Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Proverbs 5:12
And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;
More bitter than slavery, poverty, disease, will be the bitterness of self-reproach, the hopeless remorse that worketh death.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Pro 5:12
And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof.
Conscience as an instrument of punishment
These are supposed to be the words of a young man whose dissolute life had induced disease and want and infamy. He stands out upon the dim verge of life, a beacon light to all who live without God. Remorse, like a fierce vulture, had clutched upon his soul, and despair had cast the shadows of a cheerless night around him. It was from his moral reflections that his keenest anguish arose.
I. The natural authority of conscience, and its consequent power to inflict punishment.
1. If we would appreciate the capacity of the soul to suffer through the morbid action of the moral feelings, we must first understand its internal structure, its several faculties and powers. Man is endowed with various powers of reason, of sensibility, and of action. Of the principles of action, some are mechanical, as instinct and habit; some are animal, as the appetites and some of the desires and affections; and others rational, arising from a knowledge of his relations to other beings, and from a foresight of the proper consequences of his acts. He thus combines in his nature those laws which govern the brute creation with those which declare him to be made in the image of God, and suit him to a state of moral discipline. With this complex nature he is endowed with the power of self-government, which implies the due exercise of all the properties of his being, under the direction and control of one supreme authority. This authority is conscience, which God has enthroned in the human breast with all the attributes of sovereignty. The brute animal rushes on to the gratification of its desires without a thought beyond the immediate object in pursuit. Man brings under his eye the just relations of universal being, chooses and pursues.
2. Consider what a monitor conscience is. It teaches us to perform in good faith, as being right, that which we do; but it does not of itself supply an independent rule of right.
3. The government of conscience is not like that of the animal appetites. Its voice is gentle and persuasive, often drowned in the clamour of passion, or unheeded in the eager pursuit of forbidden pleasure.
4. If conscience is supreme, according to the original constitution of our nature, then, whatever may be the occasional, temporary abuse it may receive from the usurpation of the animal propensities, it must upon the whole, and taking all the range of our existence into the account, possess an ascendant power over man.
5. Go where you will, the natural dread of an accusing conscience will be found to have been the rod of terror to the guilty of all ages. No man will long abide the direct action of self-reproach. The restlessness of the soul, under the action of self-reproach, has displayed itself upon a wide scale in the cumbrous and often sanguinary superstitions of the heathen. We have seen the distress and anguish which a sense of guilt produces in the breast of the awakened sinner.
II. The nature and extent of the punitive action of conscience. In relation to God, a consciousness of guilt is accompanied–
1. With a sense of the loss of Divine favour and fellowship.
2. A sense of guilt is accompanied with an apprehension of punishment. In the breast of every man there exists a belief that this world is under a providential government, from the just awards of which he has something to hope or to fear in a future state of being. In relation to other moral beings, a sense of guilt is accompanied with–
(1) A loss of the confidence and esteem of the holy.
(2) A consciousness of guilt awakens remorse, a complex emotion, consisting of simple regret and moral disapprobation of ones self; in other words, it is moral regret.
Practical considerations:
1. How delusive is that hope of future happiness which, though it is built upon the natural goodness of God, manifested through a Mediator, makes no necessary reckoning of a holy life. It is not in the province of Omnipotence to produce moral happiness in a polluted soul.
2. We here perceive the reasonableness as well as certainty of future punishment. (Freeborn C. Hibbard, M.A.)
Womans lamentation over a wasted life
Women outnumber men in the family, in the Church, in the State, A God-loving, God-fearing womanhood will make a God-loving, God-fearing nationality.
1. A young woman who omits her opportunity of making home happy.
2. A young woman who spends her whole life, or wastes her young womanhood, in selfish display.
3. A young woman who wastes her opportunity of doing good.
4. A young woman who loses her opportunity of personal salvation. Opportunity gone, is gone for ever. Privileges wasted, wasted for ever. The soul lost, lost for ever. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Self-condemnations
I. Sensualists will be self-condemned in the end.
1. Because of the issue of sin in general, which must come to a self-condemnation.
2. Because of the strength of their sorrow arising out of their troubles.
3. Because of the force of truth, which will overcome all in the end.
4. Because of the power of conscience.
II. That which lies sorest upon the spirits of gross sinners in the end is, slighting instruction.
1. Because it is a great mercy for God to afford teachers.
2. Because not hearkening to instruction is the way to fall into sin, and not hearkening to reproof the way to abide in it.
III. Wicked men heartily hate instruction and slight reproof.
1. Because they are contrary to their corrupt affections and wicked lusts.
2. It appears that they heartily hate them by the malice they bear to the reprovers of their sins, which is vehement and deadly. Their lusts are so strong on them that they hate and slight all reproofs. (Francis Taylor, B.D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
How have I hated instruction! oh what a mad beast have I been, to hate and slight the fair warnings which were given me, and against mine own knowledge, to run headlong into this pit of destruction! which are not the words of a true penitent mourning for and turning from his sin, but only of a man who is grieved for the sad effects of his delightful lusts, and tormented with the horror of his own guilty conscience.
My heart despised reproof; I did with my whole heart abhor all admonitions.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
12-14. The ruined sinner vainlylaments his neglect of warning and his sad fate in being brought topublic disgrace.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And say, how have I hated instruction,…. To live virtuously, and avoid the adulterous woman; this he says, as wondering at his stupidity, folly, and madness, that he should hate and abhor that which was so much his interest to have observed. Gersom interprets it of the instruction of the law; but it is much better to understand it of the instruction of the Gospel; which the carnal mind of man is enmity unto, and which they are so stupid as to abhor; when it is of so much usefulness to preserve from error and heresy, superstition, will worship, and idolatry;
and my heart despised reproof; for following the whorish woman; and which was secretly despised in the heart, and heartily too, if not expressed with the mouth: it is one part of the Gospel ministry to reprove for false doctrine and false worship, though it generally falls under the contempt of the erroneous and idolatrous.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The poet now tells those whom he warns to hear how the voluptuary, looking back on his life-course, passes sentence against himself.
12 And thou sayest, “Why have I then hated correction,
And my heart despised instruction!
13 And I have not listened to the voice of my teachers,
Nor lent mine ear to my instructors?
14 I had almost fallen into every vice
In the midst of the assembly and the congregation!”
The question 12a (here more an exclamation than a question) is the combination of two: How has it become possible for me? How could it ever come to it that…. Thus also one says in Arab.: Kyf f’alat hadha (Fl.). The regimen of in 12b is becoming faint, and in 13b has disappeared. The Kal (as Pro 1:30; Pro 15:5) signifies to despise; the Piel intensively, to contemn and reject (R. , pungere ).
Pro 5:13 signifies to cleave to anything in hearing, as is to do so in seeing; yet more closely corresponds with the classic , obedire , e.g., Psa 81:9; is the usual phrase for “hearken!”
Pro 5:14 with the perf. following is equivalent to: it wanted but a little that this or that should happen, e.g., Gen 26:10. It is now for the most part thus explained: it wanted but a little, and led astray by that wicked companionship I would have been drawn away into crime, for which I would then have been subjected to open punishment (Fl.). Ewald understands directly of punishment in its extreme form, stoning; and Hitzig explains by “the totality of evil,” in so far as the disgraceful death of the criminal comprehends in it all other evils that are less. But means, either, into every evil, misfortune, or into every wickedness; and since , in contradistinction to (Hitzig compares Eze 36:5), is a conception of a species, then the meaning is equivalent to in omni genere mali . The reference to the death-punishment of the adulteress is excluded thereby, though it cannot be denied that it might be thought of at the same time, if he who too late comes to consider his ways were distinctly designated in the preceding statements as an adulterer. But it is on the whole a question whether is meant of the evil which follows sin as its consequence. The usage of the language permits this, cf. 2Sa 16:8; Exo 5:19; 1Ch 7:23; Psa 10:6, but no less the reference to that which is morally bad, cf. Exo 32:22 (where Keil rightly compares with 1Jo 5:19); and (for which in the first case one expected , I fell into, vid., Pro 13:17; Pro 17:20; Pro 28:14) is even more favourable to the latter reference. Also (cf. on the heaping together of synonyms under 11b), this paraphrase of the palam ac publice , with its (cf. Psa 111:1; 2Ch 20:14), looks rather to a heightening of the moral self-accusation. He found himself in all wickedness, living and moving therein in the midst of the congregation, and thereby giving offence to it, for he took part in the external worship and in the practices of the congregation, branding himself thereby as a hypocrite. That by the one name the congregation is meant in its civil aspect, and by the other in its ecclesiastical aspect, is not to be supposed: in the congregation of the people of the revealed law, the political and the religious sides are not so distinguished. It is called without distinction and (from ). Rather we would say that is the whole ecclesia , and the whole of its representatives; but also the great general council bears sometimes the one name (Exo 12:3, cf. 21) and sometimes the other (Deu 31:30, cf. 28) – the placing of them together serves thus only to strengthen the conception.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
(12) How have I hated instruction.The last stage of misery is the remorse which comes too late. (Comp. Mat. 25:30.)
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
12, 13. How have I The repentance and lamentation here exhibited are of the bitterest kind. “In the line of my duty,” says Dr. A. Clarke, “I have often been called to the deathbeds of such persons, whose groans and shrieks were incessant through the jaculating pains in their bones and flesh.” Let youth beware; once entered on this foul course, recovery is almost hopeless.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
DISCOURSE: 765
SINNERS RETROSPECT
Pro 5:12-13. How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!
A TIME of reflection must come to all: if men shake off all thought till the hour of death, they will not be able to do so when once the soul is separated from the body: their ways will then be brought to remembrance: and all the powers of their minds be fixed upon the contemplation of them. Happily, with many this season arrives before it is too late: and, not unfrequently, the very enormities which have been committed are the means of exciting in the soul a salutary remorse. Sometimes the present consequences of sin press heavily upon the mind, and awaken the energies of a sleepy conscience. Thus Solomon supposes many to be affected after they have brought trouble on themselves by their licentious courses: and he urges this very consideration as an argument for guarding against all temptations to sin, that, however pleasurable a life of sin may be, the retrospect will be painful in the extreme: and the now thoughtless debauchee will mourn at the last, in the review of the mercies he has abused, and will say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof!
We shall not confine our attention to the particular subject treated of in the context, though in every congregation, it is to be feared, there are but too many to whom it would be applicable: but shall rather take occasion from our text to set before you in a more enlarged view,
I.
The sinners retrospect
That we may bring home the subject to every mans bosom, we shall consider men under two distinct classes;
1.
Those who already feel some painful consequences of their past conduct
[Amongst these we must first notice the persons more immediately referred to in our text, namely, those who have wasted their property, and injured their constitution, in habits of criminal indulgence [Note: ver. 911.]. What reason for regret have they! How glad would they now be, if they had restrained their appetites, and not purchased a momentary gratification at so high a price! Next to these we may mention the spendthrift, and the gamester, who through covetousness or the love of pleasure have dissipated their fortune, and involved themselves in ruin. How common is it for persons so circumstanced to destroy their own lives, and to seek in suicide a remedy for the evils they have entailed upon themselves! To these we may add the persons who by any disgraceful act have blasted their reputation, and rendered themselves obnoxious to just reproach: to such the seasons of reflection are bitter. They attempt perhaps to divert their thoughts by business or pleasure; but they can never cease to rue the day in which they brought upon themselves so heavy a calamity. There are times when all who have entailed misery on themselves will bring to mind the instructions given them in early youth; and then they will, inwardly at least, complain, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof!]
2.
Those who, though they feel no present pain arising from their sins, are yet sensible that they have not answered the great ends of life
[The necessity of turning unto God, and the means of acceptance with God through the atonement of Christ, have been distinctly set forth from time to time; so that, supposing persons to have diligently attended to the word that has been preached to them, and to have mixed faith with it, it would have been impossible for them to have continued in the ways of sin and death. But how many are at this moment as far from God as they were years ago! How many have reason to regret that they have ever heard the Gospel, which, instead of being a savour of life to them, has, through their neglect of it, been made a savour of death unto death! Our blessed Lord told his hearers, that if he had never come to instruct them, they would not, comparatively, have had sin; but that now they had no cloak for their sin. So must it be said to many amongst us: that having been exalted to heaven in their privileges, they have reason to expect that they shall, with Capernaum, be cast the deeper into hell for their abuse of them. It is a small matter that their sins have not been such as to expose them to shame and reproach among men: their neglect of Christ, their want of love to his name, and of zeal in his service, must be reckoned for at the last day, when he will say, Bring hither those that were mine enemies, who would not that I should reign over them, and slay them before me. O painful retrospect! O afflictive prospect! Brethren, take a review of your past lives; and seek the things belonging to your peace, before they be for ever hid from your eyes.]
What then remains to be done by these distinct, but perishing, classes? To both the one and the other we would say, Consider,
II.
The sinners alternative
There is but one alternative for any child of man: we must either attend to the voice of instruction given us in the Gospel, or we must carry with us unchanging and unavailing remorse into the eternal world.
Are we willing to spend eternity in self-condemning reflections!
[They must follow us, if we die in our sins. God himself will remind us of the benefits which here we neglected to improve: Son, remember, that thou in thy life-time hadst such and such advantages. What anguish of mind will be occasioned by such thoughts as these; I once had the same offers of salvation, as they had who are now before the throne of God: I enjoyed the same heavenly instruction as they; but I despised it, and would not hear the voice of the charmer, how wisely soever he endeavoured to charm me! This will be the ground of our heavier condemnation, that light came into the world, but that we loved darkness rather than light, because our deeds were evil: and our reflections upon this will be a never-dying worm, gnawing our conscience to all eternity. Whether our sins were more or less flagrant, this will be the source of our greatest torment, that we despised the instructions given us in the Gospel, and trampled under foot that very Son of God who came into the world to seek and save us.]
If we would not spend an eternity in these bitter reflections, we must now attend to the things which are revealed to us in the Gospel
[If our teachers speak out of their own minds, we may refuse to hearken to them: but, if they speak to us the very word of God, then it is at our peril to turn a deaf ear to their instructions. The word of God is sufficient to make us wise unto salvation through faith in Christ. It bids us flee to Christ, as to a strong hold, where we shall be safe from the assaults of sin and Satan. It assures us, that Christ is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him; that his blood will cleanse us from all sin; that his grace is sufficient for us; and that he will cast out none who come unto him. Follow these directions, and you are safe: give yourselves up to him; live altogether by faith upon him; improve for his glory the grace which you receive out of his fulness; and you have nothing to fear. Instead of remorse and sorrow, you shall be filled with peace and joy. In the midst of life it shall be a matter of rejoicing to you, that you have the testimony of a good conscience; in a dying hour you shall look back with comfort in the thought of having fought a good fight, and finished your course, and kept the faith; and to all eternity shall you glory in the mercies and privileges which you here enjoyed [Note: Rev 1:5.].
Here then is your alternative: Despise this instruction, and you shall perish: Obey it, and you shall live for ever.]
Advice
1.
Endeavour to view every thing in the light of eternity
[If you think of time only, the value of present enjoyments will be unduly magnified: but think of eternity, and nothing will be deemed important but the salvation of the soul ]
2.
Endeavour so to spend each day, as you will wish you had spent it, when you shall be standing at the judgment-seat of Christ
[We know what the wishes are of men who are condemned to death for their violations of the law: and we may be sure that such will be our wishes when we are summoned to meet our Judge: O that I had lived a very different life! Now then cleave unto Christ with full purpose of heart, and devote yourselves to him without reserve. So shall you behold his face in peace, and be partakers of his glory for evermore.]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
Pro 5:12 And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;
Ver. 12. And say, How have I hated, &c. ] When cast out with the prodigal, and hath nothing left him but a diseased body, a distressed soul, then, all too late, he fills the air with doleful complaints of his former folly, and cries out, as he did, Totum vitae meae tempus perdidi, quia perdite vixi. a Oh, what a wretch, what a beast, what a maddened devil was I, so woefully to waste the fat and marrow of my dear and precious time, the flower of mine age, the strength of my body, the vigour of my spirits, the whole of mine estate, in sinful pleasures and sensual delights! Lo, here is a kind of repentance which, though late, yet, if it were true, would be accepted, b The mole, they say, begins to see when he dies, and not till then. Oculos incipit aperire moriendo, quos clausos habuit vivendo. c But it is a rare thing, and seldom seen, that any whoremonger doth truly repent. “One such man among a thousand have I found,” saith Solomon – perhaps he meant himself – “but a woman among all those have I not found.” Ecc 7:28 And yet Scultetus tells us that Dr Speiser, minister of Ansborough, in Germany, preached there so powerfully, that the common harlots, there tolerated, left their filthy trade of life, and became very honest women. d
And my heart despised reproof
a Bernard.
b Nunquam sero si serio.
c Tostat. ex Plinio.
d Anno 1523. Scultet., Annal. p. 118.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
How: Pro 1:7, Pro 1:22, Pro 1:29, Pro 1:30, Pro 15:5, Psa 50:17, Psa 73:22, Zec 7:11-14, Joh 3:19, Joh 3:20
and my: Pro 1:25, Pro 6:23, Pro 12:1, Pro 13:18, Gen 19:9, Exo 2:13, Exo 2:14, 2Ch 24:20-22, 2Ch 25:16, 2Ch 33:10, 2Ch 33:11, 2Ch 36:16, Jer 44:4, Zec 1:4-6
Reciprocal: Lev 26:15 – soul 1Sa 25:31 – grief 1Ki 22:8 – Let not the Pro 8:36 – all Pro 10:17 – he that Pro 10:21 – fools Pro 15:10 – and he Pro 15:32 – refuseth Pro 30:2 – brutish Jer 17:23 – nor Jer 36:23 – he cut Zep 3:2 – correction Act 13:41 – ye despisers Rom 1:28 – as they did