We must not only learn wisdom, but keep it in our eyes, that it may be a light to our feet; for a man that has wisdom in his mind, and forgets to use it, is like one that has money in his chest, but forgets to carry some of it with him when he is going a long journey, to bear his necessary expenses. He will be at a great loss, on many occasions, that has money in his house, but none in his pocket.—Lawson.
“But the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth.” He has no fixed and steady principle or rule; nothing on which he fixes his eye for his guidance. His thoughts are incessantly wandering after matters he has nothing to do with,—anything and everything but that which he should at the time be minding;—roving after every vanity, and keeping steadily no pursuit. It is specially true of “things pertaining to salvation.” Wisdom, in this matter above all others, is “before him that hath understanding.” He looks to one point. He sees one thing to be needful. He sees the wisdom of God providing for it. There he fixes. And this is wisdom. It is ever before him. One end—one means. Whereas “the fool’s eyes are in the ends of the earth.” He has examined nothing. He roves at random, with no determinate ideas about the most interesting, by infinite degrees, of all concerns. Ask him how he hopes to be saved, and you immediately discover his thoughtless unsettledness. He is “in the ends of the earth.” His answer is to seek. It is here, it is there, it is nowhere. He hesitates, he supposes, he guesses, he is at a stand—he cannot tell. . . . There is another character that may here be meant, namely, the schemer, the visionary projector. The truly intelligent man applies the plain and obvious dictates of common sense to the attainment of his end; but the scheming visionary fool is ever after out-of-the-way plans, new and far-fetched expedients.—Wardlaw.
Wisdom is full in the sight of the man of understanding, he beholdeth the beauty and perfection of it, he looketh into the worth and happiness of it. He sets it before him as a pattern, by which he frameth and ordereth all his ways, all his doings. His eye is never from it. It is the glass by which he espieth out the blemishes and defects of his life, and if he see in it a true resemblance of himself, it is not the glass that must be said to be true for that cannot be false, but it is himself that is a man of true worth; the glass approving his goodness, not he the goodness of the glass. But a fool beholds wisdom as a thing afar from him; he discerneth not what it is, nor what is the glory and excellency of it: he perceiveth nothing whereby either to take direction from it, or liking to it. He thinketh that he must go to the ends of the earth to get it, and if ever, it is in the end of his life, that he hath any sight of it. . . . Or else we may understand the latter part of the verse thus: That a fool’s eyes are in the ends of the earth, because in any trouble or distress he looketh all up and down the earth, from one end of it to the other for help and succour, and in the end as a fool remaineth helpless. But wisdom is before him that hath understanding, and stopping his eyes from looking too much that way, turneth them and directeth them up to heaven, where help ought to be sought and is sure to be found.—Jermin.
Verse 25 is a repetition of the thought in verse 21. For Homiletics and Comments see on chap. [x. 1].
main homiletics of verse 26.
Smiting the Just.
This verse has been variously rendered and explained. (See [Critical Notes] and the comments of different expositors.) It suggests, however—
I. That punishment in itself is sometimes necessary and desirable. When the laws of the family are wise and good, it is a great misfortune for the children, and a great sin against them, not to visit their transgressions with a suitable punishment. And it is absolutely essential to the existence of a well-ordered state, that there should be punishment for those who rebel against righteous laws. Civil rule is of Divine ordination—“the powers that be are ordained of God” (Rom. xiii. 1). When, therefore, there is no just cause for civil rebellion, it is a sin not only against the state but against the Ruler of all the kingdoms of the earth, to break the established laws. Punishment forms a necessary part of the government of the universe. God has, both by example and precept, shown its necessity. When there was rebellion in heaven against a perfect government, punishment followed, which was proportioned to the greatness of the transgression—the sentence passed upon the first rebel in the universe and upon those who were confederate with him was a terrible one, but it was only commensurate to the exceeding magnitude of the offence. If rebellion against a government had been allowed to go unpunished, it would have made way for universal anarchy. And a community of any kind without punishment for transgressors, is lacking in a most essential element of its peace and stability.
II. But those whose moral character fits them to be the awarders of punishment are often the victims of it. The natural and right order of things in this respect is often exactly the reverse of what it ought to be, and just and noble men are treated as transgressors and suffer the punishment which ought to fall upon their persecutors. Might is very far from being right in this world, and even in this country Richard Baxter stood at the bar while Judge Jeffries sat upon the bench. The apostles of the Lord suffered scourging at the hands of the council at Jerusalem (Acts v. 40); Paul was condemned to death by Nero, and Incarnate Righteousness was crucified between two thieves at the instigation of some of the worst men that the world has ever seen. In all these cases, and in ten thousand others, the just were smitten, and as a rule they have suffered, not merely although they were righteous, but because they were so—it was their integrity that aroused the enmity of their persecutors—these moral “princes” were “stricken for equity.”
III. Such an abuse of power will in its turn be visited with punishment. Those who have thus unjustly condemned the righteous, have found in their own personal experience that “to punish the just is not good”—“not good” for their own peace of mind—not good for their future reputation—not good for the nation who instigated them or permitted them to do the deed. Haman found that it was not good for him to aim a blow at the upright Mordecai when he was himself hanged upon his own gallows; the Persian princes found it was not good to strike a prince for equity when they were themselves cast into the den of lions; Judge Jeffries found it out when he lay face to face with death in the Tower. And among all the nations whose history has confirmed the truth of the text, none stands out so prominently as that one whose king was the author of the proverb. The punishment of the just—the striking of moral princes for equity—was one of the most prominent of their national crimes, and He whose death at their hands filled up the measure of their iniquity, declared that it was the great cause of their national ruin. “Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say if we had been in the days of our fathers we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves that ye are the children of them that killed the prophets. . . . Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and Scribes; and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them ye shall scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city; that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar” (Matt. xxiii. 29–35). The Jewish nation has been for nearly nineteen centuries a witness that “to punish the just is not good, nor to strike princes for equity.”