Proverbs 14:10,11

CRITICAL NOTES.—

Proverbs 14:10. Zöckler reads the latter clause, “Let no stranger,” etc. Miller renders the whole verse, “A knowing heart is a bitterness to itself; but with its joy it does not hold intercourse as an enemy.”

Proverbs 14:11. Tabernacle, “tent.”

MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 14:10

SECRETS OF THE HEART

I. Opposite dwellers in the same spirit. “Bitterness” and “joy.” The world without us is a type of the world within us. In the world of matter the bitter cold, the desolation of winter, alternates with the brightness and joyous fruitfulness of summer. On the same globe we have at the same time the vineclad regions of southern latitudes, and the dreary shores of arctic regions. Bitterness in the human spirit is a fact of human consciousness, and so is joy. There are few hearts that have not been at different times possessed by both. There are few in which there does not dwell at the same time a root of gladness and a root of sadness.

II. A possession which its possessor may keep a profound secret. It is within the power of a human soul to keep his sorrow or his joy to himself if he so pleases, and under certain conditions this is a desirable thing to do. A man or woman often finds himself or herself surrounded by those who are entire strangers to the circumstances, or the persons, or the experiences which have given birth to the sorrow or the joy. To speak of it to such would be worse than useless. It is a comfort in such circumstances to be able to lock the secret within one’s own breast. There is a consolation in sorrow, and a sense of increase of joy in not being compelled to lay open our feelings to the inspection of the unsympathetic. There are also sorrows of such a nature as to be entirely beyond the power of the tenderest human love to alleviate. To conceal such from all human ken is a kindness to those who love us. We should inflict sorrow upon them without lightening our own burden; and if we are unselfish, we are glad that it is possible in such a case to keep our bitterness within our own breast.

III. There is One who possesses the secret even more truly than the human possessor, and who should always be invited to intermeddle with our sorrow or our joy.

1. We should invite God to intermeddle, because we can do so in the strictest secresy of the soul. It may be impossible sometimes to put into words our joy or our sorrow, and therefore no human being, even the nearest and dearest, can always “intermeddle” with our deep emotions. But the thought is speech to God. He “knoweth what is the mind of the spirit.”

2. Because God’s “intermeddling” will bring softening to our bitterness and refinement to our joy. He “knew the sorrows” of Israel in their bitter bondage (Exodus 3:7). He sent His Son to “bind up the broken-hearted” (Isaiah 61:1). That Son Himself has known a bitterness that is unknowable by any creature. And as He can lighten sorrow so He can refine and increase joy.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS

Within the range of human experience there is, perhaps, no expression of the ultimate solitude of each man’s soul at all times, and not merely (as in Pascal’s Je mourrai seul) at the hour of death, so striking in its truth and depth as this. Something there is in every sorrow, and in every joy, which no one else can share. Beyond that range it is well to remember that there is a Divine sympathy, uniting perfect knowledge and perfect love.—Plumptre.

The first half of this proverb treats of life experiences which are of too complex a nature to be capable of being fully represented to others, and, as we are wont to say, of so delicate a nature that we shrink from uncovering them and making them known to others, and which, on this account, must be kept shut up in our own hearts, because no man is so near to us, or has so fully gained our confidence, that we have the desire and the courage to pour out our hearts to him from the very depths. If we were to interpret the second clause as prohibitive (see Critical Notes), then this would stand in opposition, certainly not intended, to the exhortation (Romans 12:15), “Rejoice with them that do rejoice,” and to the saying, “Distributed joy is doubled joy, distributed sorrow is half sorrow;” and an admonition to leave man alone with his joy, instead of urging him to distribute it, does not run parallel with the first clause. Therefore we interpret the future as potentialis.—Delitzsch.

Not to let a man be private in his house is a great injury, but not to let a man be private in his heart is a wrong inexcusable. And yet this is the strange presumption of some. They know the heart of another; they know what troubles it and what pains it. Perhaps by some discoveries thou mayest have some conjectures; but let not a small conjecture make thee a great offender. Wrong not another with unjust surmising. Every key a man meets with is not the right key to this lock; every likelihood thou apprehendest is not a sure sign to make thee know the heart of another.—Jermin.

“A knowing heart is a bitterness to itself; but with its joy it does not hold intercourse as an enemy.” We venture upon this translation. We find no spiritual sense in the one heretofore given.… A heart spiritually enlightened is a bitterness to itself on the principle which Christ meant when He said, He “came not to send peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34); but with its joy, weak as it may be, and small and easily clouded, “it does not,” as the impenitent do, “hold intercourse as with an enemy.” His joy is like his bitterness, a friend; and all will work in opposite direction to the joy of the wicked.—Miller.

Eli could not enter into the “bitterness of soul” of Hannah (1 Samuel 1:10; 1 Samuel 1:13; 1 Samuel 1:16): nor Gehazi into that of the Shunamite woman (2 Kings 4:27). Michal, though the wife of David, was “a stranger to his joy” at the bringing up of the ark to Zion (1 Samuel 18:13; 1 Samuel 18:20, with 2 Samuel 6:12).—Fausset.

The two extreme experiences of a human heart, which comprehend all others between them, are “bitterness” and “joy.” The solitude of a human being in either extremity is a solemnising thought. Whether you are glad or grieved, you must be alone. The bitterness and the joyfulness are both your own. It is only in a modified sense, and in a limited measure, that you can share them with another, so as to have less of them yourself.… Sympathy between two human beings is, after all, little more than a figure of speech. A physical burden can be divided equally between two. If you, unburdened, overtake a weary pilgrim on the way, toiling beneath a load of a hundred pounds weight, you may volunteer to bear fifty of them for the remaining part of the journey, and so lighten his load by half. But a light heart, however willing it may be, cannot so relieve a heavy one. The cares that press upon the spirit are as real as the load that lies on the back, and as burdensome; but they are not so tangible and divisible.… There are, indeed, some very intimate unions in human society, as organised by God.… The closest of them all, the two “no longer twain, but one flesh,” is a union of unspeakable value for such sympathy as is compatible with distinct personality at all.… The wife of your bosom can, indeed, intermeddle with your joys and sorrows, as no stranger can do, and yet there are depths of both in your breast which even she has no line to fathom. When you step into the waters of life’s last sorrow, even she must stand back and remain behind. Each must go forward alone. The Indian suttee seems nature’s struggle against that fixed necessity of man’s condition. But it is a vain oblation. Although the wife burn on the husband’s funeral pile, the frantic deed does not lighten the solitude of the dark valley. One human being cannot be merged in another. Man must accept the separate personality that belongs to his nature.—Arnot.

It is true, observes a philosophic essayist, that we have all much in common; but what we have most in common is this, that we are all isolated. Man is more than a combination of passions common to his kind. Beyond them and behind them, an inner life, whose current we think we know within us, flows on in solitary stillness. Friendship itself is declared to have nothing in common with this dark sensibility, so repellent and so forbidding, much less may a stranger penetrate to those untrodden shores. We may apply Wordsworth’s lines,—

To friendship let him turn

For succour; but perhaps he sits alone
On stormy waters, tossed in a little boat
That holds but him, and can contain no more.

Jacox.

By this thought the worth and the significance of each separate human personality is made conspicuous, not one of which is the example of a species, but each has its own peculiarity, which no one of countless individuals possesses.—Elster.

Who but a parent can fully know the “bitterness” of his grief who “mourneth for an only son”—of him who is “in bitterness for his first-born.” Who but a parent can sympathise with the royal mourner’s anguish over a son that had died in rebellion against his father and his God! Who but a widow can realise the exquisite bitterness of a widow’s agony when bereft of the loved partner of her joys and sorrows! Who but a pastor can know, in all its intensity, the bitterness of soul experienced in seeing those on whom he counted as genuine fruits of his ministry, and on whom he looked with delighted interest, as his anticipated “joy and crown” in “the day of the Lord,” falling away—going back and walking no more with Jesus.—Wardlaw.

The principal thought of Proverbs 14:11 has been treated before. See on chapter Proverbs 2:21, etc.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS

The wicked build houses on the earth; the earth is their home, where they desire to be, and they imagine to settle themselves in it. The upright do set up tabernacles only, seeking another country, and as knowing the uncertainty upon which this world standeth. For though the habitation of the wicked be a house, and rooted in the earth, yet it shall not only be shaken, but overthrown, and though the abiding of the upright be but a tabernacle pinned to the earth, yet shall it stand so safely that it shall flourish like a rooted tree. Wherefore, when in the Revelation we read “Woe to the inhabitants of the earth” (chap. Proverbs 8:13), St. Jerome understands it of the wicked only. For a godly man is not an inhabiter of the earth, but a stranger and a sojourner. And his tabernacle doth so flourish, that it reacheth to heaven, for he hath his dwelling in heaven to whom the whole world is an inn.—Jermin.

The “house of the wicked” may be a most prosperous one, and may seem to be full of peace; but it is doomed. It must become “desolate,” literally astonished; which is the Eastern way of describing grand downfalls. “But the tent of the upright” (another intensive clause) his slenderest possessions; like a sprout; like some poor tender plant, shall bloom forth. Such is the meaning of “flourish.”—Miller.