Sprüche 27:20 Kommentar

Here is, 1. A good caution against presuming upon time to come: Boast not thyself, no, not of tomorrow, much less of many days or years to come. This does not forbid preparing for tomorrow, but presuming upon tomorrow. We must not promise ourselves the continuance of our lives and comforts till tomorrow, but speak of it with submission to the will of God and as those who with good reason are kept at uncertainty about it. We must not take thought for the morrow (Mat 6:34), but we must cast our care concerning it upon God. See Jam 4:13-15. We must not put off the great work of conversion, that one thing needful, till tomorrow, as if we were sure of it, but today, while it is called today, hear God's voice. 2. A good consideration, upon which this caution is grounded: We know not what a day may bring forth, what event may be in the teeming womb, of time; it is a secret till it is born, Ecc 11:5. A little time may produce considerable changes, and such as we little think of. We know not what the present day may bring forth; the evening must commend it. Nescis quid serus vesper vehat - Thou knowest not what the close of evening may bring with it. God has wisely kept us in the dark concerning future events, and reserved to himself the knowledge of them, as a flower of the crown, that he may train us up in a dependence upon himself and a continued readiness for every event, Act 1:7.

Two things are here said to be insatiable, and they are two things near of kin - death and sin. 1. Death is insatiable. The first death, the second death, both are so. The grave is not clogged with the multitude of dead bodies that are daily thrown into it, but is still an open sepulchre, and cries, Give, give. Hell also has enlarged itself, and still has room for the damned spirits that are committed to that prison. Tophet is deep and large, Isa 30:33. 2. Sin is insatiable: The eyes of man are never satisfied, nor the appetites of the carnal mind towards profit or pleasure. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is he the loves silver satisfied with silver. Men labour for that which surfeits, but satisfies not; nay, it is dissatisfying; but satisfies not; nay, it is dissatisfying; such a perpetual uneasiness have men justly been doomed to ever since our first parents were not satisfied with all the trees of Eden, but they must meddle with the forbidden tree. Those whose eyes are ever toward the Lord in him are satisfied, and shall for ever be so.

Boast not thyself of tomorrow,.... Or, "of tomorrow day" (t). Either of having a tomorrow, or of any future time; no man can assure himself of more than the present time; for, however desirable long life is, none can be certain of it; so says the poet (u): for though there is a common term of man's life, threescore years and ten, yet no one can be sure of arriving to it; and, though there may be a human probability of long life, in some persons of hale and strong constitutions, yet there is no certainty, since life is so frail a thing; the breath of man is in his nostrils, which is soon and easily stopped; his life is but as a vapour, which appears for a little while, and then vanishes away; all flesh is as grass, which in the morning flourishes, in the evening is cut down, and on the morrow is cast into the oven: man is like a flower, gay and beautiful for a season, but a wind, an easterly blasting wind, passes over it, and it is gone; his days are as a shadow that declineth towards the evening; they are as a hand's breadth; yea, his age is as nothing before the Lord. Death is certain to all men, as the fruit of sin, by the appointment of God; and there is a certain time fixed for it, which cannot be exceeded; but of that day and hour no man knows; and therefore cannot boast of a moment of future time, or of a tomorrow, nor of what he shall enjoy on the morrow (w); for, what he has today he cannot be certain he shall have the next; he cannot assure himself of health and honour, of pleasures, riches, and friends; he may have health today, and sickness tomorrow; be in honour today, and in disgrace on the morrow: he may bid his soul eat, drink, and be merry, seeing he has much goods laid up for many years, and vainly say, tomorrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant, when this night his soul may be required of him; he may have his wife and children, friends and relations, about him now, and before another day comes be stripped of them all; he may be in great affluence, and gave great substance for the present, and in a short time all may be taken from him, as Job's was; riches are uncertain things, they make themselves wings and flee away. Nor should a man boast of what he will do on the morrow; either in civil things, in trade and business; to which the Apostle James applies this passage, Jam 4:13; or in acts of charity, so Aben Ezra explains it, boast not of an alms deed to be done tomorrow; whatever a man finds to be his duty to do in this respect, he should do it at once, while he has an opportunity: or in things religious; as that he will repent of his sins, and amend his life on the morrow; that he will attend the means of grace, hear the Gospel, the voice of Christ; all which should be to day, and not be put off till tomorrow. Nor should true believers procrastinate the profession of their faith; nor should any duty, or exercise of religion, be postponed to another season; but men should work while it is day, and always abound in the work of the Lord, and be found so doing; see Isa 56:12; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth; time is like a teeming woman, to which the allusion is, big with something; but what that is is not known till brought forth: as a woman, big with child, knows not what she shall bring forth till the time comes, whether a son or a daughter, a dead or a living child; so the events of time, or what is in the womb of time, are not known till brought forth; these are the secret things which belong to God, which he keeps in his own breast; the times and seasons of things are only in his power, Act 1:6. We know not what the present day, as the Targum renders it, will bring forth; and still less what tomorrow will do, what changes it will produce in our circumstances, in our bodies and in our minds; so that we cannot be certain what we shall be, what we shall have, or what we shall do, on the morrow, even provided we have one. (t) "in die crastino", Pagninus, Montanus. (u) Sophoclis Oedipus Colon. v. 560. "Nemo tam divos habuit faventes, erastinum ut possit sibi polliceri", Senco. Thyest. v. 617, 618. (w) "Quid sit futurum eras, fuge quaerere", Horat. Carmin. l. 1. Ode 9.

Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle,.... As the manna was, Num 11:8; and as wheat beat and bruised in a mortar, or ground in a mill, retains its own nature; so, let a wicked man be used ever so roughly or severely, by words, admonitions, reproofs, and counsels; or by deeds, by corrections and punishment, by hard words or blows, whether publicly or privately; in the midst of the congregation, as the Targum and Syriac version; or of the sanhedrim and council, as the Septuagint and Arabic versions; yet will not his foolishness depart from him; his inbred depravity and natural malignity and folly will not remove, nor will he leave his course of sinning he has been accustomed to; he is stricken in vain, he will revolt more and more, Isa 1:5. Anaxarchus the philosopher was ordered by the tyrant Nicocreon to be pounded to death in a stone mortar with iron pestles (q), and which he endured with great patience. (q) Laert. in Vit. Anaxarch. l. 9. p. 668.

Hell and destruction will not be full, etc. The torments of hell will not be filled, by receiving an end; similarly, the intentions of those who are wise in human matters are insatiable in the desire to sin. And hence they pay the penalties without end because they had the will to sin without end, if they had the nature to live without end.

(Pro. 27:1-27) Do not confide implicitly in your plans (Pro 16:9; Pro 19:21; Jam 4:13-15).

Men's cupidity is as insatiable as the grave.

The following proverb has, in common with the preceding, the catchword האדם, and the emphatic repetition of the same expression: 20 The under-world and hell are not satisfied, And the eyes of man are not satisfied. A Kerı̂ ואבדון is here erroneously noted by Lwenstein, Stuart, and others. The Kerı̂ to ואבדּה is here ואבדּו, which secures the right utterance of the ending, and is altogether wanting (Note: In Gesen. Lex. this אבדה stands to the present day under אבדה.) in many MSS (e.g., Cod. Jaman). The stripping off of the ן from the ending ון is common in the names of persons and places (e.g., שׁלמה, lxx Σολομών and שׁלה); we write at pleasure either ow or oh (e.g., מגדּו), Olsh. 215g. אבדּה (אבדּו) of the nature of a proper name, is already found in its full form אבדּון at Pro 15:11, along with שׁאול; the two synonyms are, as was there shown, not wholly alike in the idea they present, as the underworld and realm of death, but are related to each other almost the same as Hades and Gehenna; אבדון is what is called (Note: Vid., Frankel, Zu dem Targum der Propheten (1872), p. 25.) in the Jonathan-Targum בּית אבדּנא, the place of destruction, i.e., of the second death (מותא תנינא). The proverb places Hades and Hell on the one side, and the eyes of man on the other, on the same line in respect of their insatiableness. To this Fleischer adds the remark: cf. the Arab. al'ayn l'a taml'aha all'a altrab, nothing fills the eyes of man but at last the dust of the grave - a strikingly beautiful expression! If the dust of the grave fills the open eyes, then they are full - fearful irony! The eye is the instrument of seeing, and consequently in so far as it always looks out after and farther, it is the instrument and the representation of human covetousness. The eye is filled, is satisfied, is equivalent to: human covetousness is appeased. But first "the desire of the eye," Jo1 2:16, is meant in the proper sense. The eyes of men are not satisfied in looking and contemplating that which is attractive and new, and no command is more difficult to be fulfilled than that in Isa 33:15, "...that shutteth his eyes from seeing evil." There is therefore no more inexhaustible means, impiae sepculationis, than the desire of the eyes.