Proverbs 21:14

MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 21:14

THE PACIFICATION OF ANGER

I. Human anger is an evil to be avoided. Even the anger of a righteous man exposes the object of it to danger. David had good reason to be angry with Nabal, but his anger, though it was the anger of a man just in the main, so nearly overmastered him for the time as to lead him to meditate a very bitter revenge. For even righteous indignation has a tendency to run into unrighteous action, as in the case of Esau and Jacob. The elder brother had just cause to be angry with the younger for his meanness and deceit, but lawful displeasure soon degenerated into an unlawful purpose, and Jacob had to flee for his life. If, then, even the anger of the righteous man is to be feared because it may lead him to visit the offender with justice without mercy, much more is the anger of the unrighteous man likely to lead him to extreme measures, and the anger of either is an evil to be avoided when it can be done without sin.

II. Gifts may appease human anger. This proverb does not, we think, refer to bribery but to lawful tokens of goodwill, and of a desire to be reconciled—to gifts by which we seek to make some atonement for a wrong done. Such were the presents which Jacob offered to Esau, and Abigail to David. A bribe is a gift offered to a third person who is to judge between the parties at strife, but the gift here is from the offender to the person offended.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS

A gift in itself is gracious, but if it be secretly given it is yet more acceptable; for privy bestowing taketh away the blush of open receiving. When as then a present shall even so closely be conveyed unto the receiver as that it shall covertly be put into his bosom, then it will be most welcome and even forcible.—Muffett.

“Have gifts,” says a judicious writer, “such a powerful influence to disarm resentment? Then let no man plead, in apology for the fury of his passions, that he is not able to conquer them. If money can conquer them, shall reason, and the fear of God, and the command of Christ, be too weak to bridle them? Surely the commandments of God our Saviour have too little authority with us, if they have less influence upon our spirits than gold and jewels have upon the spirits of almost all men.”—Wardlaw.