Verse 3. “Her maidens.” Sermons and providential strokes, the whole heraldry of the doctrine of salvation.—Miller.
Wisdom being personified as a feminine word, fitly has maidens as her ministers here. May there not also be an intimation (as Gregory and Bede suggest) of the natural feebleness of the Apostles and other ministers of the Gospel who have their treasure in earthen vessels (2 Cor. iv. 7), and also of the tender love which the preachers of the Gospel must feel for the souls of those to whom they are sent? . . . The great Apostle of the Gentiles speaks of himself spiritually as a nurse and a mother.—Wordsworth.
She, together with her maids, crieth; she puts not off all the business to them, but hath a hand in it herself. “We are workers together with God,” saith Paul.—Trapp.
Verse 4. Ignorance is not a cause that should stay men from hearing the Word of God, but rather incite them to it. Their necessity doth require it, for who hath more need of eye-salve than they whose eyes are sore? And who have more need of guides than they who have lost their sight and are become blind? And especially when the way is difficult and full of danger.—Dod.
Verse 5. Not for the first time, in John vi., or on the night of the Last Supper, had bread and wine been made the symbols of fellowship with eternal life and truth.—Plumptre.
Indeed, to come and to eat; to come to Wisdom by attention is to eat of her instructions by receiving it into the soul.—Jermin.
The invitation is free. So it is throughout the Bible. The blessings of salvation are the gift of God. They are offered to sinners with the freeness of Divine munificence. Not only may they be had without a price, but if they are to be had at all it must be without a price. This is one of their special peculiarities. In treating with our fellow-men in the communication of good, we make distinctions. From some, who can afford it, we take an equivalent; from others, who cannot, we take none. We sell to the rich, we give to the poor. In the present case there is no distinction. All are poor. All are alike poor; and he who presumes to bring what he imagines a price, of whatever kind, forfeits the blessings, and is “sent empty away.” The invitation, too, is universal; for all men, in regard to divine and spiritual things, are naturally inconsiderate and foolish, negligent and improvident of their best and highest interests. And it is earnest, repeated, importunate. Is not this wonderful? Ought not the earnestness and the importunity to be all on the other side? Should not we find men entreating God to bestow the blessings, not God entreating men to accept them? Wonderful? “No,” we may answer in the terms of the Negro woman to the missionary when he put the question, “Is this not wonderful?” “No, Massa, it be just like Him.” It is in the true style of infinite benevolence. But is it not wonderful that sinners should refuse the invitation? It is not in one view, and it is in another. It is not, when we consider their depravity and alienation from God. It is, when we think of their natural desire for happiness, and the manifest impossibility of the object of their desire being ever found, otherwise than by their acceptance of them.—Wardlaw.
Verse 7. The reproof given is duty discharged, and the retort in return is a fresh call to repentance for sin past, and a caution against sin to come.—Flavel.
Here caution is given how we tender reprehension to arrogant and scornful natures, whose manner it is to esteem it for contumely, and accordingly to return it.—Lord Bacon.
The three verses, 7–9, in their general preceptive form, seem somewhat to interrupt the continuity of the invitation which Wisdom utters. The order of thought is, however, this: “I speak to you, the simple, the open ones, for you have yet ears to hear; but from the scorner or evil-doer of such, I turn away.” The rules which govern human teachers, leading them to choose willing or fit disciples, are the laws also of the Divine Educator. So taken, the words are parallel to Matt. vii. 2, and find an illustration in the difference between our Lord’s teaching to His disciples and to them that were without.—Plumptre.