Proverbs 18:22

Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the Lord.

A happy marriage

At the outset these words strike two thoughts on our attention.

1. That celibacy is not the best mode of social life. Solomon means to say that it is a good thing to have a wife. Even in the state of innocence it was not good for man to be alone. “Celibate,” says Bishop Taylor, “like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity; but marriage, like the useful bee, builds a house and gathers sweetness from every flower, and labours and unites into societies and republics, and sends out colonies and feeds the world with delicacies, and obeys their king and keeps order, and exercises many virtues, and promotes the interests of mankind, and is that state of good things to which God hath designed the present constitution of the world.”

2. That monogamy is the true marriage. Solomon does not say, “He that findeth wives,” but “He that findeth a wife.” Though Solomon had many wives, he nowhere justified plurality. Duality appears everywhere, and throughout the universe is necessary. The text in its completeness teaches--

I. That a good wife is a good thing. Of a good wife, of course, the writer must be supposed to speak, for a bad wife is a bad thing. Manoah found a good thing in his wife (Judges 3:13). The patriarch of Uz does not seem to have found a good thing in his (Job 2:9). “A good wife” must be--

1. A good woman. A woman of chaste loves, incorruptible virtues, and godly sympathies and aims.

2. A suitable companion. A good woman would not be a good wife to all men. There must be a mutual fitness, a fitness of temperament, taste, habits, culture, associations.

II. A good wife is a divine gift. “Obtaineth favour of the Lord.” All good things are His gifts. Young men, be cautious of your choice of a companion for life. “When Themistocles was to marry his daughter, there were two suitors, the one rich and a fool, and the other wise but not rich; and being asked which of the two he had rather his daughter should have, he answered, ‘I had rather she should marry a man without money than money without a man.’ The best of marriage is in the man or woman, not in the means or the money.” (D. Thomas, D. D.)