Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Proverbs 8:36

But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death.

36. sinneth against] Or, “ misseth,” R.V. marg. The Heb. word here used means primarily to miss the mark (as, for example, a slinger, Jdg 20:16). Then it is used commonly for missing the mark, or erring from the way, morally, i.e. sinning. Comp. the use of in Greek.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Pro 8:36

He that sinneth against Me wrongeth him own soul.

The sinner wrongeth his own soul

I. What are we to understand by a man sinning against Christ?

1. To take partial views of His glorious gospel.

2. When He would wreathe His gentle yoke about our necks, to kick at the restraint, and refuse it.

3. To coldly hear the offers of His grace, and grieve His Holy Spirit in not fully and spiritually accepting them.

II. How can we be said to hate the only being who can save us? This expression seems wholly inconsistent with the natural dispositions of men. Yet as a fact, men may be seen all around us loving the ways of death.

1. We may be said to love death when we suffer and encourage our desires to go forth and loiter about the precincts of it. The thoughts and desires of a man tell us what he is.

2. We love the captivity of death when we make but few and faint efforts to break the chains of it.

III. How does a sinner who loves death wrong his own soul?

1. He does it by choosing to be a beggar in the midst of riches.

2. He does it when he treats his soul as a fleeting mortal thing. We do it great wrong when we labour to fill it with too much of the creature, and with too little of Christ. (F. G. Crossman.)

Sinners wrong themselves

1. They snatch their souls away from wisdom.

2. They spoil (rob) their souls.

3. They infect their souls with the guilt of sin.

4. They corrupt them with the filth of sin.

5. They disgrace their souls.

6. They torment their souls with the pangs of conscience.

7. They betray their souls to sin.

8. They destroy them eternally. (Francis Taylor, B. D.)

Wronging ones self

It would be repugnant to our moral sense to overlook the consequences of sin, and put on the same plane one whose life had been one of spotless purity and a grey-haired sinner who had at the eleventh hour found pardon. Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap is an inflexible law. Notice certain particulars in which the principle is seen.

1. Opportunities are lost. A man wrongs his own soul by the sinful neglect of Gods commands in his early years. Those grand years freighted with golden chances of service for God and humanity, can never be recalled.

2. Moral growth is arrested. You may secure the resumption of arrested processes in a crystal or a plant, but as you ascend the scale of being difficulties increase. In ones moral nature the law we illustrate holds inexorable sway. He that sinneth against God dwarfs, deadens, and stultifies his better faculties. Take a single faculty, like the memory. There is retention as well as reception. The passing thought, the momentary impulse, the fugitive desire we entertain–all these are ours; yea, they are us. We are ever enriching or defacing our moral life through the faculty of memory.

3. Look at the true end of our life here, service for God and our fellow-men. If that service is unrendered, it remains undone for ever.

4. Look at the effects of our sin on others. True religion in a man is that which earnestly and habitually makes for righteousness and holy obedience. If it does not keep from sin, it is not a religion sufficient to save. (H. A. Stimson, D. D.)

Wronging the soul

Of all created things the soul of man most resembles the Deity. It is like Himself in its nature. The soul is a being possessed of volition, with powers of imagining the loftiest themes, of conceiving and working out the most difficult inquiries. The Divine image is still traced upon the soul. It is therefore true that he who sinneth against God sinneth against (wrongeth) his own soul.

I. The Sinner wrongs his own soul in this world, by debasing it. Indulgence in vice wrongs and destroys the moral nature. Even the intellectual faculty is hurt and wronged by sin. Sensuality debases the mind. He who is the slave of sin occupies a lower position in creation than the man who by virtue asserts the high prerogative of nature, who by his goodness and righteousness strives to assimilate his soul to God. He wrongs the soul who makes it subservient to the base requirements of the body. The intellectual faculty will censure sin, and so will the moral faculty. Therefore these properties should be cultivated. The conscience is seared by indulgence in sin, and the Holy Spirit is grieved.

II. Sin wrongs the soul by subjecting it to punishment in the world to come. That this is true is evident from the teaching of nature as well as religion. The mind has reasoned correctly when it wrought out for itself the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and proved an existence beyond the grave. The living being is not the outer frame. Consciousness is perceived to be a simple and indivisible power–an essential property of the mind. The destruction of matter cannot of necessity be considered the destruction of living agents. The destruction of the body and all its organs does not necessarily involve the destruction of the reflecting powers; they may not even be suspended in death. Upon the immortality of the soul philosophy speaks the precepts of religion. Behold, then, the excellency of the soul, and the guilt of him who wrongs it. How is it possible that he who wrongs the heavenly Essence can escape the just judgments of God? But the Christian can realise the dignity of the soul from other considerations. He has the evidence of his own heart. Christianity requires the submission of the whole heart; the acceptance of its mysteries; the noblest self-denial, the most exalted virtue, the highest holiness, the perfection of humanity. But who except the Christian can realise this? From the death-bed of the unbelieving may be learned the misery, here and hereafter, of those who wrong their own soul. (David Ross, B. A.)

The wronged soul

I. The wrong sin does the nature of the soul.

1. Sin is inhuman.

2. Sin is unnatural.

3. Sin is the degradation of human nature.

II. The wrong sin does the capacities of the soul. The soul of man is a great capacity for God. There is no punishment worse than the habit of sin, which comes from sinning. To do wrong is worse than to suffer any calamity. Pain is soon over, misfortune is for a moment, calamity is temporary. But sin is permanent. It does an irreparable injury to the soul. It keeps man out of his heritage. It defeats the end for which man was made. God made us in His image.

III. The wrong sin does the power of the soul.

1. The conscience, which is that power of the soul by which we recognise the moral quality of actions.

2. Sin also wrongs the will. Sin enfeebles man at the most vital part of his nature. Sin wrongs the soul in every faculty and power. Conclusion:

(1) Of all evils that man can know or suffer, sin is the worst.

(2) The sinner makes his own hereafter. Remember that heaven is a holy soul in a holy place.

(3) I cannot, I dare not, close without a word of hope for any troubled and penitent soul. (S. Z. Batten.)

The self-destroyer

The particular truth of the text is, that sin is not only an offence to God, whom no man hath seen or can see, but it is a distinct and irreparable injury to the man, the sinner himself. And that is the only way to get hold of man. Tell a man that by sinning he is hurting the unseen God, and what does he care? You can only get hold of a man in so far as any truth you teach or any requisite you demand impinges upon himself. Touch the little Self and you have put a hook in the nose of leviathan. God can make you possess in your bones the effects of your moral action. (J. Parker, D. D.)

The wrong done to the soul by unbelief

I. Unbelief, or a sinners not believing, accepting, closing with, and resting on Christ for salvation, is the sin against Christ by way of eminency. What treatment of Christ is it that is this sinning against Him? There is a doctrinal and a practical treatment of Him. Living ignorant of Christ and the fundamental truths of the gospel. Living insensible of our absolute need of Christ. Not believing the doctrines of the gospel. Of this treatment of Christ there are two evidences: their not seeking Him with the utmost diligence; their seeking life and salvation some other way–the way of the covenant of works or the way of uncovenanted mercy.

II. Confirm this doctrine.

1. Faith in Christ is honouring Him in a special manner; therefore unbelief must be a special dishonour.

2. Unbelief is the great Antichrist in the heart, sitting up there in downright opposition to the Son of God.

3. This sin engrosses the whole soul to itself against Christ.

4. It is the sin that ruins the hearers of the gospel, with whom Christ has to do.

5. It is equal to the grossest sins against the light of nature.

6. It is above these sins in heinousness.

7. It has none that goes beyond it but the sin against the Holy Ghost.

8. It is a sin directly striking against the glorious office wherewith Christ is invested, and while He is in the actual exercise of that office.

III. Unbelief is sin against christ by way of eminency, and this appears from a view of some particular pieces of malignity wrapped up therein.

1. It is a despising Him as the Fathers choice.

2. It is a trampling of His love in taking the mediatory office.

3. It is a treating of Him as if He were an impostor.

4. It is a contempt poured upon His precious blood.

5. It is a frustrating of the ends of the death of Christ, as far as lies in the unbelievers power.

6. It is a declining of His government most reproachfully. From this doctrine learn lessons for saints, for sinners, for all.

IV. The sinner Against Christ by unbelief wrongs his own soul.

1. Wrongs his own soul really. He does in very deed do hurt and bring damage to himself, body and soul. He keeps his soul in a state of alienation from God. He keeps his soul under the guilt of all his sins. In a state of inability to do what is good or acceptable in the sight of God. It fixes the soul in a state of condemnation.

2. Wrongs his own soul only; not Christ whom he sins against. All sin is against the mind and honour of Christ, but no sin is against His happiness. (T. Boston, D. D.)

The indignity of sin

There are various definitions of sins, each one of which is true according to our standpoint. If we regard sin as a violation of mans true destiny, which destiny we read not only in Gods loving command, but also in the very law of mans own being, then sin is the transgressing of the law. If we regard sin as variation from the right, the good, the true, then sin is unrighteousness. If we regard sin as the negation of mans true nature as a spiritual being, and the identifying of him with the things of sense, then sin is materialism. If we regard sin as the fixing of the affections–affections that were intended for glories beyond the stars–upon the perishing thing of this world, then sin is worldliness. And, finally, if we regard sin as the failure or refusal of the soul to apprehend and confide in the unseen, then sin is unbelief. But it is always the one and self-same thing, the same grim and ghastly thing–in the godless man of the world, and the ruffian who outrages law, and the smooth libertine and vulgar thief; in the respectable atheist who says there is no God, and the brave outlaw who lives his creed and acts upon his belief. For, while sins differ, sin–the evil root out of which all sins proceed–is the same. Sins are but symptoms; the disease called sin lies deeper in the soul. And oh! it is an awful thought, well calculated to humble us all into the very dust, that no matter what our sins may be–no matter how decent, how respectable, how secret–they each and all proceed out of the same fell disorder as the sins of the veriest wretch who outrages mans laws and exhausts mans patience by his wickedness! And now that sin has been traced to its last analysis, let us consider its results on the soul. It was Wisdom that of old spoke the words of my text, and her voice is still uplifted among the sons of men, He that sinneth against Me wrongeth his own soul. It is true that he wrongs the souls of others also. But it is not of this that I now speak. The worst wrong, the deepest indignity, is done to the soul that commits the sin.

1. He wrongs his soul by the degradation he inflicts upon it, the evil that he scatters through it. The soul comes as a new creation from God. It is enshrined in a body that inherits evil–evil propensities, insurgent affections; and it has a hard struggle at best, and cannot win the victory but by the help of God. But the man who sins makes a voluntary surrender of the nobler to the baser part, and so appropriates the frailty of the baser nature, and makes it a part of his souls being. Each sin by a certain reflex action spreads disorder through mans whole nature. In this way the very bodily appetite may become the appetite also of the soul. Oh, grim and ghastly are the evils which sin inflicts upon the body! It dulls the eye, and palsies the hand, and banishes manly grace from the brow, and coarsens and brutalises the human face Divine. But something far more dreadful than this befalls the sinner. The soul takes on the vice of the body. The worst symptom of drunkenness, for instance, is not the craving of the body, but the craving of the soul. The soul of the inebriate begins to crave the false excitement of drink, and an obliquity corresponding to that of the body begins to set up in the soul. The eye of the drunkard sees false or sees double: the minds eye begins to see false also. And so it comes to pass that the soul of the drunkard becomes untruthful. This is the reason that men cannot trust the word of a drunkard. So also the deadly sin of impurity. The very mind and conscience become defiled. The mind panders to the body. Oh, horrible degradation! And so we find that there is a correspondence and correlation between different kinds of sin. The sensual man is always a cruel man. The drunkard is a liar. The thief is simply covetous and selfish, just like the worldling and the miser. In all these things mans whole nature is shamed and dishonoured. In all his being he is degraded and coarsened by his sin.

2. And this becomes all the more evident when we examine the wrong which sin does to mans characteristic powers. And first, his intellectual faculties, his reason, his power to know. It is a great and awful truth, little heeded, little understood, that all the powers of mans intellect are blunted and weakened by sin. Who has not seen the splendour of some lordly intellect first dimmed, then obscured, by excess or folly, until its fitful light would blaze at intervals, and then go out in piteous darkness, or fade into still more pitiable imbecility? But even more pitiable, if possible, is it to see the royal intellect of man forced into the base service of the world, and compelled to drudge like a very slave in the interest of sordid vice, or avarice, or other selfishness. Who does not know how such intellect declines into trickery or beastly cunning, and it watches like a fox for a chance to deceive, or like a predatory beast to seize its prey? To such a man high thoughts and noble purposes become simply impossible. Not less disastrous and dishonouring is the influence of sin on mans moral nature–on his power to discriminate and choose between right and wrong. Of the debilitating effect of sin upon the will of man I need not speak at length. All observation and all experience prove that this is its immediate, unvarying, inevitable effect. He who once yields to do wrong will find it harder the next time to do right, until he speedily becomes powerless to choose God and resist evil. But of the darkening, paralysing effect of sin upon a moral sense not so much is commonly thought, though such effect is not less immediate and inevitable. The moral sense, which at first is quick to discriminate, begins, under the pressure of sin, to lose the keenness of perception. The high sense of honour and of truthfulness is dulled. The good seems to be less good, and the evil does not seem to be so very evil, until at last that soul calls evil good and good evil. Woe to the soul that is in such a case! He has abdicated his throne, and lost his regal state, and broken his sceptre, and flung away his crown. Finally, even more debasing is the effect of sin upon the affections. This would seem to be the worst degradation of all–that man should not only sin his intellect and will and conscience away, but that he should love his shame, that his soul should be enamoured of its degradation. And yet, who does not know that even this is the effect of sin? Through it men learn to love the base things of this world and lose the power to love the nobler things. What is life to such a soul but shame? What shall death be but the beginning of an eternal bereavement? One word in conclusion. All the effects of sin may be summed up in one dreadful word–death. The dying of the soul, the decay of its faculties, the languishing of its strength–the progressive unending dying of an immortal soul, with all its unending anguish of unsatisfied tonging, unfulfilled desire, baffled hope, pitiless remorse, remediless desire–this is the dread reality at which men ought to tremble. It is no chimera of imagination; it is no spectre of the future–it is a present reality. It is doing its ghastly work even now in every soul where sin reigns. For the soul that sins is dying. The wages of sin is death. (Bp. S. S. Harris.)

The self-hurt of sin

Wisdom, as used here, is the law of God concerning human life and conduct, and sin is the transgression of that law. The text, not in a spirit of haughty denunciation, but with sad and kindly warning, declares that he who transgresses that law wrongs his own soul, is the author of his own sorrow and suffering and loss. Gods laws, under His immediate direction, work out the penalty of their own violation; in part here, fully hereafter. All Gods purposes in us are accomplished by the operation of beneficent law. To break the law is to thwart His purposes, and bring the ruin which naturally follows such a course. The law of the piano is, that its strings shall be tuned in harmony, and that under the skilful touch of the key light-cushioned hammers shall strike them so that they give out genuine music. But if you fail to tune them in harmony, and then, lifting the lid, strike them with iron hammers, you get discord and destruction. You have transgressed the law of the piano. The law of the watch is to submit to balance-wheel and regulator; take off the one and misplace the other, and your watch reports falsely all the time. You have transgressed its law. The law of the circulation of the blood is from heart to artery, capillary, and back again by the veins; and as it goes it repairs waste, carries off useless matter, and gives health and strength. But if you open an artery and send the blood outside its course, you die. You have transgressed the law. How sinful and self-destructive, then, is the violation of law, and how fatally does he who thus sins wrong his own soul!

I. Sin against spiritual law.

1. The law of nutrition. Hunger, flavour, and the delight of the palate are Gods arrangements for insuring the taking of proper food to repair the waste and supply the growth of the body. Break the law, and eat for the sake of pleasing the palate or increasing sociability, then indigestion, dulness, sleeplessness at night and sluggishness by day follow. Who shall estimate the sin against the temple of the soul?

2. The nervous system. Its motor power is intended to carry messages from the mind to the muscles, ordering work done and motion performed. Properly governed and temperately used, what usefulness, health, and abundance of valuable labour accomplished may result! Abuse it, and exhaustion, prostration, paralysis follow.

II. The spiritual hurt.

1. To the truth-perceiving faculties. The judgment and reason, acting under the restraint of a pure conscience, leads to the truth in a thousand ways: in business, society, pleasure, habits, indulgences–in all necessary things–and the life is guided in righteousness and wisdom. But let unholy ambition, improper desire for gain, any form of wicked selfishness, get control of these faculties, and how they become warped, blinded, and misguided!

2. To the power of self-control. This is the battle of growing evil habits against the will–growing more and more impatient of restraint, more and more defiant of conscience and will, till appetite, strengthened into habit, leads manhood captive and blots out every hope and joy.

3. To the religious nature. Properly acted upon by the Holy Spirit, it becomes Gods audience-chamber in the soul; the natal chamber of the holiest purposes; the place where the strength comes which gives martyr-power. Sinned against, the demons of superstition, distrust, hatred of good, vile affections, scepticism, and cold, dark atheism come in to torment the soul. To the joys of memory and hope. Every life gathers up all its past and holds it in its present possession for evermore by faithful memory; and if that past be one of holy purpose and noble endeavour, every record it holds will be a joy for ever; its pains will turn to pleasure, its hardships to victories, its struggles to triumphs. But if its records be of deceit and dishonesty, of lust and recklessness, then remorse pours her bitterness into every recollection.

III. He that sins against wisdom interferes with Gods purposes for his future. God has great ambitions for us.

1. He would build in us a noble character. Sin defeats His wish, and makes us in character ignoble.

2. He would make us useful; sin makes us hurtful to others.

3. He would make us happy; sin makes us wretched, utterly and for ever.

4. He would have us grow in spiritual beauty, symmetry, and power; sin deforms, enfeebles, and mars our being. (C. N. Sims, D. D.)

The wrong which sin does to human nature

The sinner does a wrong, indeed, to others. Sin is, to all the dearest interests of society, a desolating power. It brings misery into the daily lot of millions. But all the injury, great and terrible as it is, which the sinner does or can inflict upon others, is not equal to the injury that he inflicts upon himself. Does any one say he is glad that it is himself that he injures most? What a feeling of disinterested justice is that! Because he has not only wronged others, but ruined himself, is his course any the less guilty, or unhappy, or unnatural? I say unnatural; and this is a point on which I wish to insist, in the consideration of that wrong which the moral offender does to himself. The world, alas! is not only in the awful condition of being filled with sin, and filled with misery in consequence, but of thinking that this is the natural order of things. Sin is a thing of course; it is taken for granted that it must exist very much in the way that it does; and men are everywhere easy about it, as if they were acting out the principles of their moral constitution, and almost as if they were fulfilling the will of God.

1. Sin does a wrong to reason. There are instances in which sin, in various forms of vice and vanity, absolutely destroys reason. There are other and more numerous cases in which it employs the faculty, but employs it in a toil most degrading to its nature. There is reasoning, indeed, in the mind of a miser; the solemn arithmetic of profit and loss. There is reasoning in the schemes of unscrupulous ambition; the absorbing and agitating intrigue for office or honour. There is reasoning upon the modes of sensual pleasure; and the whole power of a very acute mind is sometimes employed and absorbed in plans, and projects, and imaginations of evil indulgence. But what an unnatural desecration is it, for reason–sovereign, majestic, all-comprehending reason–to contract its boundless range to the measure of what the hand can grasp; to be sunk so low as to idolise outward or sensitive good; to make its god not indeed of wood or stone, but of a sense or a nerve!

2. Sin is a kind of insanity. So far as it goes, it makes man an irrational creature; it makes him a fool. The consummation of sin is ever, and in every form, the extreme of folly. And it is that most pitiable folly which is puffed up with arrogance and self-sufficiency. The infatuation of the inebriate man, who is elated and gay just when he ought to be most depressed and sad, we very well understand. But it is just as true of every man that is intoxicated by any of his senses or passions, by wealth, or honour, or pleasure, that he is infatuated–that he has abjured reason. What clearer dictate of reason is there than to prefer the greater good to the lesser good? But every offender, every sensualist, every avaricious man, sacrifices the greater good–the happiness of virtue and piety–for the lesser good, which he finds in his senses or in the perishing world. Nor is this the strongest view of the case. He sacrifices the greater for the less, without any necessity for it. He might have both. A pure mind can derive more enjoyment from this world and from the senses than an impure mind. What bad man ever desired that his child should be like himself? And what a testimony is this, what a clear and disinterested testimony, to the unhappiness of a sinful course! How truly, and with what striking emphasis, did the venerable Cranmer reply, when told that a certain man had cheated him: No he has cheated himself.

3. Sin does a wrong to conscience. There is a conscience in every man, which is as truly a part of his nature as reason or memory. The offender against this, therefore, violates no unknown law nor impracticable rule. From the very teaching of his nature he knows what is right, and he knows that he can do it; and his very nature, therefore, instead of furnishing him with apologies for wilful wrong, holds him inexcusable. He will have the desired gratification; and to obtain it he sets his foot upon that conscience, and crushes it down to dishonour and agony worse than death.

4. Sin does a wrong to the affections. How does it mar even that image of the affections, that mysterious shrine from which their revealings flash forth, the human face Divine; bereaving the world of more than half its beauty! Can you ever behold sullenness clouding the clear, fair brow of childhood–or the flushed cheek of anger, or the averted and writhen features of envy, or the dim and sunken eye and haggard aspect of vice, or the red signals of bloated excess hung out on every feature, proclaiming the fire that is consuming within–without feeling that sin is the despoiler of all that the affections make most hallowed and beautiful? But these are only indications of the wrong that is done and the ruin that is wrought in the heart. Nature has made our affections to be full of tenderness; to be sensitive and alive to every touch; to cling to their cherished objects with a grasp from which nothing but cruel violence can sever them. But sin enters into this world of the affections, and spreads around the death-like coldness of distrust; the word of anger falls like a blow upon the heart, or avarice hardens the heart against every finer feeling; or the insane merriment, or the sullen stupor of the inebriate man falls like a thunderbolt amidst the circle of kindred and children. Oh! the hearts where sin is to do its work should be harder than the nether millstone; yet it enters in among affections, all warm, all sensitive, all gushing forth in tenderness; and, deaf to all their pleadings, it does its work as if it were some demon of wrath that knew no pity, and heard no groans, and felt no relenting! (O. Dewey, D. D.)

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Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 36. Wrongeth his own soul] It is not Satan, it is not sin, properly speaking, that hurts him; it is himself. If he received the teaching of God, sin would have no dominion over him; if he resisted the devil, the devil would flee from him.

Love death.] They do it in effect, if not in fact; for as they love sin, that leads to death, so they may be justly said to love death, the wages of sin. He that works in this case, works for wages; and he must love the wages, seeing he labours so hard in the work.

I HAVE gone through this fine chapter, and given the best exposition of it in my power. I have also, as well as others, weighed every word, and closely examined their radical import, their connection among themselves, and the connection of the subject of the chapter with what has gone before, and with what follows after; and I cannot come, conscientiously, to any other interpretation than that which I have given. I am thoroughly satisfied that it speaks not one word either about the Divine or human nature of Christ, much less of any eternal filiation of his Divinity. And I am fully persuaded, had there not been a preconceived creed, no soul of man, by fair criticism, would have ever found out that fond opinion of the eternal sonship of the Divine nature, which so many commentators persuade us they find here. That it has been thus applied in early ages, as well as in modern times, I am sufficiently aware; and that many other portions of the Divine records have been appealed to, in order to support a particular opinion, and many that were false in themselves, must be known to those who are acquainted with the fathers. But many quote them who know nothing of them. As to the fathers in general, they were not all agreed on this subject, some supposing Christ, others the Holy Spirit, was meant in this chapter. But of these we may safely state, that there is not a truth in the most orthodox creed, that cannot be proved by their authority, nor a heresy that has disgraced the Romish Church, that may not challenge them as its abettors. In points of doctrine, their authority is, with me, nothing. The WORD of GOD alone contains my creed. On a number of points I can go to the Greek and Latin fathers of the Church, to know what they believed, and what the people of their respective communions believed; but after all this I must return to God’s word, to know what he would have ME to believe. No part of a Protestant creed stands on the decision of fathers and councils. By appealing to the Bible alone, as the only rule for the faith and practice of Christians, they confounded and defeated their papistical adversaries, who could not prove their doctrines but by fathers and councils. Hence their peculiar doctrines stand in their ultimate proof upon THESE; and those of Protestantism on the BIBLE. Some late writers upon this subject, whose names I spare, have presumed much on what they have said on this subject; but before any man, who seeks for sober truth, will receive any of their conclusions, he will naturally look whether their premises be sound, or whether from sound principles they have drawn legitimate conclusions. They say this chapter is a sufficient foundation to build their doctrine on. I say it is no foundation at all; that it never has been proved, and never can be proved, that it speaks at all of the doctrine in question. It has nothing to do with it. On this conviction of mine, their proofs drawn from this chapter must go with me for nothing. I have been even shocked with reading over some things that have been lately written on the subject. I have said in my heart, They have taken away my ETERNAL LORD, and I know not where they have laid him. I cannot believe their doctrine; I never did; I hope I never shall. I believe in the holy Trinity; in three persons in the Godhead, of which none is before or after another. I believe JEHOVAH, JESUS, the HOLY GHOST to be one infinite, eternal GODHEAD, subsisting ineffably in three persons. I believe Jesus the Christ to be, as to his Divine nature, as unoriginated and eternal as JEHOVAH himself; and with the Holy Ghost to be one infinite Godhead, neither person being created, begotten, nor proceeding, more than another: as to its essence, but one TRINITY, in an infinite, eternal and inseparable UNITY. And this TRIUNE GOD is the object of my faith, my adoration, and my confidence. But I believe not in an eternal sonship or generation of the Divine nature of Jesus Christ. Here I have long stood, here I now stand, and here I trust to stand in the hour of death, in the day of judgment, and to all eternity. Taking the Scriptures in general, I find a plurality in the Divine nature; taking the grand part mentioned, Mt 3:16-17, I find that plurality restrained to a trinity, in the most unequivocal and evident manner: Jesus, who was baptized in Jordan; the HOLY GHOST, who descended upon him who was baptized; and the FATHER, manifested by the VOICE from heaven that said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And how that person called JESUS the CHRIST, in whom dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, could be called the Son of God, I have shown in my note, See Clarke on Lu 1:35.

Some writers, in their defense of the doctrine above, which I venture to say I do not believe, have made reflections, in real or pretended pity, on the belief of their Trinitarian brethren, which have very little to do with candour: viz., “How the supporters of this hypothesis can avoid either the error of Tritheism on the one hand, or Sabellianism on the other, is difficult to conceive.” Now, the supporters of the doctrine of the underived and unbegotten eternity of Christ’s Divine nature might as well say of them: How the supporters of the eternal sonship of Christ can avoid the error of Arianism on the one hand, and Arianism on the other, it is difficult to conceive. But I would not say so; for though I know Arians who hold that doctrine, and express their belief nearly in the same words; yet I know many most conscientious Trinitarians who hold the doctrine of the eternal sonship, and yet believe in the proper deity, or eternal godhead, of Jesus Christ. After all, as a very wise and excellent man lately said: “While we have every reason to be satisfied of the soundness of each other’s faith, we must allow each to explain his own sentiments in his own words: here, in the words used in explanation, a little latitude may be safely allowed.” To this correct sentiment I only add: –

Scimus; et hanc veniam petimusque damusque vicissim. – HORACE.

“I grant it; and the license give and take.” I have passed the waters of strife, and do not wish to recross them: the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. I will have nothing to do with ill-tempered, abusive men; I wish them more light and better manners.

And while I am on this subject, let me add one thing, which I am sure will not please all the generation of his people; and it is this: that Jesus Christ, having taken upon him human nature, which was afterwards crucified, and expired upon the cross, did by those acts make a full, perfect, and sufficient offering, sacrifice, and atonement for the sin of the whole world. That he died, paid down the redemption price, for every soul of man, that was ever born into the world, and shall ever be born into it. That all who lay hold on the hope set before them shall be saved; (and all may thus lay hold;) and none shall perish but those who would not come to Christ that they might have life. And that men perish, not because they were not redeemed, but because they would not accept of the redemption.

To conclude on this subject, it will be necessary to refer the reader to the remarkable opposition that subsists between this and the preceding chapter. There, the prostitute is represented as going out into the streets to seek her prey; and the alluring words of carnal wisdom to excite the animal appetite to sinful gratification, which she uses: here, heavenly wisdom is represented as going out into the streets, to the high places, the gates of the city, to counteract her designs, and lead back the simple to God and truth.

These personifications were frequent among the Jews. In the Book of Ecclesiasticus we find a similar personification, and expressed in almost similar terms; and surely none will suppose that the writer of that Apocryphal book had either the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, or the sonship of Christ in view.

I will give a few passages: –

“WISDOM shall glory in the midst of her people; in the congregation of the Most High shall she open her mouth, and triumph before his power. I came out of the mouth of the Most High, and covered the earth as a cloud. I dwelt in the high places; I alone compassed the circuit of the heaven, and walked in the bottom of the deep, in the waves of the sea, and in all the earth. He created me from the beginning, before the world; and I shall never fail. I am the mother of fair love, and fear, and knowledge, and holy hope. I therefore, being eternal, am given to all my children which are named of him. Come unto me, and fill yourselves with my fruits. I also came out as a brook from a river, and a conduit into a garden,” c., &c., Eccl 24:1, &c. This kind of personification of wisdom we have had in the preceding chapters and in the following chapter we shall find the figure still kept up.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

He that sinneth against me, by the neglect or contempt of or rebellion against my commands,

wrongeth his own soul; is guilty of self-murder and of soul-murder.

They that hate me, i.e. who reject and disobey my counsels, and live wickedly, which in Gods account is a hating of him, as is here implied and elsewhere, as Exo 20:5; Deu 7:10; 32:41.

Love death; not directly or intentionally, but by consequence, because they love those practices which they know will bring certain destruction upon them.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

36. sinneth . . . meorbetter, “missing me,” as opposed to “finding” [Pr8:35].

love deathact as ifthey did (compare Pr 17:9).

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

But he that sinneth against me,…. Or misses the mark, as the word b signifies; and which is observed by Aben Ezra; see

Jud 20:16. Christ is the mark and scope of the counsels of God; of the covenant of grace; of the Scriptures; of the Gospel, the truths and promises of it; of the graces of the Spirit, and of all spiritual duties and services; and to whom we are to look for heaven and eternal happiness, Php 3:14; and such miss the mark who look for salvation elsewhere, either by the light of nature; or by the law of Moses; or by any moral performances, or any religious exercises; or by a mere profession of religion, even the best. The word is frequently used for sinning; which is an aberration or straying from, or missing, the mark of the law. Some sin against Christ doctrinally, who say he is not come in the flesh, or that Jesus is not the Christ; who deny his proper deity, his divine and eternal Sonship; and treat his blood, righteousness and salvation, with any degree of contempt: they sin against him practically that slight his Gospel, neglect his ordinances, transgress his laws, and evilly treat his people. Sinning against him is very aggravating; it is against him in whom all grace and mercy is, and from whom it comes to the sons of men; who is the Saviour of men from sin, and in whom alone salvation is. Wherefore everyone that thus sins against him

wrongeth his own soul; is injurious to it, and to the spiritual and eternal welfare of it; all sin is hurtful to the souls of men, especially sins against Christ; since there is no other Saviour but him, no other sacrifice for sin but his; and therefore to such there can be no other than a fearful looking for of judgment, that trample him under foot, and treat his blood, righteousness, and sacrifice, in a contemptuous manner, Heb 10:26;

all they that hate me; as do the seed of the serpent, the whole world that lies in wickedness, all unregenerate persons, and even many professors of religion; they hate him privately, being without love to him, or loving others more than him; and positively and practically, by despising his Gospel, or not walking worthy of it; by disclaiming doctrines, casting off his yoke, and maltreating his people; all which arise from the corruption of their nature; for this hatred or enmity is original and natural; it is deeply rooted in their minds, and irreconcilable without the grace of God, and is always undeserved. Wherefore such are said to

love death; not formally and intentionally, for death in any shape cannot be desirable; not a corporeal death, and much less an eternal one; but interpretatively and consequentially, as they love that which brings death upon them both in body and soul, and so are reckoned to love death itself.

b “qui vero aberraverit a me”, Michaelis.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

(36) He that sinneth against me.Rather, He that misses me does not find me. So in Greek, sin () is a missing of the true object of life.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

REFLECTIONS.

AND now, Reader! having gone over this blessed chapter, pause and enquire at your own heart what are your views concerning the contents of it? Doth it strike your mind that the wisdom here spoken of, and here speaking, is the Wisdom-Mediator the Lord our righteousness, thus unfolding the sweet and secret transactions in that high character of God-man, which took place before the world began? Was the Son of God thus constituted, thus appointed, and by the union of natures, as the Redeemer elect, thus possessed by Jehovah in the beginning of his ways, and before his works of old? And was it indeed, thou blessed Jesus, was it thou that didst then stand intentionally, as thou didst afterwards stand openly and in reality, in the streets of thy city Jerusalem, and speaking to thy church in all these endearing terms, to invite poor sinners to be happy in thy blood and righteousness. Oh! Lord, cause poor sinners then, by the sweet constraining influences of thy Holy Spirit, to listen to thy call, and to regard thy gracious invitation. Cause both the Writer and the Reader of these lines, if consistent with thy holy counsel and will, to enter into an heartfelt apprehension of all these precious truths connected with the knowledge of thyself, and the enjoyment also; that thy love may be so shed abroad. in our hearts that we may inherit substance, and that thou thyself mayest be our treasure and fill all of them. Oh! precious Lord! let a daily knowledge of thee, and a daily enjoyment of thee be our portion; for then will all these blessings follow, and we shall find indeed that riches and honor are with thee; yea, durable riches and righteousness.

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

The Self-destroyer

Pro 8:36

What is the particular truth of the text? It is that sin is not only an offence to God, whom no man hath seen nor can see, but it is a distinct and irreparable injury to the man, the sinner, himself. “Whoso sinneth against me, doth not wrong me only, but wrongeth himself.” And that is the only way to get hold of man. Oh, the infinite cunning, the infinite subtlety, the holy inspiration of this immortal volume! Tell a man that by sinning he is hurting the unseen God, and what does he care? You can only get hold of a man in so far as any truth you teach or any requisite you demand impinges upon himself. Touch the little Self, and you have put a hook in the nose of leviathan. That is the subject, that to do wrong is not only to do an injury to an unseen spirit, but to do a positive injury to the man guilty of that wrong himself.

There is a plant, and I say to the sun, “I am not any longer going to be under obligation to you; I am going to keep this plant in the cellar,” and I take down the plant that ought to be in the very middle of the garden, miles away from any shadow, and say to the sun, “I am going to do without you.” Do I injure the sun? Not at all. What do I injure? The plant. The sun says, “I want to shine upon that plant, and to bring out of its juices all the beauty that is hidden there, and I would do so if you would allow me: whoso, plant of any kind, sins against me, or is made to sin against me, wrongs itself; does not wrong me, does not impair my shining. My light shall be as pure and lavish as ever, but the plant that is withdrawn from my shining shall die.” And the sun blazes on, performing his circuit and accomplishing his appointed work.

I say to Nature, “You have given me two arms; I am going to bind one of them to my side and never to use it. My purpose is to do as well as I can with one arm and one hand.” What does Nature say? Nature says, “I meant you to use both arms; if you do not use both those limbs you will not injure me Nature; you will set aside my purpose; you will destroy the limb.” But cannot I bind my arm to my side and keep it there while I please, and allow it to hang there, and then let it grow as it may be able? “No,” Nature says, “no.” The everlasting ordinances of God, written on Sinai, written in the dust, written in the air, written everywhere, say “No.” Whoso sinneth against physiological law wrongeth his own nature, his own flesh and blood, and he shall feel, in manifold penalty, in excruciating pain, in gradual and irresistible decay, that he has violated eternal law. That is the distinct teaching of the text. He that sinneth against wisdom, Christ, truth, light, purity, wrongeth his own soul, commits suicide, brings himself to an untimely death and a dishonoured grave.

It may be difficult to show men that they ought not to sin against a being whom they have never seen, or against spiritual and moral laws which they had no share in determining. Man may under those circumstances get up a kind of metaphysical defence against such obedience; but this unhappy possibility is met and overruled by the unalterable and appalling fact that not to obey is to suffer, to sin is to decline and perish, to go away from truth and purity and honour is to go into darkness and shame and intolerable torment. That is the tremendous hold which God has over us. Understand that God’s argument with man is not an affair of words which may be twisted by strong and skilful reasoners in any shape and direction which their genius may suggest; God’s hold over us is this, that if a branch be cut out of the vine no man on earth can save it from decay. And the appeal of the divine Being is to facts; the great contention of Christianity with us is not as to a set of notions their metaphysical value, their philosophical relationship to one another, and their general bearing on the civilisation of the day: the great argument to man is this He that believeth shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be damned. The issue is sharp enough: there is no room there for quibbling and shuffling; we are shut up against a granite wall, higher than we can measure with the eye, wider than any line of ours can bring to figures. This is the argument which can soon be brought to the test; a child can prove it no giant can escape it. I propose, then, to bring you upon ground that is very narrow to shut you up to an argument that you cannot escape from and be fair to the first principles of justice, to the elements of common honesty.

You have a strong emotional nature; you allow that. You cannot deny it if you are sane. My question immediately following your admission is, What are you going to make of it? You can laugh, cry, grieve, rejoice; you can show anger, sympathy, feeling of every kind: you have a tremendous steam power in you what are you going to do with it? The question is not, Will you have it? you have got it. To what use will you put it? Suppress it? Then you will wrong your own soul. Turn it towards low objects? Then you will debase one of the highest gifts of your nature. You must use it; you have it without your own consent, and the question which you have to answer must answer practically or verbally, or both, is, What are you going to make of that emotional nature of yours? It is the grand motive power of your being; you have passion, you have enthusiasm, you can weep bitterly, you can laugh triumphantly and rejoicingly what are you going to do with that dynamic power of human life? Are you going to despise emotion? That is the first sign of your falling. Are you as the apostle describes some persons whom he knew past feeling? Then you are very nearly in perdition; one step more and the outer darkness encloses you within its infinite fold, from which there is no escape.

If you do not touch a man emotionally you do not get the man at all. So long as he is merely arguing, contending, defending himself intellectually and logically against certain mental assaults, you may silence the man, but you will get no good out of him. Touch his emotion, move his heart, be master of his tears, keep the secret of his joy, and then you are master of him. Christ’s grand appeal is to our feeling, our emotion, our homage, our loyalty: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy mind.” The intellect itself is thus turned into an organ of devotion. If you suppress your emotion you will go down in the quality and the quantity of your being. You will desiccate your soul that is to say, you will take out of it all the vital juices, and you will become a mere thing, an article with a price attached to it, a life that has no immortality, a soul devoid of hope without hope because without God in the world.

Observe it is possible to suppress emotion: it is possible to say to your tears, “I do not want you;” it is possible to say to your laughter, “I shall never call you into operation;” it is possible to take a knife and cut out of the soul, so to speak, its grand emotional power. Some men seem to have done this; you never saw a hearty expression of emotion in all your intercourse with them: it is all dry, arithmetical, superficial, many inches deep in dust; wanting in the holy enthusiasm, the fiery passion, the tender emotion, which after all conquers and elevates the world. “He that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul,” tears the stops out of the great organ of his being, and then expects that organ to play as voluminously, as powerfully, as tenderly and delicately as if he had not torn out of their places the stops that were needful to give full expression to the powers of his soul.

You have a great imaginative nature; the question is not, Will you have an imagination? You have it. Then the inquiry comes instantly upon that fact, What are you going to do with your imaginative nature? You cannot live within the narrow circle of things visible; you must, speaking generally alas! there are exceptional instances you must wonder about the unseen, the distant, and the future, if you are true to your instincts: and to begin to wonder in any intelligent and just manner is to begin to worship. Give me a man who sometimes says, feeling a pressure of the brain he can hardly bear, “I wonder what is beyond that blue veil, that stellar dome, that mystic night, that far and inaccessible horizon?” Give me a man who shall put these questions, express these wonders, and I say to him, “Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.” Wonder may be the beginning of worship What are you going to do with your imagination? I will tell you what you can do with it: you can take a knife and cut its wings off, and let it labour and perish in the dust; you can keep your imagination at home and starve it, but if you do so you will sit down to a pauper’s crust when you might revel at the banquet of a king. What are you going to do with that imagination of yours? He that sinneth against that wrongeth his own soul. “Why,” say you, “I intend to take in the whole material universe.” Do you? What is the whole? There, you see, I bring you straight to a wall which you cannot scale and you cannot penetrate. What do you mean by the whole? How do you know that when you have reached the end of your line it is not the beginning of another and a longer line still? “Well, but,” you reply, “I am going to keep my imagination within that line.” Then you are going to prevent it enjoying its widest liberty. The moment you call it home you interfere with its functions, you endanger its life, you withdraw it from the sun and the light, which are the necessary elements of its very existence. But suppose now you could find out the whole material universe, and say, standing on some central star, “I see all the constellations, all the planets, all the asteroids, all the material creation;” even then that marvellous imagination of yours has not scope enough it feels the bars and says, “I see daylight beyond; what is this which falls upon my eye, that assails my ear, that challenges me further still what is this?” Aye, what is that? and if you say you will not go out of the cage when the door is open, and the greatening universe sends you still larger and more hospitable invitations, then you wrong your own soul. The whole material universe, as you call it, or as it is conceivable by us, is a bird’s small cage compared with the infinite resources of him who fainteth not, neither is weary, and of whose understanding there is no searching. Whoso sinneth against me, wrongeth his own soul, belittles himself, trivialises his own nature, wastes his powers, shuts himself up in a cell, when he might be enjoying the liberty of an ever-expanding firmament.

You have a profound moral nature; what are you going to make of it? “Well,” some one will say, “I am going to do right.” What is right? Are you going to do the infinite right or your own notion of rectitude? What is your standard to what do you appeal? Your right may be wrong to me, and I may be able to prove it to be wrong to you; right is not an affair of terms, is not a metaphysical distinction between one word and another it is an eternal quantity, it comes to man first by intuition, and secondly by revelation. Before, therefore, you can satisfy me on that side of the argument, you must give me distinctly to understand by what standard you determine the absolute right. “Well, then,” you may perhaps reply, “I am going to do the best I can.” Do you say so? I give you time to recall the words, and modify them. If you insist upon that form of words, I hasten with a reply, bright as lightning, cutting as a sword Who is to be judge of the best you can? Whoever did the best it is possible for him to do? One young man thought he had done so, when he had kept the commandments in the letter. Whoever imagines that he has kept the commandments has reached the very consummation of self-deception; they cannot be kept, they grow upon the man who tries to keep them. He realises his first conception, and then that conception broadens, enlarges, heightens, and says, “Further still.” “Thou shalt not kill.” The man says, “I have not killed; I have kept that commandment at all events,” and the commandment says, “No perhaps not; it may be thou art a murderer, though no red-hot blood ever fell upon thy trembling hand.” “Whoso hateth his brother, or is angry with his brother without a cause, hath committed murder in his heart.” Who then is to be judge of the best you can do? You cannot be your own judge, otherwise we should have millions of standards, and various heights and various qualities; there must be one law, one judge, one commandment, one faith, one Lord, one baptism. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. Ah, I find that your protestations and propositions of moral behaviour will not bear cross-examination; they shrivel under scrutiny because there is no real life in them.

So this is the hold God has upon us: “He that sinneth against me wrongeth himself.” You do so physically. Do you imagine that you can do as you please physically and escape all consequences? God makes you possess in your bones the effects of your moral action. Once a man came into a new experience, and abruptly exclaimed, “Thou makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth.” He thought he had escaped these he was fifty years away, mayhap, from boyhood and early manhood; but at seventy his old sins caught him and they always will do so. A man says, “Surely I can devote what hours I please to business.” You cannot without moral consequences. You cannot turn up a gas lamp after a certain hour without Nature standing over you and marking down something against your account.

You imagine that you have been proceeding comfortably, successfully, triumphantly, and making a fortune, while, in fact, you have so used your brain as to entail upon that little boy of yours and that little girl paralysis of the highest powers, a life-long disability and manifold discomfort. Do you imagine that you have got the keys of the universe at your girdle and can do as you like? If it were a question of metaphysical morality, and you were to be told that there is an account against you above the blue sky, you would laugh at the speaker as a sentimentalist, and, therefore, God comes right down and works in your bones, so that one day will find you a tottering old man, saying, “I have not only injured myself, but my poor children. I so wrought my brain as to leave them a legacy of the most painful kind.” Therefore, God does not give up life the Lord still brings us to practical judgments, to distinct personal consequences of our action, and we who would shrink from any merely metaphysical Divinity, from any philosophical conception of right, are bound to feel in our own flesh and blood and bones that we have done wrong. What are you going to do? The good man makes the best of his powers; the Christian man gets the best out of himself; righteousness makes a man realise the grandest of his powers, the widest of his capacities, and imparts to him as he goes along such instalments of heaven as are consistent with a life upon earth.

If you want to sleep well, be good. If you want to do your business well, be good. If you want to enjoy your holiday, be good. If you want to make a. penny go furthest, be good. If you want a happy home, be good. That is where God has his terrific hold over us if we insult him in what we suppose to be the sentimentalities and metaphysics of nature, in all those concerns which He immediately within the range of our present experience.

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

Pro 8:36 But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death.

Ver. 36. Wrongeth his own soul. ] Rapit animam suam. He plunders his own soul of its happiness; yea, he cruelly cuts the throat thereof, being ambitious of his own destruction.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

sinneth. Hebrew. chata’. App-44.

soul. Hebrew. nephesh. App-13.

love death = live and act so as to lose life. Figure of speech Metonymy (of Cause).

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Wronging the Soul

He that sinneth against me [misseth meR.V. marg.] wrongeth his own soul:

All they that hate me love death.Pro 8:36

This is represented as the language of Wisdom. The attribute of wisdom is personified throughout the chapter, which closes its instructions with the declaration of the text: He that sinneth against me (or misseth me) wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death. The theme, then, is obviously the wrong which the sinner does to himself, to his nature, to his own soul.

He does a wrong, indeed, to others. He does them, it may be, deep and heinous injury. The moral offender injures society, and injures it in the most vital part. Sin is, to all the dearest interests of society, a desolating power. It spreads misery through the world. It brings that misery into the daily lot of millions. The violence of anger, the exactions of selfishness, the corrodings of envy, the coldness of distrust, the contests of pride, the excesses of passion, the indulgences of sense, carry desolation into the very bosom of domestic life; and the crushed and bleeding hearts of friends and kindred, or of a larger circle of the suffering and oppressed, are everywhere witnesses to, and victims of, the sinners folly.

But all the injury, great and terrible as it is, which the sinner does or can inflict upon others is not equal to the injury that he inflicts upon himself. The evil that he does is, in almost all cases, the greater, the nearer it comes to himself; greater to his friends than to society at large; greater to his family than to his friends; and so it is greater to himself than to any other. Yes, it is in his own nature, whose glorious traits are dimmed and almost blotted out, whose pleading remonstrances are sternly disregarded, whose immortal hopes are rudely stricken down,it is in his own nature that he does a work so dark and mournful, and so fearful, that he ought to shudder and weep to think of it.

I

The Sin against Wisdom

The Hebrew term rendered he that sinneth against me, means literally, he who misses me, who fails to hit, to find me and to hearken to me. The Greek word used in the Septuagint has reference to an archer who misses his object, and of the arrow that fails to hit the mark. In the text missing is a true antithesis to finding. The Arabic reads it much in this sense: he who errs from me.

1. There are various definitions of sin, each one of which is true according to our standpoint. If we regard sin as a violation of mans true destiny, which we recognize not only in Gods loving command, but also in the very law of mans own being, then sin is the transgressing of the law. If we regard sin as variation from the right, the good, the true, then sin is unrighteousness. If we regard sin as the negation of mans true nature as a spiritual being, and the identifying of him with the things of sense, then sin is materialism. If we regard sin as the fixing of the affectionsaffections that were intended for glories beyond the starsupon the perishing things of this world, then sin is worldliness. And finally, if we regard sin as the failure or refusal of the soul to apprehend and confide in the unseen, then sin is unbelief. In the sphere of law, then, sin is transgression; in the sphere of morals, it is unrighteousness; in the sphere of thought, it is materialism; in the sphere of conduct, it is worldliness; in the sphere of spiritual apprehension, it is unbelief. But it is always one and the self-same thing, the same grim and ghastly thingin the godless man of the world and in the ruffian who outrages law, in the smooth libertine and in the vulgar thief, in the respectable atheist who says there is no God, and in the brave outlaw who lives his creed and acts upon his belief.

If all trees were clerks and all their branches pens, and all the his books, and all the waters ink, yet all would not sufficiently declare the evil that sin hath done. For sin has made this house of heavenly light to be a den of darkness; this house of joy to be a house of mourning, lamentation, and woe; this house of all refreshment to be full of hunger and thirst; this abode of love to be a prison of enmity and ill-will; this seat of meekness to be the haunt of pride and rage and malice. For laughter sin has brought horror; for munificence, beggary; and for heaven, hell. Oh, thou miserable man, turn convert. For the Father stretches out both His hands to thee. Do but turn to Him and He will receive and embrace thee in His love.1 [Note: Jacob Behmen.]

2. Sin is here represented as a missing of wisdom.

(1) Wisdom is frequently spoken of in the Book of Proverbs as mere prudential morality, the discretion which life teaches or should teach, the sagacity in dealing with affairs, the knowledge of men and things that comes from experience. As many of the Proverbs show, wisdom means what we call common sense, and is opposed to folly, the stupid disregard of facts, the dulness of mind that will not learn the lessons that are patent on the very face of life. Thus, the book has many practical exhortations as to what to do in the ordinary problems that emerge every day, exhortations whose tone grows solemn and impressive as it warns against gluttony and drunkenness and the undue regard of wealth and kindred mistakes, even condescending to give advice about becoming surety for another. It is a sort of prudential morality, which experience loudly teaches to all who are not deaf.

To this wisdom, necessary though it is to all in some degree, we could only partially apply the words of the text, He that misseth me wrongeth his own soul. We are all sufficiently alive, at least in theory, to the necessity for such wisdom. Men are trained in some fashion to acquire it; and most of us do gain some knowledge of men and affairs. We all undergo the education which informs us of things, and fills our heads with facts and distinctions in varying degrees of usefulness or uselessness. It is quite true that to miss this worldly wisdom which life should teach is to wrong ones own self. To have the means of knowledge in our hands and before our eyes and yet not to know, to have gone through life with our minds sealed, is to do despite to our own nature. To be incorrigible, unteachable, is to be (as the proverbs again and again declare) brutish, like the fool with folly so ingrained that though he were brayed in a mortar with a pestle yet will not his folly depart from him. He that misseth me, says Wisdom as a guide of practical conduct, wrongeth his own self.

Prudence is a virtue of the practical reason, which not only enables a man to know in concrete circumstances what means are best to take to a good end, but also inclines a man to take those means with promptitude. Prudence resides in the intellect, not in the will, for its acts are intellectual acts. By prudence we inquire about, examine, and direct ourselves to the adoption of the proper means to a desired end. Modern philosophy has done much to bring the virtue of prudence into contempt by representing it as exclusively a selfish virtuea virtue by which each man seeks to secure his own greatest happiness. But prudence no more exclusively concerns the individuals happiness than do the other virtues. For there is a prudence that prescribes the right means to the family good or general good, as well as that which secures ones own personal good. However, when used without qualification, the word prudence has always been understood as appertaining to the individual good only.1 [Note: M. Cronin, The Science of Ethics.]

(2) But wisdom as used in this book has a deeper meaning, which underlies all the practical counsels. Wisdom is looked on as identical with the law of God. It is the discernment that looks beneath the surface and sees cause and effect; looks into the heart of things and gets sane and true views of life, putting everything into correct perspectivea guide of the heart as well as of the feet, a guide for thought and feeling as well as for conduct. In this deeper sense it teaches morals and religion. Its very beginning is in the fear of God, reverence for the good and the high. It deals with the moral basis of life, and looks upon evil, not simply as mistake which a wise man would avoid, but as sin which perverts and depraves the very nature. This inner, deeper wisdom judges human nature and human conduct by the religious ideal set forth in the law of God. It probes down to the causes which produce such tragic failure in the lives of men. It sees that life is built on law; so that to break law is not merely folly that incurs punishment from the outside as by some machine that regulates all things, but is to break the law of our own life and sin against our own nature and wrong our own self.

This sense of the word as the law of God is that in which the Psalmist prayed, Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom, that we may learn not worldly wisdom but wisdom, the true meaning and purport and duty and destiny of life. Wisdom like this delights in displaying the fitness of what is good in the scheme of history and nature, pointing to a moral design both in human society and in the world at large.

At first sight, on a cursory reading of the early chapters of this Book of Proverbs, it may seem as if all that was meant by Wisdom was a shrewd earthly common sense and worldly prudence. But look a little closer, and you will see that the Wisdom spoken of in all these chapters is closely connected not only with clearness of the well-furnished head, but with uprightness of the heart. It is not an intellectual excellence only (though it is that) which the author of the book commends; it is a moral excellence as well. The Wisdom that he speaks about is Wisdom that has rectitude for an essential part of it, the fibre of its very being is righteousness and holiness. Ay, there is no true wisdom which does not rest calmly upon a basis of truthfulness of heart, and is not guarded and nurtured by righteousness and purity of life. Man is oneone and indissoluble. The intellect and the conscience are but two names for diverse parts of the one human being, or rather they are but two names for diverse workings of the one immortal soul. And though it be possible that a man may be enriched with all earthly knowledge, whilst his heart is the dwelling-place of all corruption; and that, on the other hand, a man may be pure and upright in heart, whilst his head is very poorly furnished and his understanding very weakyet these exceptional cases do not touch the great central truth, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. Here, then, is the first outline of this fair form that rises before youa Wisdom satisfying and entire for all the understanding, and not a dry, hard, abstract Wisdom either, but one which is all glowing with light and purity, and is guidance for the will, and cleansing for the conscience, and strength for the practical life: wisdom which is morality and righteousness; morality and righteousness which is the highest Wisdom 1 [Note: A. Maclaren, Sermons Preached in Manchester, i. 298.]

(3) Wisdom is raised at length in this book to the highest level when it is clothed with personal attributes and made almost identical with God. As being the quality which God displays in all His works, and being the root-principle of the world, it is spoken of (in words that glow and catch fire) as a glorious personality, the firstfruits of Gods creative work, the very firstborn of creation, not only presiding over the fortunes of men and disposing of human destiny, but aiding God in creation, the Divine Wisdom set up from everlasting, from the beginning or ever the earth was. It is in this sense, as Wisdom personified, that the word is used in this chapter, which one who speaks with authority calls one of the most remarkable and beautiful things in Hebrew literature. We can understand how the Fathers of the Christian Church used this passage to illustrate their thought about Christ, the Logos, the Word of God, the incarnate wisdom and love and righteousness of God, the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature, who is before all things and by whom all things consist; and we can see how they should apply to Christ the beautiful words of this passage, I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me. Whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord.1 [Note: T. C. Finlayson, The Divine Gentleness, 304.]

Nay, falter not; tis your assurd good

To seek the noblest; tis your only good,

Now you have seen it; for that higher vision

Poisons all meaner choice for evermore.

II

The Reaction of Sin in the Soul

He that misseth me wrongeth his own soul. He that does not take Me into account, ignores Me, leaves Me out of his practical creed and obedience, has done an immense injustice to himself. He that misses Me has missed the mark, missed the prize of existence.

To miss the wisdom that cometh from above, to fail to recognize the true relationship between life and the universal law of God, is indeed to wrong ourselves. It is to belittle man and do dishonour to human nature. To believe it in any sense true of wisdom that

She doth preserve the stars from wrong,

And the most ancient heavens by her are fresh and strong,

and to deny that that same law has meaning and purpose in human life, is to make the whole universe a hideous dance of unreason.

And if without this faith there seems no foothold for intellect, still less is there for morals. To be men in all that hitherto has stood for manhood at its best, we must believe that our moral life is related to a moral law which is rooted in the very nature of things; we must believe that man is so related to God that the will of God, the law of God, is the law of our own life, and that to miss this, to sin against this, is to destroy ourselves. This is why, according to the Bible, sin is among other things foolishness, insensate folly, a mad choice of death. To break the commandments is not merely to break a system of rules arbitrarily imposed on us from without, but is to sin against ourselves, and to ruin our own true happiness, to dim the radiance of our own souls, and to desecrate our own life.

Ruskin was never weary of telling that, whatever faults an artist may have, they are always reproduced in his work. He declares that the fumes of wine and the stain of sensuality mentally leave dark shadows upon the artists masterpiece. He cannot indulge his lower nature without in some degree clouding and marring his genius. But if everybody can see that in a mans physique and in a mans genius, is it not just as certain that sin will spoil a mans lordlier self, his moral and spiritual being? A man can never commit a transgression but it has blinded the eyes of his spiritual understanding. A man never violates a commandment of God but he has done an injustice to his conscience.1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson.]

1. Sin introduces an element of disorder, of discord, and of disease into our life. It is a violation of our nature, a refusal to follow the light and to obey the highest. It destroys the inner harmony. It throws us out of accord with the central music of the universe. We pray, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Heaven is heaven because that highest will is done there. Heaven is begun below when the will of God is done. The religion of Jesus Christ holds as its chief power the secret of making duty a delight. Man finds his highest and noblest sphere of activity in doing the will of God; and love for that will transforms the man, gives all his powers their proper outlet, and makes for their perfection. To stand outside that central will is to wrong our souls and to mar our lives. Christ is seeking to gather all into Himself, and to stand outside that Divine unity is to stultify ourselves and thwart God. To dash into the rapids above the falls is to court inevitable destruction, and to throw ourselves athwart the known will of God is self-murder.

Even our narrow experience of the universe presented one obtrusive fact which seemed to contradict the theistic presupposition of Omnipotent Goodness. The contingently presented universe of experience, which philosophy tries to reduce to rational unity, consists of unconscious things and self-conscious persons. Things are believed to evolve in natural order, which is thus virtually divine language; and this divine language of things is (so far) scientifically interpretable by persons. But persons themselvesat least on this planetseem to be naturally evolved in moral disorder, and to live in a chaos of suffering. Pain, the supposed consequence of moral disorder, seems to be unfairly distributed. The constant order of insentient things is in striking contrast to the moral disorder that appears among living persons. What ought not to be, is commonly found in them. Analogous irregularity is not seen among things; which are all found punctually obeying their natural, yet supernatural, lawsand they are not expected to involve us at last in intellectual disorder. The material world of things does not put us to final confusion, although most of its phenomena remain uninterpreted, or inadequately interpreted. But the world of persons seems to be continually putting us to moral confusion, by its strangely chaotic appearances.1 [Note: A. Campbell Fraser, Biographia Philosophica, 306.]

2. Sin impairs the moral sense, and relaxes the spiritual fibre, taking away with it the bloom of the soul. All observation and all experience prove that this is its immediate, unvarying, inevitable effect. He who once yields to do wrong will find it harder the next time to do right, until he speedily becomes powerless to choose good and resist evil. The moral sense, which at first is quick to discriminate, begins under the pressure of sin, to lose the keenness of perception. The high sense of honour and of truthfulness is dulled. The good seems to be less good, and the evil does not seem to be so very evil, until at last that soul calls evil good and good evil. Such a desperate degradation is not reached all at once,not till years of sin, it may be, and of indulgence have passed by. But let the soul remember that the first sin is the first step, and that the next will be easier, and that with each succeeding sin the momentum increases at a fearful rate until its speed shall hurl it down to ruin.

It is related that in certain parts in South America it used to be the practice to drug with opium the coolies brought to work there, in order to make them oblivious to their wretched surroundings, and their arduous tasks. It is possible with the opiates of sin, of small sins as we call them if you will, gradually to dose our souls into a state of callous indifference to great moral and spiritual issues, so that it becomes possible to stand upon the very brink of ruin and not to realize it. What once would have appalled and shocked with a great horror is looked upon with indifference, or perhaps practised with complacency.1 [Note: R. Mackintosh.]

Meissonier, the great artist, had a very delicate hand, and he used to take great care of it, so much so that he had it shampooed every morning, and in driving always wore thick gloves. He was always watchful that he should not impair this marvellous suppleness and dexterity. Well, if a man thinks it necessary to take all that care of his hand that it may retain its sensitiveness and masterliness, how careful you ought to be of that diviner faculty inside by which you discriminate in the great questions of character and conduct. In short, no man commits a sin but the conscience that records it is injured, it has lost some of its discriminateness, some of its sensibility, some of its force. A man never sins but he has injured his will.2 [Note: W. L. Watkinson.]

3. To turn our back on wisdom is to love death. Sin is not only foolishness: it is suicide, self-inflicted wrong, killing the man in us, pouring out the very blood of our life. To have lived and with all our getting to have missed wisdom, to have missed the blessedness of accord with Gods holy law, is failure. And in all the worlds sore tragedy there is no failure so tragic as this. As the years pass by us, and the shadows gather round us, we look back, and the keenest sting is the thought of what we have missed by the way, what we might have been and done and received, and failed to be or do or get. When we have given way to passion or evil desire, when we have sinned against conscience or heart, when we have slid down to lower levels of thought and life, how we have wronged ourselves! No enemy hath done this, but we ourselves. Fools! we have been our own worst enemy. So foolish was I, I was as a beast before thee. Folly! It is madness. He that misseth me (wisdom, the eternal law of all living) wrongeth his own soul. All that hate me love death.

Charlotte Bront writes thus to her literary friend and adviser Mr. W. S. Williams, a few days after the death of her brother Branwell, who passed away at the gloomy Haworth Parsonage, in September, 1848, a dissolute wreckthe victim, at the age of 31, of opium, strong drink, and debauchery: We have buried our dead out of our sight. A lull begins to succeed the gloomy tumult of last week. It is not permitted us to grieve for him who is gone as others grieve for those they lose. The removal of our only brother must necessarily be regarded by us rather in the light of a mercy than a chastisement. Branwell was his fathers and his sisters pride and hope in boyhood, but since manhood the case has been otherwise. It has been our lot to see him take a wrong bent; to hope, expect, wait his return to the right path; to know the sickness of hope deferred, the dismay of prayer baffled; to experience despair at last and now to behold the sudden early obscure close of what might have been a noble career. I do not weep from a sense of bereavementthere is no prop withdrawn, no consolation torn away, no dear companion lostbut for the wreck of talent, the ruin of promise, the untimely dreary extinction of what might have been a burning and a shining light. My brother was a year my junior. I had aspirations and ambitions for him once, long agothey have perished mournfully. Nothing remains of him but a memory of errors and sufferings. There is such a bitterness of pity for his life and death, such a yearning for the emptiness of his whole existence as I cannot describe.1 [Note: C. K. Shorter, The Bronts: Life and Letters, i. 453.]

Professor Turner tells us in his most interesting book on astronomy that the astronomer uses mechanism of unspeakable delicacy. One day they allowed a visitor to come into the room; and the visitor gently touched one of the instruments with his finger. That was enough. It took months of painstaking and expensive work to correct that machine and make it once more register the signs of the sky. And I tell you that as one touch would destroy that astronomical mechanism, so an act, a thought, a word, a fancy may destroy the delicacy of the human soul, and put us out of fellowship with the sky above our head. He that sinneth against Me does injustice to his own personality, maims his own splendid faculties. That is the thing to look atsuicide, self-destruction, suicide of the soul.1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson.]

4. This would seem to be the worst degradation of allthat man should not only sin his intellect and will and conscience away, but that he should love his shame, that his soul should be enamoured of its degradation. And yet, who does not know that even this is the effect of sin? Through it men learn to love the base things of this world, and lose the power to love the nobler things. What is life to such a soul but shame? What shall death be but the beginning of an eternal bereavement? All its affections are fixed on things of sense. All its delights and all its joys are bound up with the pleasures of sense. And when death comes and strips off the pampered flesh, and the world, which alone it is able to love, fades away like the baseless fabric of a vision, what shall eternity be to that soul but an eternal bereavement of all that it is able to love, and therefore an eternal torture and an eternal death?

A Buddhist story tells of a man who had lived wickedly and became very ill and nigh unto death. In the fever he had a dream, and in this dream he was conducted through the underworld to the hall of justice in which the judges sat in curtained alcoves. He came opposite his judge, and was told to write his misdeeds upon a slate provided for that purpose. Sentence was then passed that he should be thrice struck by lightning for his sins. The curtain was then drawn back, and he faced his judge, to find there seated the very image of himself, and he realized that he had pronounced the verdict. He had unconsciously judged himself. There is a word that says, Be sure your sin will find you out, which some seem to think means Be sure your sin will be found out. This of course is quite beside the mark. It points to a mans sin avenging itself, tracking down its victim and demanding its pound of flesh. So Be sure your sin will find you out, with emphasis upon the you. He that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul. There is no escape from it.2 [Note: R. Mackintosh.]

Though no mortal eer accused you,

Though no witness eer confused you,

Though the darkness came and fell

Over even deeds of hell;

Though no sign nor any token

Spake of one commandment broken,

Though the world should praise and bless

And love add the fond caress,

Still your secret sin would find you,

Pass before your eyes to blind you,

Burn your heart with hidden shame,

Scar your cheek with guilty flame.

Sin was never sinned in vain,

It could always count its slain;

You yourself must witness be

To your own souls treachery.

Literature

Black (H.), Edinburgh Sermons, 11.

Dewey (O.), Works, 15.

Finlayson (T. C.), The Divine Gentleness, 291.

Harris (S. S.), The Dignity of Man, 108.

Holden (J. S.), Redeeming Vision, 144.

Matheson (G.), Messages of Hope, 81.

Mitchell (J.), Shot and Shell, 70.

Newton (J.), The Problem of Personality, 59.

Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, viii. 193.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), New Ser., xvi. (1878), No. 1060.

Christian World Pulpit, lxi. 401 (W. L. Watkinson); lxx. 379 (R. Mackintosh).

Homiletic Review, xx. 426 (H. A. Stevenson).

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

he: Pro 1:31, Pro 20:2, Joh 3:19, Joh 3:20, Act 13:46, Heb 2:3, Heb 10:29

all: Pro 5:11, Pro 5:12, Pro 5:22, Pro 5:23, Eze 18:31, Eze 33:11, Joh 15:23, Joh 15:24, 1Co 16:22

Reciprocal: Exo 20:5 – of them Num 16:38 – sinners Deu 30:19 – choose life Job 35:6 – General Psa 18:39 – that Psa 50:17 – hatest Pro 1:32 – the turning Pro 6:32 – destroyeth Pro 11:19 – he Pro 13:24 – General Pro 19:8 – loveth Pro 21:6 – seek Pro 29:24 – hateth Jer 25:7 – that ye Jer 27:13 – Why Jer 44:7 – against Hos 13:9 – thou Hab 2:10 – sinned Joh 7:7 – but Joh 8:24 – for Act 16:28 – Do Rom 1:30 – haters

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Pro 8:36. But he that sinneth against me By the neglect or contempt of, or rebellion against my commands; wrongeth his own soul Doth the greatest injury to his own soul: he even destroys it, and is guilty of the worst kind of murder, of soul-murder. All they that hate me That reject and disobey my counsels, living in the commission of known sin, which, in Gods account, is hating him, as is here and elsewhere implied; love death Not directly and intentionally, but by consequence, because they love those practices which they know will bring certain destruction upon them.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments