Proverbs 26:17-22

CRITICAL NOTES.—

Proverbs 26:17. Meddleth, rather, “is excited.”

Proverbs 26:21. Coals to burning coals—i.e., “black coals to burning,” etc.

Proverbs 26:22. A repetition of chap. Proverbs 18:8. (See on that verse.)

MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 26:17

NEEDLESS INTERFERENCE

The wise man may here be regarded as passing from one extreme of character to the other—from the man who is too indolent to mind his own affairs, to one whose activity is so great that it leads him to unnecessary interference with his neighbour’s business. Or he may intend to suggest that indolence and meddling are very closely allied—that he who is not usefully occupied in doing his own work will be very apt to interfere impertinently with the concerns of others.

I. Such a meddler brings trouble upon himself. It is a dangerous thing to take a strange dog by the ears, and he who does it will be very likely to suffer for it in his own person, for the creature will probably wound him. But he who meddles impertinently with those who are at strife has to deal, not with one angry brute, but with two angry men or women, and will very likely bring down the wrath of both upon his own head. For it is to be noted that the strife with which it is mischievous to intermeddle is that “which belongeth not to” a man—a quarrel in which an outsider has no right to take a part.

II. He may do harm to others. To take a dog by the ears is at least a foolish and useless act, and will certainly not increase the comfort or peace of anybody. But it may so enrage the beast as to make him a general disturber of the public peace and safety. And the same holds good in relation to meddlers; the mischief that they do may extend far beyond themselves, and their action may form a centre of a wide circle of mental disquietude and moral mischief.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS

A wide difference is made between “suffering as a busy-body, and suffering as a Christian.” It is alarming to those who have no adequate sense of the criminality to find the apostle classify the one with “murderers, and thieves, and evil-doers.”—Bridges.

For Homiletics on Proverbs 26:18, see on chap. Proverbs 17:14, page 513, and on chap. Proverbs 18:6, page 539.