Proverbs 18:1

Through desire According to the rendering of A.V. this would mean: A man who is possessed by an intense desire of wisdom separates himself from all other avocations and pursuits and from the society of his fellow men, isolates himself, as we say, that he may "intermeddle with" it, give himself wholly to (but see Proverbs 17:14 note) the pursuit of it. We must, however, render with R.V.:

He that separateth himself seeketh his own desire:

He rageth against (or, quarrelleth with, marg.) all sound wisdom.

The proverb then is a condemnation of the selfish isolation of the self-seeker or the misanthrope. Mr Horton, who has an interesting chapter on this verse, writes:

"Shakespeare might have had this proverb before him in that grim delineation of Richard the Third, who boasts that he has neither pity, love, nor fear. He was, he had been told, born with teeth in his mouth,

-And so I was," he exclaims, -which plainly signified

That I should snarl, and bite, and play the dog."

And then he explains this terrible character in these significant lines:

-I have no brother, I am like no brother:

And this word Love, which greybeards call divine,

Be resident in men like one another,

And not in me; I am myself alone."

III. K. Henry VI. Act v. Sc. 6."

wisdom Or, sound wisdom, R.V., as the same Heb. word is rendered in A.V. in Proverbs 2:7.