Proverbs 17:17-18

CRITICAL NOTES.—

Proverbs 17:17. “Friend and brother are related the one as the climax of the other. The friend is developed into a brother by adversity.” (Lange’s Commentary).

MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 17:17, and of CHAP. Proverbs 18:24

TRUE FRIENDSHIP

I. A true friend loves under all conditions.

1. He loves in times of separation. The distance between our earth and the sun does not prevent the one from influencing the other—there is a power in gravitation which can make itself felt even when the objects affected by it are thousands of miles apart. So true love is quite independent of space—oceans may roll between the friends, yea, the very grave may separate them, and yet the gravitating force which first drew the heart of one man to another will make itself felt. It has been said that the dead and the absent have no friends, but this is a libel upon human nature. A friend loveth whether the object of his love is present or absent, and will, if needs be, defend his friend’s character when he is not present to speak for himself.

2. He loves even in times of temporary estrangement. Transitory differences are not incompatible with the most genuine friendship, and while human nature is in its present imperfect condition it will sometimes happen that one real and true friend will disappoint and grieve another. But if the real and true feeling is in the heart it will be as unshaken by these temporary disturbances as the root of the tree is by the storm-wind that moves its branches.

II. Friendship is especially precious in times of trial. True friends are not like the locust, which seeks only the green pastures and fruitful fields, and leaves them as soon as it has taken from them all that it could feed upon, but they are like the stars, the value of whose light is only really understood when all other lights are absent. When all is going well with a man he may underestimate the value of his friend’s regard; he may not really know how heartfelt it is; but when misfortune, or sickness, or bereavement overtake him, he realises that a “brother is born for adversity.”

III. There is a bond stronger than any tie of blood-relationship. We have abundant and melancholy proofs that the mere fact of being brothers according to the flesh does not make men one in heart. The first man who tasted death was murdered by his brother, and many sons of the same father since that day have been separated from each other by a hatred as deep and deadly as that which prompted Cain to murder Abel. In the family in which Solomon was a son there was one brother with the blood of another upon his head (2 Samuel 13:28). Something stronger and deeper than the mere tie of blood is needed to make men one in heart. The most beautiful example of friendship upon record existed between the son of Saul and the shepherd of Bethlehem where there was no relationship according to the flesh, and where the heir-apparent to the throne loved as his own soul the youth who was to supplant him. There is no friendship so firm and enduring as that which is based upon doing the will of God (Mark 3:35) no brotherhood so perfect and lasting as that which has its origin in a common discipleship to Him who is not ashamed to call them brethren (Hebrews 2:11), and who is Himself the “Friend above all others,” whose love can span the distance between His throne in glory and the meanest hovel upon earth, and the greater distance between Divine perfection and human sinfulness, and who was in all things “made like unto his brethren,” that having Himself “suffered being tempted, He might be able to succour them that are tempted” (Hebrews 2:17), and thus prove Himself to be pre-eminently the “Brother born for adversity,” and the “Friend that sticketh closer than a brother.”

IV. It is an evidence of great folly to treat men as bosom-friends before we know them. There are men who will trust in a comparative stranger to such an extent as to lend their credit and their good name to him without any reasonable security. Such a man Solomon here characterises as being “void of understanding.” It is a mark of a fool to enter into any engagement without deliberation, and in nothing does lack of wisdom more plainly manifest itself than in the formation of hasty friendships, especially if the friendship involves a man in any kind of suretyship. From lack of prudence in this matter many a man has been “all his lifetime subject to bondage.” It behoves all men in the matter of friendship to follow the advice of Polonius:—

The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade.

ILLUSTRATION OF TRUE FRIENDSHIP

Damon was sentenced to die on a certain day, and sought permission of Dionysius of Syracuse to visit his family in the interim. It was granted on condition of securing a hostage for himself. Pythias heard of it, and volunteered to stand in his friend’s place. The king visited him in prison, and conversed with him about the motive of his conduct, affirming his disbelief in the influence of friendship. Pythias expressed his wish to die, that his friend’s honour might be vindicated. He prayed the gods to delay the return of Damon till after his own execution in his stead. The fatal day arrived. Dionysius sat on a moving throne drawn by six white horses. Pythias mounted the scaffold and thus addressed the spectators, “My prayer is heard; the gods are propitious, for the winds have been contrary till yesterday. Damon could not come, he could not conquer impossibilities; he will be here to-morrow, and the blood that is shed to-day shall have ransomed the life of my friend. Could I erase from your bosoms every mean suspicion of the honour of Damon, I should go to my death as I should to my bridal.” … As he closed a voice in the distance cried, “Stop the execution!” and the cry was taken up and repeated by the whole assembly. A man rode up at full speed’ mounted the scaffold, and embraced Pythias crying, “You are safe now, my beloved friend! I have now nothing but death to suffer, and am delivered from reproaches for having endangered a life so much dearer than my own.” Pythias replied, “Fatal haste, cruel impatience! What envious powers have wrought impossibilities in your favour! But I will not be wholly disappointed. Since I cannot die to save you, I will not survive you.” The king was moved to tears, and, ascending the scaffold, cried, “Live, live, ye incomparable pair! Ye have borne unquestionable testimony to the existence of virtue, and that virtue equally evinces the existence of a God to reward it. Live happy, live renowned, and oh! form me by your precepts, as ye have invited me by your example, to be worthy of the participation of so sacred a friendship.”

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS

Proverbs 17:17. “The Friend.” We are to notice the article. It does not impair the proverb for its secular use. We have such an idiom: “the friend,” i.e., the true friend. Even a worldly friend, to be worth anything, must be for all times; and what is a brother born for, but for distress? But spiritually, the article is just in its place. There is but One Only “Friend,” and a “Brother” who would not have been “born” at all, but for the distress and straitness of His house.—Miller.

Friendship contracted with the wicked decreases from hour to hour, like the early shadow of the morning; but friendship formed with the virtuous will increase like the shadow of evening, till the sun of life shall set.—Herder.

Extremity distinguisheth friends. Worldly pleasures, like physicians, give us over, when once we lie a-dying; and yet the death-bed hath most need of comforts. Christ Jesus standeth by His in the pangs of death, and after death at the bar of judgment; not leaving them either in their bed or grave. I will use them, therefore, to my best advantage; not trust them. But for Thee, O my Lord, which in mercy and truth canst not fail me, whom I have found ever faithful and present in all extremities, kill me, yet will I trust in Thee.—Bp. Hall.

A friend shares my sorrow and makes it but a moiety; but He swells my joy and makes it double. For so two channels divide the river and lessen it into rivulets and make it fordable, and apt to drink up at the first revels of the Syrian star; but two torches do not divide, but increase the flame. And though my tears are the sooner dried up when they run on my friend’s cheek in furrows of compassion; yet when my flame has kindled his lamp, we unite the glories, and make them radiant, like the golden candlesticks that burn before the throne of God; because they shine by numbers, by unions, and confederations of light and joy.—Jeremy Taylor.

When a man blind from his birth was asked what he thought the sun was like, he replied, “Like friendship.” He could not conceive of anything as more fitting as a similitude for what he had been taught to regard as the most glorious of material objects, and whose quickening and exhilarating influences he had rejoiced to feel.—Morris.

A brother for adversity is one who will act the brother in a season of adversity. Of such an one it is said, he must or shall be born, possibly, he is born. I do not understand this last clause unless the assertion is, that none but such as are born brethren, i.e., kindred by blood, will cleave to us in distress. Yet this is true only in a qualified sense. But another shade of meaning may be assigned to the passage, which is, that such a man as a friend in adversity is yet to be born, i.e., none such are now to be found; thus making it substantially equivalent in sense to the expression: “How few and rare are such faithful friends.”—Stuart.

As in the natural, so in the spiritual brotherhood, misery breeds unity. Ridley and Hooper, that when they were bishops, differed so much about ceremonies, could agree well enough, and be mutual comforts one to another when they were both prisoners. Esther concealed her kindred in hard times, but God’s people cannot; Moses must rescue his beaten brother out of the hand of the Egyptian, though he rescue his life by it.—Trapp.

Man in his weakness needs a steady friend, and God in His wisdom has provided one in the constitution of nature. Not entrusting all to acquired friendship, He has given us some as a birthright inheritance. For the day of adversity a brother is born to many who would not have been able to win one. It is at once a glory to God in the highest, and a sweet solace to afflicted men, when a brother or a sister, under the secret and steady impulses of nature, bears and does for the distressed what no other friend, however loving, could be expected to bear or do. How foolish for themselves are those who lightly snap those bonds asunder, or touch them oft with the corrosive drops of contention! One who is born your brother is best fitted to be your friend in trouble, if unnatural strife has not rent asunder those whom their Maker intended to be one in spirit.… “There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” He must be a fast friend indeed, for a brother, if nature’s affections have been cherished, lies close in, and keeps a steady hold.… Oh, when hindering things are taken out of the way of God’s work, a brother lies very close to a brother. He who comes closer must be no common friend.… It is the idea of a friendship more perfect, fitting more kindly into our necessities, and bearing more patiently with our weaknesses, than the instinctive love of a brother by birth. From God’s hand-work in nature a very tender and a very strong friendship proceeds: from His covenant of mercy comes a friendship tenderer and stronger still. Now, although the conception is embodied in the communion of saints, its full realisation is only found in the love wherewith Christ loves His own.… The precious germ which Solomon’s words unfold, bore its ripened fruit only when He who is bone of our bone gave Himself the just for the unjust. Thus by a surer process than verbal criticism, we are conducted to the man Christ Jesus, as at once the Brother born for adversity, and the friend that sticketh closer than a brother.… In the day of your deepest adversity even a born brother must let go his hold. That extremity is the opportunity of your best friend.—Arnot.

Proverbs 17:18. It is good to try him whom we intend for a bosom friend before we trust him; as men prove their vessels with water before they fill them with wine. Many complain of the treachery of their friends, and say, with Queen Elizabeth, that in trust they have found treason; but most of these have greatest cause, if all things be duly weighed, to complain of themselves for making no better choice.—Swinnock.

Seeing he hath not understanding to keep himself from hurt, it were good if he had not power in his hand to do himself hurt.… Surely such a fool may quickly wring his hands together in sorrow, who before did clap his hands in joy, and may strike himself in anger with the same hand, wherewith in the foolish kindness of surety he struck the hand of another.… For often this over-kind part of a friend is the breaking of friendship if it bring no further mischief.—Jermin.

The evil effects of strife and pride, which form the subject of Proverbs 17:19, have been treated before. See on Proverbs 17:14, and on chaps. Proverbs 11:2, and Proverbs 16:18. Some expositors attach a slight difference to the meaning of the latter clause. See below.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS

“Sets high (exalteth) his gate;” a figure that is probably misunderstood. It probably means belligerence. A moat over which issued armed bands, with banners and mounted spearmen, required high space to let them go forth. “Lift up your heads, O ye gates,” etc. The soul that fixes itself that way against the Almighty, ready to march out upon Him on any occasion of quarrel, “seeks” ruin.—Miller.

The slothful man exposes himself to misery; but he waits for it till it comes upon him like a traveller. The aspiring man, that cannot be happy without a stately dwelling, and a splendid manner of living beyond what his estate will bear, seeks for destruction, and sends a coach and six to bring it to him.—Lawson.

“And he that exalteth his gate seeketh destruction.” Some take this for a comparison:—As surely as he that exalteth his gate (enlarging it out of due proportion) seeketh destruction to his house, by thus weakening its structure,—so surely does he that loveth strife generate transgression. The phrase “exalteth his gate,” however, instead of being thus understood literally, may, with more propriety, be interpreted of a man’s ambitiously affecting a style of living beyond his income—disproportionate to the amount of his means of maintaining it. The general character is described by one particular manifestation of it—the high style of the exterior of his mansion. The “exalting of the gate” applies to the entire style of his household establishment—not to his dwelling merely, but to his equipage, his table, his servants, his dress, and everything else. He who does this “seeks destruction:” he courts his own downfall, as effectually as if it were his direct object to ruin himself. Matthew Henry, in his own quaint and pithy way, says—“He makes his gate so large, that his house and estate go out at it.”—Wardlaw.

There is none that loveth strife more than he that exalteth his gate, either the gate of his ears to hear the tales of others, and the praises of himself, or else the gates of his eyes overlooking others with scorn and disdain, and his own worth by many degrees, or else the gate of his mouth, which is properly the gate of man, with big and swelling words, with high and lofty terms which usually are the sparks that kindle contention. But what doth such an one do, but even seek for destruction, which at his lifted-up gate, findeth easy passage to run in upon him.—Jermin.

For Homiletics on the subjects of Proverbs 17:20, see on chapter Proverbs 10:1; Proverbs 10:13, etc., and on Proverbs 17:24.