Warning cry of Wisdom
In dramatic style, Wisdom is presentiated, personified, endued with visible and audible attributes. As contempt for religion has been animadverted upon, so now contempt for Wisdom calls for rebuke. The motto (Proverbs 1:7) is still in the preacher's mind.
I. THE CRY OF WISDOM IS PUBLIC AND CLEAR. In the street, "where merchants most do congregate," and in all places of general resort, the cry is heard. Hers is no esoteric doctrine; it is popularly exoteric, it is for all. She has no concealments. She is not ashamed of her message. She seeks the weal of each and of all. Like her Divine embodiment, she is the Friend of the simple and the meek, yea, of the fools and the sinners (Matthew 10:27; Luke 14:21). It is a voice to be heard above the mingled sounds of these thronged centres. The state of the markets and of the weather, passing events, the gossip of the hour, news of success and of failure, all have a moral meaning, run up into moral calculations, may be reduced to expressions of moral law.
II. HER TONE.
1. It is commanding and superior. She appeals to different classes of the frivolous, the free-thinking, the scoffers of the time. The times of Solomon, as pointed out by Delitzsch, were times of widespread worldliness and religious indifference. The lezim, or "scorners," must have been a numerous class. They scoffed at sacred things, laid claim to superior sense (Proverbs 14:6), were contentious and full of debate (Proverbs 22:10). They avoided the chakanim, or "wise men," and hence received the name of scoffers or mockers. They were like our modern free-thinkers, and have left their clear traces on the biblical page. The "wise men" were a kind of practical philosophers, not a professional class, but belonging to different callings. Religion and worship have never been exempt from criticism, have in every age been exposed to that "ridicule which is the test of truth." In these conflicts the tone of truth is ever commanding, conscious of authority, calm; that of the scoffer irritable and wanting in weight. Wisdom is commanding, because she holds the conscience. She bandies no arguments with the scoffer, who will only find in them fuel for his contentious spirit; she aims directly at the conscience, accuses and judges the perverted heart. "Turn at my denunciation" from your evil ways] "I will cause my Spirit to stream forth upon you."
2. Her tone is hortatory and promising. The Spirit of wisdom is compared to a mighty, forth-bubbling, never-exhausted fountain. So Christ cried in the last great day of the feast in Jerusalem, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink."
3. Her tone is threatening and prophetic of retribution. The day of grace is now conceived as past, the hour gone that will not return. She has called, has stretched out the hand, in token of pleading for attention, has lavished both counsel and rebuke; but has been responded to by sullen refusal, averted looks, scornful depreciation, obstinate resistance. This relation of forbearance and good will has been strained to the last degree; in the law of things it must be succeeded by a reaction. The places will be reversed. The scoffer will be the scoffed; the mocker will afford material for mirth. And here the pictures accumulate their dread impression on the imagination; the tempest and the tempest whirlwind answer in nature to the calamity and the horror, the anguish and constraint, of the faithless soul. All moral teaching carries in it a twofold prophetic element; a prophecy of penal retribution and a prophecy of blessed recompense. Retribution is the logical consequence of certain acts; and it involves a correspondence. The relation which has been wrongly denied comes in the end to be affirmed; and that which was affirmed, to be in the end denied. The manner of the sin foretells the manner of the penalty. Those who turned from pleading Wisdom, plead in the end with her in vain; seeking her now with zeal ("early"), their search is vain, The attitude which the soul refused to assume in its pride, it is forced into by its distress. The wheel comes full circle; the sinner is smitten in the very place of his sin; and outraged conscience is avenged.
4. Above all, the tone of Wisdom is reasonable. These are no arbitrary, cruel, capricious dealings with the sinner. They rest upon the law of things (Proverbs 1:29-31). "Because they hated reasonable doctrine, and coveted not the fear of Jehovah, fared not on the way of my counsel, and despised all my rebuke; therefore they shall eat of the fruit of their way, and be satiated with their counsels!" It is the law of causality applied to moral things. "The curse causeless shall not come!" The most obvious example of the law of cause and effect in nature—the connection of seed and crop, sowing and reaping—best illustrates the process in the human spirit. We cannot deceive God, cannot evade law; whatsoever we sow, we must reap, and that according to quantity, to kind or quality. Again, the figure of a surfeit is forcible as applied to this experience of the consequences of guilt. We find it also in Isaiah 3:10; Psalms 88:4; Psalms 123:4. It brings out the principle that all spurious pleasures, i.e. those which are rooted only in egotism, cloy, and so turn the man against himself. Self-loathling, self-contempt, is the deep revelation of an inner judgment. If any one asks with the anger of the atheistic poet, "Who made self-contempt?" let him turn to this passage for an answer.
5. Wisdom is declarative of moral laws. The turning away, the resistance and recalcitrancy of the simple, murders them (Jeremiah 8:5; Hosea 11:5), and the security (idle, easy, fleshly carelessness, Jeremiah 22:21) destroys them.
"More the treacherous calm I dread
Than tempests sailing overhead."
(See South's powerful sermon, with his usual splendid illustrations, on "Prosperity ever dangerous to Virtue," vol. 2, ser. 6.)
6. She is prophetic of good to the obedient. In bright contrast to the spurious peace of the dulled conscience is the true peace of the wise and God-fearing, "He who listens to me shall dwell securely, and have rest. without terror of calamity." It is like that of ordered nature—"central peace abiding at the heart of endless agitation." In this profound union with God, the parables of life are but superficial and transient as the waves of ocean, while the depths are calm as eternity. The method of personified Wisdom is that of Christ, with which it may be compared at every point.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON