Seeking wisdom early implies 1. That it engages our first concern and endeavour, while matters of an inferior consideration are postponed. 2. The constant use of the proper means to obtain it. If we see one continually practising any art, we judge that it is his intention to be master of it. 3. The using them with spirt and vigour. The superficial and spiritless performance of duty is as faulty as the total omission.—Abernathy.
All fancy that they love God. But those who either do not seek God at all, or seek Him coldly, whilst they eagerly seek the vanities of the world, make it plain that they are led by the love of the world more than by the love of God.—Fausset.
It is His love to us that makes us to love Him; and, doubtless, He that loves us so as to make us to love Him, cannot but love us when we do love Him.—Jermin.
Seek early, as the Israelites went early in the morning to seek for manna (Exod. xvi. 21), and as students rise early in the morning and sit close to it to get knowledge. To seek the Lord early is to seek the Lord (1) firstly; (2) opportunely. There is a season wherein God may be found (Isa. lv. 6), and if you let this season slip, you may seek and miss Him. (3) Affectionately, earnestly (Isa. xxvi. 6). That prayer that sets the whole man a-work will work wonders in Heaven, in the heart, and in the earth. Earnest prayer, like Saul’s sword and Jonathan’s bow, never returns empty.—Brooks.
Verse 18. Spiritual riches are durable. 1. Because they are gotten without wronging any man. Temporal riches are often gotten by fraud and violence, and, therefore, are not lasting. The parties wronged use all means to recover their own, and God punishes unjust persons. Spiritual riches no man can challenge from us. 2. They are everlasting riches, and therefore durable. That must needs last long which lasts ever. These are true, not transitory riches, which often change their masters. They will swim out of the sea of this world with us, out of the shipwreck of death. Neither fire nor sword can take them from us.—Francis Taylor.
In the matters of rank and riches, the two strong cords by which the ambitious are led, the two reciprocally supporting rails on which the train of ambition ever runs,—even in these matters, that seem the peculiar province of an earthly crown, the Prince of Peace comes forth with long challenge and conspicuous rivalry. Titles of honour! their real glory depends on the height and purity of the foundation whence they flow. They have often been the gift of profligate princes, and the rewards of successful crime. And the best the fountain is low and muddy: the streams, if looked at in the light of day, are tinged and sluggish. Thus saith the Lord, “Honour is with me.” He who saith it is the King of Glory. To be adopted into the family of God,—to be the son or daughter of the Lord Almighty,—this is honour. High born! We are all low-born until we are born again, and then we are the children of a King.—Arnot.
Verse 20. Christ guides infallibly by—1. His Word. It is all truth. 2. His Spirit. Men mistake and think they are guided by God’s Spirit when they are guided by their own, or by a worse spirit. But certainly when Christ’s Spirit guides He guides aright. 3. His example. All other men have their failings, and must be followed no further than they follow Christ. He is the original copy; others are but blurred abstracts.—Francis Taylor.
“I lead in the way of righteousness,” which is to say, I got not my wealth by right and wrong, by wrench and wiles. My riches are not the riches of unrighteousness, the “mammon of iniquity” (Luke xvi. 9); but are honestly come by, and are therefore like to be “durable” (ver. 18). St. Jerome somewhere saith, that most rich men are either themselves bad men or the heirs of those that have been bad. It is reported of Nevessan, the lawyer, that he should say, “He that will not venture his body shall never be valiant; he that will not venture his soul never rich.” But Wisdom’s walk lies not any such way. God forbid, saith she, that I, or any of mine, should take of Satan, “from a thread even to a shoelatchet, lest he should say, I have made you rich” (Gen. xiv. 23).—Trapp.
Verse 21. The great “I AM” (Exod. iii. 14) is the only substantial reality to satisfy the disciples of Wisdom.—Fausset.
The followers of Christ shall be no losers by Him. They shall not inherit the wind, nor possess for their portion those unsubstantial things, of which it is said, they are not (chap. xxiii. 5), because they are not the true riches. It is not for want of riches to bestow, nor for want of love to His people, that He does not bestow upon every one of them crowns of gold and mines of precious metals.—Lawson.