Proverbs 31:1

The words of king Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother taught him.

The words of king Lemuel

I. The first thing that strikes us here is the mother. “The prophecy which his mother taught him.”

1. A mother’s anxiety. What shall he be? Better not to be, than to turn out a bad man. Seekest thou great things for the little one by thy side? Seek them not; better is it to be good than to be great; to be obscure in holiness rather than to be conspicuous in sin.

2. This is a pious mother. “The son of my vows.” It is a great thing to be the child of a good mother. We do not know the name of this mother--her son’s nature we know. What eminent sons have ascribed all their distinction to their mother; but she is out of sight. He attains to fame; she is still unknown.

II. The mother taught her son things pertaining to character. Men cannot command circumstances or facts, but they can preserve principles. Principles are like the piles on which you build bridges, or on which you construct railways over morasses and swamps. Principles are the piles of life. Unshaken convictions and principles are only found in profound minds. King Lemuel’s mother left, as she might safely do, the technicalities of instruction to others; she looked after character; she laid the foundation strong in goodness. Women teach goodness better than men. There is the right power of woman. When the counsels of good mothers have been disregarded, how often those mothers have been avenged!

III. The prophecies which his mother taught him. The words of Lemuel’s mother are living still. In youth we love and are loved so quickly. Then love is pure--more of the heart and less of the senses, which all true love is. In noble natures, the purer the heart, the more it is purified by the love of God. Youth is the time for the choice between God and good, and Satan and evil. “Be sober,” said this mother. “Do not excite the body, lest the body should rise against the soul and dethrone her.” “My soul,” said John Foster, “shall either be mistress in my body, or shall quit it.” Never were young men in more danger than now.

1. Young men waste time. The wise man must “separate himself.” Ill habits gather by obscure degrees.

2. Young men fail in high principle. You see how everything goes down before things of money value. It is hard to reckon things by another than a money value. All fast living means low thinking, or nothing at all. These are the men who see nothing in religion, because they know nothing about it. Our sanctification must be wrought out where we are, not where we are not. Life is serious and earnest, but let us not despair over its failures, even though they abide with us to the close. “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise.” Walk with them in their books, in solitude, in meditation, and join their company at last. (E. Paxton Hood.)

The counsels of a noble mother to her son

The identity of this man Lemuel is lost in the mist of ages. A motherly ministry is the tenderest, the strongest, most influential of all the Divine ministers of the world, but when the ministry is the expression of a genuinely religious nature, and specially inspired by heaven, its character is more elevated, and its influence more beneficent and lasting. The counsel of this mother involves two things.

I. An earnest interdict. With what earnestness does she break forth! Her motherly heart seems all aflame! Her vehement intuition is against animal indulgence in its two great forms, debauchery and intemperance; against inordinate gratification of the passions and the appetites. The reign of animalism is a reign that manacles, enfeebles, and damns the soul. Lust blunts the moral sense, pollutes the memory, defiles the imagination, sends a withering influence through all the faculties of the moral man.

II. An earnest injunction. She enjoins social compassion. Some think in the phrase “ready to perish” there is an allusion to the practice of administering a potion of strong mixed wine to criminals, for the purpose of deadening their sensibility to suffering. But there are ordinary cases of suffering and distress where wine might be administered with salutary effect. What this mother inculcates is compassion to the poor. It is the duty and honour of kings to espouse the cause of the distressed. This mother enjoins not only compassion, but also justice. She is a model mother. (David Thomas D.D.)