Although Solomon repeats himself, he always advances upon the thought. There is always some characteristic novelty: and that novelty is the hinge of the purpose, and imbeds its meaning in the life of the passage. Here it is the function of the heart. It circulates life. Give it good blood, and it will throw off disease; give it bad blood, and it will produce disease. Give it health enough, and it will throw off incipient mortification; give it no health, and it will produce mortification. Solomon weaves this into experimental godliness. . . . Guard the great central guard-post, and no out-station will be cut off. If it be, for a time, the heart will win it again.—Miller.
Verse 24. While we speak, we should never forget that God is one of the listeners. . . . Take the principle of Hagar’s simple and sublime confession, accommodated in thought to the case at hand “Thou, God, hearest me.” If our words were all poured through that strainer, how much purer and fewer they would be.—Arnot.
It is true that vigilance over the heart is vigilance over the tongue, inasmuch as out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. . . . There is no surer index of the state of the “inner man.” As is the conversation, so is the heart.—Wardlaw.
While a fire is confined to one man’s house, even if it burns that house to its foundation, all other dwellings are unharmed; but when it lays hold of surrounding buildings, all the city is endangered. When an evil thought is confined to a man’s own spirit, kept within the limits of thinking or desiring, though it may char his own soul with the blackness of perdition, the evil ends with himself. But when he allows his thought to become words, he kindles a fire outside himself which may go on burning even after he has forgotten it himself.
Verse 25. Let them be fixed upon right objects. . . . Be well skilled in Moses’ optics (Heb. xi. 27). Do as mariners do that have their eye on the star, their hand on the stern. A man may not look intently upon that he may not love.—Trapp.
Like one ploughing, who must not look back.—Cartwright.
Had Eve done so she would have looked at the command of God, not at the forbidden tree. Had Lot’s wife looked straight before her instead of behind her, she would, like her husband, have been a monument of mercy. . . . In asking the way to Zion, be sure that your faces are thitherward (Jer. i. 5). The pleasures of sin and the seductions of the world do not lie in the road. They belong to the bye-paths. They would not, therefore, meet the eye looking right on.—Bridges.
Verse 26. Lift not up one foot till you find firm footing for another, as those in Psa. xxxv. 6. The way of this world is like the vale of Siddim, slimy and slippery.—Trapp.
The habit of calm and serious thinking makes the difference between one man and another.—Dr. Abercrombie.
The feet of the soul are generally understood to be the affections. And surely we have need to ponder the path of them before we give away to them. St. Bernard maketh the two feet to be nature and custom, for, indeed, by them we are much carried, and great need we have to ponder the path of them, so that they do not lead us amiss.—Jermin.