Adam asked God for a helpmeet for him, yet we do not know that he did not. This we do know, that God’s best gifts, as a rule, are only had for asking. And when we reflect upon the terrible blight that an ungodly, unsympathetic, incapable wife is to a man, causing him such shame as is “rottenness to his bones,” we can fully see the need of seeking Divine guidance in forming a relationship which has so much to do with “making” or “marring” a man.