Proverbs 1:20-33

TEXT Proverbs 1:20-33

20.

Wisdom crieth aloud in the street;

She uttereth her voice in the broad places;

21.

She crieth in the chief place of concourse;

At the entrance of the gates,
In the city, she uttereth her words:

22.

How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity?

And scoffers delight them in scoffing,
And fools hate knowledge?

23.

Turn you at my reproof:

Behold, I will pour out my spirit upon you;
I will make known my words unto you,

24.

Because I have called, and ye have refused;

I have stretched out my hand, and no man hath regarded.

25.

Be ye have set at nought all my counsel,

And would none of my reproof:

26.

I also will laugh in the day of your calamity;

I will mock when your fear cometh;

27.

When your fear cometh as a storm,

And your calamity cometh on as a whirlwind;
When distress and anguish come upon you.

28.

Then will they call upon men, but I will not answer;

They will seek me diligently, but they shall not find me.

29.

For that they hated knowledge,

And did not choose the fear of Jehovah.

30.

They would none of my counsel,

They despised all my reproof.

31.

Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way,

And be filled with their own devices.

32.

For the backsliding of the simple shall slay them,

And the careless ease of fools shall destroy them.

33.

But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell securely,

And shall be quiet without fear of evil.

STUDY QUESTIONS OVER 1:20-33

1.

How does wisdom cry (Proverbs 1:20)?

2.

What does concourse mean (Proverbs 1:21)?

3.

Are the simple ones, scoffers, and fools different groups or the same group under different words (Proverbs 1:22)?

4.

Is Proverbs 1:23 speaking of inspiration?

5.

What is the antecedent of I, my, and me from Proverbs 1:24 to the end of the chapter?

6.

What does set at nought mean (Proverbs 1:25)?

7.

Will such a day as pictured in Proverbs 1:26 come to the foolish?

8.

How serious will things become for the foolish (Proverbs 1:27)?

9.

What sad news does Proverbs 1:28 bear?

10.

They should have ................. knowledge instead of hated it (Proverbs 1:29)?

11.

The fear of Jehovah is something to be ............... (Proverbs 1:29)?

12.

Proverbs 1:30 is a restatement of what previous verse?

13.

What is the meaning of eat in Proverbs 1:31?

14.

Find three parallel expressions in the two statements of Proverbs 1:32.

15.

What contrast belongs to those who will listen (Proverbs 1:33)?

PARAPHRASE OF 1:20-33

Proverbs 1:20-28.

Wisdom shouts in the streets for a hearing. She calls out to the crowds along Main Street, and to the judges in their courts, and to everyone in all the land. You simpletons! she cries, how long will you go on being fools? How long will you scoff at wisdom and fight the facts? Come here and listen to me! I-'ll pour out the spirit of Wisdom upon you, and make you wise. I have called you so often but still you won-'t come. I have pleaded, but all in vain. For you have spurned my counsel and reproof. Some day you-'ll be in trouble, and I-'ll laugh! Mock me, will you?-I-'ll mock you! When a storm of terror surrounds you, and when you are engulfed by anguish and distress, then I will not answer your cry for help. It will be too late though you search for me ever so anxiously.

Proverbs 1:29-33.

For you closed your eyes to the facts and did not choose to reverence and trust the Lord, and you turned your back on me, spurning my advice. That is why you must eat the bitter fruit of having your own way, and experience the full terrors of the pathway you have chosen. For you turned away from meto death; your complacency will kill you, Fools! But all who listen to me shall live in peace and safety, unafraid.

COMMENTS ON 1:20-33

Proverbs 1:20. From here to the end of the chapter (yes, and on beyond that) wisdom is personified as talking, teaching, crying, watching, and turning a deaf ear to people's cries when suffering from refusing her. Virtue itself is usually represented as a woman; so is wisdom here (note the her). Other verses that have wisdom crying or speaking: Proverbs 8:1; Proverbs 8:3-4; Proverbs 8:6-7. Our verse tells of wisdom uttering her voice and crying aloud in the street and the broad places. Their streets were very narrow. Where two streets met, they made a broad place (see Mark 11:4). Actually wisdom speaks everywhere if people will but listen. What have you learned today from life?

Proverbs 1:21. The chief place of concourse is translated at the head of the multitudes (Young's Literal) and at the head of the thronged ways (American Bible Union Version). The entrance of the gates would be where people entered or left the city and where legal transactions were conducted (Ruth 4:1-11). In the city would be where people lived. Proverbs 1:20-21 shows that wisdom spoke to the ancients from every place (the street, the broad places, the chief place of concourse, the entrance of the gates, and in the city). Today wisdom also speaks to us from many places: it speaks from the juvenile court (on child-rearing;, from the curse of alcholicism (asking, Was Prohibition a failure after all?), from tobacco-statistics, etc. What do tobacco statistics say? Don-'t smoke! Wisdom tells us it is a foolish habit (look at the effect upon your health); it is a wasteful habit (in outlay of money and in costs in minutes of life when added together; it is a bad habit (bad breath, spreading foul smell wherever one goes, causing others to cough from smoke, etc.).

Proverbs 1:22. There are those who love simplicity (ignorance), some who delight in scoffing at the truth and at righteousness and at those who hold them, and some who hate knowledge. Wisdom, God, parents, and godly people cannot help wondering, How much longer will such people live that way?

Proverbs 1:23. The very question, How long...will ye love simplicity...delight in scoffing...hate knowledge? of Proverbs 1:22 was itself a reproof to those addressed, the hope being to get them to turn or change. The height of wisdom which men have sometimes scoffed at and hated is Inspired Wisdom found within the Word of God. The language, I will pour out my spirit, sounds like a parallel prediction with Joel 2:28, which was fulfilled in God's sending the Holy Spirit to inspire the apostles and prophets of New Testament times. Old Testament writers often jumped in such long-range prophecies without elaboration and sometimes without a close topic-connection with its surroundings. Thus, we take this to be a prediction of New Testament inspiration.

Proverbs 1:24. Wisdom again speaks. A pause may be imagined, and seems to be implied between this and the preceding verses (22 and 23), when the address passes into a new phasefrom that of invitation and promise to that of judgment and stern denunciation (Pulpit Commentary). Other passages on God calling and speaking but men refusing to hearken: Isaiah 65:12; Isaiah 66:4; Jeremiah 7:13; Zechariah 7:11.

Proverbs 1:25. Set at nought means to treat as nothing. Men who reject God's counsel (His instructions, commandments, and prohibitions) usually do not listen to His reproof (correction of their ways) either. This verse's last statement is also found in Proverbs 1:30. Luke 7:30 says, The Pharisees and the lawyers rejected for themselves the counsel of God, being not baptized of him (John the Baptist). Why do men act as if they know more than God? Or, as if they don-'t have to bow down to God? Whatever the reason, it is both wrong and ruinous!

Proverbs 1:26. That such a day of calamity is coming for the wicked is rightfully assumed. It is coming! Those who lack the fear of Jehovah and the wisdom that it brings (Proverbs 1:7) will finally end up in a fear that they cannot escape! The terrific nature of the punishment of the wicked is marked by a succession of terms all of terrible importcalamity, fear, desolation, destruction, distress and anguish (Proverbs 1:26-27) (Pulpit Commentary). Wisdom here (and Jehovah in Psalms 2:4) is represented as laughing and mocking when such deserved calamity comes. Actually judgment will but return men's laughing and mocking upon them.

Proverbs 1:27. What can be more fearful than overpowering storms in nature? These are used to depict the fear, distress, and anguish that will come upon those who have refused to follow wisdom's counsel. All of this was unforeseen when they were scoffing and refusing to listen to sound instruction.

Proverbs 1:28. Now they will turn by the hardships that come upon them even though they wouldn-'t turn in obedience to Proverbs 1:23. When men begin to reap the results of their own foolish choices, it does very little good to cry to God in the day of judgment! Other passages on His not listening to them and their cries: Job 27:9; Isaiah 1:15; Jeremiah 11:11; Jeremiah 14:12; Ezekiel 8:18. Oh, the desperation of calling when no one will answer! Had they sought God and wisdom diligently, they would have found a rich reward (Hebrews 11:6).

Proverbs 1:29. The reasons for their calamities are here given: they had hated knowledge, and this helped bring the downfall of the Northern Kingdom (My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou has rejected knowledge, I will also reject theeHosea 4:6), and they did not choose the fear of Jehovah (Job said the wicked say to God, Depart from us; For we desire not the knowledge of thy waysJob 21:14). Proverbs 1:22 also spoke of their hating knowledge.

Proverbs 1:30. Further reasons for their calamities: they had refused God's way (counsel) and had despised all the reproof He had sent them because of their disobedient ways. This verse is a restatement of Proverbs 1:25.

Proverbs 1:31. Just as Galatians 6:7 says people will reap what they have sown, so this verse says the wicked will eat what they have planted (Proverbs 1:22); in judgment God will laugh, God will mock (Proverbs 1:26). When we are punished, the blameworthiness lies not with God, but with us sinners (Pulpit Commentary).

Proverbs 1:32. The simple referred to in Proverbs 1:22 are here pictured as backslidingas fools they will return to their folly (as a dog that returneth to his vomit, So is a fool that repeateth his follyProverbs 26:11; If, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the last state is become worse with them than the first...It has happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog turneth to his own vomit again, and the sow that had washed to wallowing in the mire2 Peter 2:20-22). For careless ease destroying one, consider the Rich Fool of Luke 12:19-20: I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, be merry. But God said unto him, Thou foolish one, this night is thy soul required of thee). The beginning of sin is confidence (Proverbs 1:13); the end of sin is destruction (this verse).

Proverbs 1:33. In contrast to the wicked this verse sets forth the security of the righteous who have hearkened to wisdom: The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever (1 John 2:17); What man is he that feareth Jehovah? He shall be instructed in the way that he shall choose. His soul shall dwell at ease; And his seed shall inherit the land (Psalms 25:12-13); He shall never be moved; The righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance. He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: His heart is fixed, trusting in Jehovah (Psalms 112:6-7). Evil here is used in the sense of trouble.

STUDY QUESTIONS OVER 1:20-33

1.

What is wisdom as personified busy doing (Proverbs 1:20)?

2.

What are some of the places where wisdom is crying today (Proverbs 1:21)?

3.

What question was raised in Proverbs 1:22?

4.

In Proverbs 1:23 what was wisdom trying to get the disobedient to do?

5.

Cite a passage where God called, but they did not listen (Proverbs 1:24).

6.

What is the difference between counsel and reproof (Proverbs 1:25)?

7.

Why will wisdom laugh and mock in the day of the foolish people's calamities (Proverbs 1:26)?

8.

How is the fear that comes upon the disobedient pictured (Proverbs 1:27)?

9.

Will these who once mocked in time call (Proverbs 1:28)?

10.

What reasons are given in Proverbs 1:29-30 for their destruction?

11.

According to Proverbs 1:31 their judgment will only visit what upon them?

12.

In what other verse are fools and backsliding put together (Proverbs 1:32)?

13.

On what subject does the chapter close (Proverbs 1:33)?

THE HUMAN TONGUE

Of all the subjects that can be named, the subject of the tongue is one that needs to be considered the most. This important part of our bodies can get so far out of line at times, and the terrible havoc that the tongue has done cannot be completely recorded. On the other hand, the good that has been done through words is likewise inestimable.
Exclusive of Proverbs, when preachers go to the Bible to prepare messages on the tongue, the book of James, the book of Ephesians, and the book of Matthew are among the chief sources of material. But, Proverbs discusses this subject more fully than any other book of the Bibleso much that all the material found elsewhere in the Bible does not nearly equal the material found alone in it.

FROM THE 7th CHAPTER

The writer tells of a sad scene that he once beheld: For at the window of my house I looked through my casement, and beheld among the simple ones, I discerned among the youths, a young man void of understanding, passing through the street near her corner and he went the way to her house, in the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night: and, behold, there met him a woman with the attire of an harlot and subtil of heart...She caught him, and kissed him, and with an impudent face said unto him, I have peace offerings with me; this day have I payed my vows. Therefore came I forth to meet thee, diligently to seek thy face, and I have found thee (Proverbs 1:6-15), and the following verses show her enticing words, I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry, with carved works, with fine linen of Egypt. I have perfumed by bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning: let us solace ourselves with loves (Proverbs 1:16-18). Then she goes on to assure him that he need not fear about her husband coming home: For the goodman is not at home, he is gone a long journey: he hath taken a bag of money with him, and will come home at the day appointed (Proverbs 1:19-20). Oh the sadness in the next verses: With her much fair speech she caused him to yield, with the flattering of her lips she forced him. He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks; till a dart strike through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life (Proverbs 1:21-23). What is the lesson? Listen to the next verses: Hearken unto me now therefore, O ye children, and attend to the words of my mouth. Let not thine heart decline to her ways, go not astray in her paths. For she hath cast down many wounded: yea, many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.