A Double Keeping.
I. A keeping of the Divine commandments. What is it to “keep the commandments?” Dr. Miller translates this verb to guard or watch. Taken in this sense therefore the proverb implies that there is need—1. To lay up God’s law in our hearts. It is to be our constant aim to know the will of God—the words which He has spoken, the commands which He has given, are to be constantly kept in remembrance and made the principal subject of our thoughts. We are to tread in the footsteps of the man described in the first Psalm, whose “delight is in the law of the Lord” and who “meditates” upon it “day and night.” But the word as it is commonly understood implies—2. To translate God’s law into life. It is one thing to know the will of God, it is another thing to do it. Knowledge must come before obedience, but knowledge alone will not save the soul from death.
II. A keeping of the human soul. There is but one way to guard the human soul from the dangers to which it is exposed, and that is by complying with the demands of the God who can alone give spiritual life. He commands us to yield ourselves unreservedly to His guidance, to accept His method of being made right in relation to His law, to fight against the evil tendencies of our fallen nature, and to seek His help to overcome them. In doing this He has promised that we shall find that emancipation from the bondage of sin, that awakening of spiritual faculties, and that sense of His favour which alone is the life of the soul. We have before dwelt upon proverbs which embody truths similar to those contained in this verse. (See on chap. [xi. 3], page 195; chap. [x. 8], page 151; chap. [xiii. 6], [13], [14], pages 299, 312, 313; chap. [xvi. 17], page 479.)
outlines and suggestive comments.
Keep means to retain. Guard means to watch. The root of the present word means to bristle, then to watch close, either from the bristling of spears, or from a sharp stave. There is a philosophy in these words, . . . viz., that conscience is vagrant. We have to watch. Like the mind itself, it is hard to hold it to the point. Attention is our whole voluntary work. And, to a most amazing degree, the Scriptures are framed upon this idea. We are to remember now our Creator (Eccles. xii. 1). We are to remember the Sabbath day (Exod. xx. 8). We are to “observe to do,” etc. (this very word guard.) See Deut. v. 1, 32, et passim. “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed (this same word guarding) thereto according to Thy Word” (Psa. cxix. 9). “Guards himself” (the same word). (See [Critical Notes].) This is an iron link of sequence which no Anti-Calvinistic thought can shake. He who stands sentry over the “commandment” stands sentry over himself; literally “his soul.” There is no helplessness in man other than that tardema, or deep sleep (ver. 15) which “sloth” wilfully casts him into, and which a voluntary slothfulness perpetually increases and maintains. “The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are aliens.” The proverb advances upon this in the second clause. What more voluntary than a man’s “way?” It has a voluntary goal, it has a daily journeying, and it includes all that is voluntary. Seize a man at any moment. All that he is upon is part of his life’s travel. Now, a Christian has but one way. So far forth as he is a Christian, he has but one end, and one path for reaching it. There is a beautiful unitariness in his journeying. It is a habit of Scripture to turn attention to the scattered life of the lost. They have no one end. “If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light,” says the Saviour (Matt. vi. 23). Thou “hast scattered thy ways to the strangers,” says Jeremiah (iii. 13); this same expression. “Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way” (Jer. ii. 36). Despiseth (English version) suits the lexicon and suits the sense, for certainly the lost man has less respect for his way and life than the pardoned believer; but “scattering” is equally legitimate and common; more strengthened by analogy, and more in keeping with the first clause, where the verb to guard stands more opposed to vagrant and distraught ideas. “Dies;” see Job v. 2. Corruption is seated in the soul, but not out of reach by any means. A man can increase it. What we do outside kills inwardly. A man’s counting-house might seem to have little to do with the state of his soul, but it is shaping it all the time. If he scatters his ways he is killing his soul, and what we are to remark is, that there is an ipso actu condition of the effect (as in chap. xi. 19) which is expressed in the Hebrew. The vagrancy of a morning’s worldliness is that much more death, as punctually administered as any of the chemistries of nature. The form is participial. It is “in scattering,” or “as scattering,” his ways that “he dies.”—Miller.
main homiletics of verse 17.
The Best Investment.
I. A God-like disposition. To “pity the poor” and to show that we do so by ministering to their necessities (for this is implied in the proverb) is to be like God. We have before seen how He identifies Himself with them, and how severe is the condemnation which He passes upon those who wrong them. (See Homiletics and Comments upon chap. [xiv. 31], page 390, and upon chap. [xvii. 5], page 504.) God is a Being of compassion—the Gospel of salvation is a testimony to the pitifulness of His nature. He has remembered man in his low estate and in his condition of spiritual poverty, and out of the “riches of His grace” (Ephes. i. 7) He has supplied his need. But he has not only an eye for the spiritual necessities of His creatures, but for those also which belong exclusively to their bodily nature. God manifest in flesh had compassion upon the multitude because “they had nothing to eat” (Matt. xv. 32), and the same pitiful heart is still moved with a like emotion when He looks into the haunts of poverty and sees men and women and little children without the necessaries of life, or toiling hard and long for a pittance that is only just enough to keep them from starvation. The man therefore who “has pity on the poor” manifests a disposition akin to that of his Father in heaven.
II. A most reliable debtor. God incarnate fed the hungry by miracle, but now that He has left the earth for a season He entrusts the duty to human hands. He does not now rain down bread from heaven to feed even his spiritual Israel, but He expects those of His children to whom He has given more than enough of this world’s good things to do it for Him, and looks upon the act as a loan to Himself. 1. That the investment will be a profitable one is certain, from the character of God. When men entrust others with their money, they have especial regard to the character of those whom they make their debtor. This forms the chief and most reliable security that a man can have that he will receive it again. God’s character is pre-eminently good—so good that His Word is more than the bond of the most trustworthy human creature, and none in heaven or earth or hell will ever be able to say that He has not paid them what was their due. 2. The wealth of God is a guarantee that He will repay with interest. A man who is generous by nature, and possessed of abundant means, will not only faithfully repay a loan but, if his debtor is a needy man, will feel a pleasure in adding to it a large interest, or will press him to accept some extra token of his esteem. God is a great and bountiful proprietor of all the resources of the universe, whether spiritual or material, and He loves to give abundantly. He has been always giving out of His fulness since there has been a creature upon whom to lavish His gifts, and He delights to see His children give, like Himself, generously and ungrudgingly. And, seeing he takes upon Himself to repay what is given to the poor, His generosity and His wealth are sureties that the interest for the loan will be very ample. His children may have to wait long for it, but the longer they wait the greater the accumulation of interest. They may receive a partial repayment in material good, but the great recompense will be at the “resurrection of the just” (Luke xiv. 14) on that day when the King shall say unto them, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was an hungered and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger and ye took me in; naked and ye clothed me” (Matt. xxv. 34, 36).
outlines and suggestive comments.