We cannot promulgate as doctrine, but we think the last day will show that wisdom plied every art; that what was, “all things working together for good” in behalf of the believer, was something analogous in tendency in the instance of the sinner; that if the sinner thought his lot defeated repentance, he was mistaken; or that, could he have fared otherwise, his chances would have been improved: all this was largely error; moreover, that he will be held accountable at last for quite the opposite, and punished for a life singularly favoured and frequently adapted as the very best to lead him to salvation.—Miller.
In her ministers, who are criers by office, and must be earnest (Isa. lviii. 1). See an instance in holy Bradford. “I beseech you,” saith he, “I pray you with hand, pen, tongue, and mind, in Christ, through Christ, for Christ, for His name, blood, mercy, power, and truth’s sake, my most entirely beloved that you admit no doubting of God’s final mercies towards you.” Here was a lusty crier indeed.—Trapp.
This form of interrogation, which expects as its answer an assenting and emphatic “yes, truly,” points to the fact clearly brought to view in all that has preceded, that Wisdom bears an unceasing witness in her own behalf in the life of men.—Zöckler.
Verse 2. “Standeth” implies assiduous perseverance. Instead of taking her stand in dark places, in a corner, like the harlot (chap. vii. 9), she “standeth” in the top of high places.—Fausset.
Wisdom is representing as haunting all human paths. Folly lives upon them, too. Wisdom does not claim them as her own; Folly does. Wisdom has but one path. And she haunts every other to turn men out of such diverse journeyings into the one great track of holiness and truth.—Miller.
Verse 3. Thereby intending (1) to reach the whole concourse of the lost, and (2) to make human life at these great rallying places of men, speak its own lessons, and utter the loudest warnings against the soul’s impenitence.—Miller.
main homiletics of the paragraph.—Verses 4–9.
God’s Speech Meeting Man’s Need.
I. Divine Wisdom has spoken because God’s silence would be human death. When a man is lying in prison awaiting the execution of the extreme penalty of the law, after he has petitioned the monarch for a reprieve, the silence of the monarch is a permission that the sentence is to be carried out. His silence is a death-knell to the criminal who has asked for pardon. It is an anticipation of the steel of the executioner, of the rope of the hangman. He longs for the word that would bring pardon. There is death in the silence. In the history of men’s lives there are many other instances when the silence of those whom they desire to speak embitters their life. There are many who keep silence whose speech would fall upon the heart of those who long for it, as the dew and gentle rain falls upon the parched earth. A word or a letter would be like a new lease of life, but the silence brings a sorrow which is akin to death, which perchance is the death of all that makes life to be desired. A parent who has no word from his absent son goes down in sorrow to the grave. Jacob was thus going down mourning when the words of Joseph reached him. Then “his spirit revived” (Gen. xlv. 27), and the aged, sorrowful patriarch renewed his youth. The life of man—all that is worth calling life—depends upon God’s breaking the silence between earth and heaven. His silence is that which is most dreaded by those who have heard His voice. Hence their prayer is, “Be not silent unto me; let, if Thou be silent unto me, I become like them that go down into the pit” (Psa. xxviii. 1). If a man had been left without any communication from God, he must have remained spiritually dead throughout his term of probation. For he is by nature what is called in Scripture, “carnally-minded,” which “is death” (Rom. viii. 5). Every man, if left to himself, forms habits of thinking and of acting that cause him “to be tied and bound with the chain of his sins.” And if God had not spoken he must have remained in this condition, which is spiritual death. Therefore, God has broken this silence with an “Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead” (Ephes. v. 14). The nations were walking in the darkness and the shadow of death when the “light shined” upon them (Luke i. 79), in the person of Him who is the Word and the Wisdom of God, who, Himself, declared “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life;” “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John vi. 63, x. 10).
II. Human nature needs the voice of Divine Wisdom because the soul cannot rest upon uncertainties (verses 6–8). If a man is in the dark upon any subject, he is in a condition of unrest; there is a desire within him to rise from the state of probability to one of certainty. If a boy works a sum and does not know how to prove that it is right, he does not feel that satisfaction at having completed his task that he would do if he could demonstrate that the answer was correct. After all his labour he has only arrived at a may-be. So the result of all efforts of man’s unaided reasonings concerning himself and his destiny was but a sum unproved. There was no certainty after ages of labourious conjecture. There might be a future life and immortality, but it could not be positively affirmed. Although the sum might be right there was a possibility that it was wrong. The world by wisdom arrived at no certain conclusions in relation to the Divine character and the chief end of man, and uttered but an uncertain sound on the life beyond the grave. “How can man be just with God?” “If a man die shall he live again?” were never fully and triumphantly answered until the Incarnate Word stood by His own empty grave and said, “I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God” (John xx. 17). He brought “rest” to the weary and heavy laden (Matt. xi. 28), because His words were truth, and plainness, and certainty (see verses 6–8); before they had been only error, or obscurity, or conjecture.