Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Proverbs 24:10
[If] thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength [is] small.
10. faint ] Or, art slack. The Heb. word is the same as in Pro 18:9.
is small ] as is proved to be the case by thy “fainting” under pressure. But the proverb may mean, because of thy fainting thy strength will be small; want of courage will cause want of strength to meet the emergency. So Vulg., imminuetur fortitudo tua; and Maurer, impar eris ferendis malis. Comp. “Let us not be weary ( , turn cowards, lose heart, Bp Lightfoot) in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not,” Gal 6:9; where see note in this Series.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Pro 24:10
If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small
The Christian failing in business
There are such failures.
Christianity does not secure its disciples against misfortune and calamity. It has need of trouble. While it could not help it always without a constant miracle, it does not always help it when it can. There is a tendency in religion to promote worldly prosperity. Most of the conditions of secular success are improved by the principles and habits of spirituality. It quickens the intellect, gives calmness and self-possession to the feelings, fosters industry and diligence, creates character and credit. Many a man may be found who has been made, in this sense, by godliness. Some Christians never get on. They try many schemes, with one sorrowful result.
I. Christianity should preserve from despondency in failure. There is a tendency in trouble to dispirit. It may be checked by the force of natural energy of heart. The greater number of men are apt to sink under disappointment. Many cannot row against the tide. The evil of this depression is great. In relation to the worldly business. The man is as one possessed with a spirit of defeat. There is no ingenuity to plan; no vigorous employment of offered opportunities. This despondency affects other things. Begun in business, it extends to all departments of feeling and activity. Christianity tends to check this, because it limits the sphere of failure. It also changes its character. It teaches us that if we fail it may be the means of our greater success. The prostration, the sorrow, the want, may be the discipline of life everlasting. Sometimes the failure may be traced to the Christians own fault. Then these considerations are inapplicable. But then the evil may be overruled for good.
II. Christianity should preserve from irritation in failure. If the timid are most in danger of despondency, the proud are most in danger of exasperation. And who is so free from pride as not to be in danger of this? Failure may easily excite the evil passions of the soul, sour the temper, and arouse to anger and to wrath. If a man were only irritated against himself, there might not be much amiss. But the danger is nearly all the other way. The failing man is often found cherishing a wrong temper towards his fellows. To check this evil Christianity begets humility, and produces a spirit of benevolence.
III. Christianity should preserve from dishonesty in failure. Want is a temptation to dishonesty. It is not an excuse for it. Many who never had a thought that was not honourable have fallen into sin when they fell into trouble. And even when the trouble has been much less than entire failure. There is temptation to do wrong in order to evade, or conceal, or repair misfortune. Making us to love truth and equity, Christianity connects our self-respect with these principles. And, as Christians, we should be supremely concerned for the moral honour of Christianity. (A. J. Morris.)
Small strength
I. The occasion referred to. The day of adversity.
1. Reverse of fortune–poverty and want.
2. Bereavement.
3. Sickness.
4. Persecution.
5. Temptation.
II. The action reproved. If thou faint. Not the suffering of pain or the feeling of sorrow, but the excess of an allowable feeling.
1. When we yield to impatience, entertain hard thoughts of God, and distrust His goodness.
2. When we are so absorbed by adversity as to forget past prosperity.
3. When we yield to sorrow so far as to preclude necessary exertion.
4. When it causes us to yield to unholy methods in order to extricate ourselves from the difficulty. The Jews appealed to Egypt.
III. The fault explained. Thy strength is small.
1. Bodily.
2. Morally.
3. Spiritually.
(1) Smallness of faith.
(2) Weakness of hope.
(3) Deficiency of love.
(4) Lack of courage.
(5) Want of humility.
IV. The remedy.
1. Call into exercise the strength you have. To him that hath, etc.
2. Cherish higher thoughts of God.
3. Wait at the throne of grace. (J. Bunting.)
Susceptible character
The wych-elm manifests the approach of winter earlier than any other tree. It becomes ruined and denuded by a touch of the frosty air, and contributes no splendour, no beauty to our autumnal scenery, as its leaves curl up, become brown, and flutter from their sprays, as early, when growing in exposed situations, as the middle of September. This character of itself marks a difference from the common elm, which preserves its verdure, except from accidental causes, long after this period, and with a fine mellow yellow hue, contributing a full share with other trees to the character and splendour of autumn. The wych-elm is an emblem of the susceptible, tender human character. The soul of such a man is highly sensitive to all external impressions. The first frosty touch of a great sorrow shakes his life to its centre. Men of a more robust type are chastened by sad events; and, mellowed by chequered experiences, live on to the tranquil maturity of their existence. But he, unfortunately, cannot face the rough blasts of adversity, and perishes at once under their cruel, chilling influence. Even the cold breath of slander sometimes bears for him a sentence of death. (Scientific Illustrations.)
Flourishing upon the unpromising
Humming-birds, colibris, and their brothers of every hue, live with impunity in the fearful forests where tropical nature, under forms oftentimes of great beauty, wages her keenest strife in those gleaming solitudes where danger lurks on every side–among the most venomous insects, and upon those most mournful plants whose every shade kills. One of them (crested, green, and blue), in the Antilles, suspends his nest to the most terrible and fatal of trees, to the spectre whose fatal glance seems to freeze your blood for ever, to the deadly manchineal. It is this parroquet, which boldly crops the fruits of the fearful tree, feeds upon them, assumes their livery, and appears, from its sinister green, to draw the metallic lustre of its triumphant wings. Nature endows the birds, as she also endows men, with a marvellous capacity for accommodation to circumstances. Beautiful birds are not made out of what we should consider wholesome food, and beautiful characters are not made out of the choice events of history. Nature supplies us with an appropriative power whereby we transmute everything to the purposes which she intends to serve. We know to what splendid purposes genius has been able to turn poverty, jails, cruelty, persecution. Some of the finest characters in history have been formed by and flourished upon these unpromising elements. The bird does not take the poison and submit to death; it transmutes it into life and beauty. The hero does not let circumstances subdue him; he makes circumstances subserve the growth of his character. (Scientific Illustrations.)
The culture that gives strength
If you were to hear some mens experience, you would think that they grow as the white pine grows, with straight grain, and easily split; for I notice that all that grow easy, split easy. But there are some that grow as the mahogany grows, with veneering knots, and all quirls and contortions of grain. That is the best timber of the forest which has the most knots. Everybody seeks it, because, being hard to grow, it is hard to wear out. And when knots have been sawn and polished, how beautiful they are. There are many who are content to grow straight, like weeds on a dunghill; but there are many others who want to be stalwart and strong like the monarchs of the forest, and yet, when God sends winds of adversity to sing a lullaby in their branches, they do not like to grow in that way. They dread the culture that is really giving toughness to their soul and strength to its fibre. (H. W. Beecher.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 10. If thou faint] If thou give way to discouragement and despair in the day of adversity – time of trial or temptation.
Thy strength is small.] tsar cochachah, thy strength is contracted. So the old MS. Bible excellently: Gif sliden thou dispeire, in the dai of anguyfs, schal be made litil thy strengthe. In times of trial we should endeavour to be doubly courageous; when a man loses his courage, his strength avails him nothing.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
If thou faint; if thou art impatient, and unable to bear sufferings; if thy resolution flag, and thou givest way to despondency or dejection of mind. Is small, Heb. is narrow; it lives in a little compass; it is as strait as thy condition is; for there is an elegant allusion in the Hebrew words. The sense is, This is a sign that thou hast but little Christian strength or courage, for that is best known by adversity.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
10. Literally, “If thoufail in the day of straits (adversity), strait (or, small) isthy strength,” which is then truly tested.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
[If] thou faint in the day of adversity,…. When under bodily afflictions, stripping providences, reduced to great straits and wants; or under the violent persecutions of men, which is sometimes the case of the people of God; whose times are in his hands, times of adversity, as well as prosperity; and which are appointed by him, when they shall come, and how long they shall last; which is but for a short time, it is but a “day”, and yet they are apt to “faint” under them, through the number and continuance of their afflictions; and especially when they apprehend them to be in wrath; when they have a sense of their sins at such a time, and no view of pardon; when they are under the hidings of God’s face, their prayers do not seem to be heard, and salvation and deliverance do not come so soon as they expected; which, notwithstanding, shows the truth of what is next observed;
thy strength [is] small; such who are truly gracious are not indeed at such times wholly without strength; they are in some measure helped to bear up; but yet their sinkings and faintings show that they have but little strength: they have some faith that does not entirely fail, Christ praying for it; yet they are but of little faith; they have but a small degree of Christian fortitude and courage; there is a want of manliness in them; they act the part of children and babes in Christ; they do not quit themselves like men, and much less endure hardness, as good soldiers of Christ, as they should; they are, Ephraim like, without a heart, a courageous one, Ho 7:1. Some think the words have reference to what goes before, and the sense to be this, “if thou art remiss” g; that is, if thou art careless and negligent in time of health and prosperity, in getting wisdom, as thinking it too high for thee, Pr 24:7; “in the day of adversity thy strength [will be] small”; thou wilt not have that to support thee which otherwise thou wouldest have had. Aben Ezra connects the sense with the following, “if thou art remiss”, in helping and delivering thy friend in affliction,
Pr 24:11; “in the day of adversity”, or “of straitness, thy strength shall be strait”; thou shalt be left in thy distress and difficulties, and have none to help thee.
g “si remiseris”, Tigurine version; “remissus fuisti”, Pagninus, Montanus, Mercerus, Gejerus; “si remisse te geras”, Junius Tremellius, Piscator so Michaelis.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The last of these four distichs stands without visible connection:
Hast thou shown thyself slack in the day of adversity,
Then is thy strength small.
The perf. 10a is the hypothetic, vid., at Pro 22:29. If a man shows himself remiss (Pro 18:9), i.e., changeable, timorous, incapable of resisting in times of difficulty, then shall he draw therefrom the conclusion which is expressed in 10b. Rightly Luther, with intentional generalization, “he is not strong who is not firm in need.” But the address makes the proverb an earnest admonition, which speaks to him who shows himself weak the judgment which he has to pronounce on himself. And the paronomasia and may be rendered, where possible, “if thy strength becomes, as it were, pressed together and bowed down by the difficulty just when it ought to show itself (viz., ), then it is limited, thou art a weakling.” Thus Fleischer accordingly, translating: si segnis fueris die angustiae, angustae sunt vires tuae . Hitzig, on the contrary, corrects after Job 7:11, “ Klemm (klamm) ist dein Mut ” [= strait is thy courage]. And why? Of [strength], he remarks, one can say [it is weak] (Psa 31:11), but scarcely [strait, straitened]; for force is exact, and only the region of its energy may be wide or narrow. To this we answer, that certainly of strength in itself we cannot use the word drow eht esu t in the sense here required; the confinement (limitation) may rather be, as with a stream, Isa 59:19, the increasing (heightening) of its intensity. But if the strength is in itself anything definite, then on the other hand its expression is something linear, and the force in view of its expression is that which is here called , i.e., not extending widely, not expanding, not inaccessible. is all to which narrow limits are applied. A little strength is limited, because it is little also in its expression.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
10 If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.
Note, 1. In the day of adversity we are apt to faint, to droop and be discouraged, to desist from our work, and to despair of relief. Our spirits sink, and then our hands hang down and our knees grow feeble, and we become unfit for anything. And often those that are most cheerful when they are well droop most, and are most dejected, when any thing ails them. 2. This is an evidence that our strength is small, and is a means of weakening it more. “It is a sign that thou art not a man of any resolution, any firmness of thought, any consideration, any faith (for that is the strength of a soul), if thou canst not bear up under an afflictive change of thy condition.” Some are so feeble that they can bear nothing; if a trouble does but touch them (Job iv. 5), nay, if it does but threaten them, they faint immediately and are ready to give up all for gone; and by this means they render themselves unfit to grapple with their trouble and unable to help themselves. Be of good courage therefore, and God shall strengthen thy heart.
| Pleasure and Advantages of Wisdom. | |
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Fainting in Time of Stress
Verse 10 declares that he who faints in the day of adversity (Num 14:3; Deu 1:28) has little strength. He is looking at the problem rather than the problem solver; at his own weakness rather than the strength of the LORD (Pro 3:5-6). Examples such as Job 19:23-27; Hab 3:17-19; Act 20:22-24; beckon the wise to faint not in the day of adversity, to which all are subject, Proverbs Php_1:29.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
CRITICAL NOTES.
Pro. 24:10. If thou faint, etc., rather If thou hast been straitened in the day of straitness, strait is thy strength. The principle, says Dr. Aitken, is familiar enough, that courage and hopefulness is half a mans strength.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Pro. 24:10
THE DAY OF ADVERSITY
I. The inevitable in human experience. The day of adversity is an ordination of God, as a necessary element in mans moral training. The human rulers of a well-ordered State make certain provisions for the education of the young, and these provisions necessarily include many things that are distasteful, and even painful, to the pupils. But if they were left to map out their own course, and to arrange for themselves the plan of their education, we well know that the result in the end would be unsatisfactory to everybody, and most of all to themselves when they were old enough to judge. Even so is it with mankind and the Ruler of the world. God has purposed that men shall be subject to such a course of instruction and discipline as shall at least give them an opportunity of becoming wiser and better, and the day of adversity is an indispensable element in such a training. It therefore does not come to us by chance, nor is it always to be regarded in the light of a penalty for special sin, but is a token of Divine interest in our real welfarean expression of Divine desire for our moral growth. It is wise, then, for all to recognise the fact that adversity in some form or other, at some period or other, is an inevitable event in their human life.
II. The test of human character. No man knows his moral strength until he comes face to face with trial. The chain that holds the vessel to the quay is only as strong as the weakest link, and if that one gives way the vessel is loosed from her moorings as surely as if every link was broken. So human character is only as strong as its weakest point, and if a severe strain is brought to bear upon a man, he will break down there. In the day of adversity every virtue and excellence that we possess will be subjected to a severe test, and if only one of them is found unequal to the trial, the whole character suffers, and we are in danger of losing our hold upon God, and so drifting from the right course. A man may have a high opinion of his own physical strength, and fancy that he is well able to grapple with any foe who might attack him. But it is not till he is in the grip of his antagonist that he knows how much or how little he is able to do and to bear. If he finds himself on the ground, stunned and bleeding, he rises from the struggle with a lower estimate of his own muscular strength than he had before. And so it is with the inner man when the day of adversity overtakes itwe think that our faith and moral courage are equal to any emergency, but we are sometimes stricken down to the dust and faint from the weight of a blow which we thought beforehand we could withstand, and for the rest of our lives have less confidence in our spiritual strength.
III. A strengthener of human character. Although men often faint in the day of adversity, or find their resources insufficient to meet their needs in the hour of trial, it is not necessarily the case, nor is it always so. Indeed, the intention of trial is not to take away our strength, but to increase it. If the day of adversity proves too much for our strength, the encounter may leave us morally weaker than we were before; but if we bear it courageously, and do not allow it to drive us to despair, or even to doubt, we come out of the ordeal stronger than when we entered into it. If a tree has too firm a hold upon the soil to be uprooted by the tempest, the shaking will but make it firmer still, and if our confidence and hope in God are not lessened by the blasts of adversity, they are rendered stronger and brighter, and more fitted to encounter the next storm. But fainting at the first blow of adversity leaves very little strength to meet the next trial, and this thought seems also to be in the proverb as it stands in the Hebrew.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
If you were to hear some mens experience you would think they grew as the white pine grows, with straight grain and easily split, for I notice that all that grow easy split easy. But there are some that grow as the mahogany grows, with veneering knots, and all quirls and contortions of grain; that is the best timber of the forest which has most knots. There are many who are content to grow straight, like weeds on a dunghill; but there are many others who want to be stalwart and strong like the monarchs of the forest, and yet when God sends the winds of adversity to sing a lullaby in their branches, they do not like to grow in that way. They dread the culture that is really giving toughness to their soul and strength to its fibre. Beecher.
The time of mans distress, though it be a night of sorrow and trouble, which it bringeth to the soul, yet is it a day also, because it showeth truly to the soul what a man is.Jermin.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(10) If thou faint in the day of adversity.And prove unable to help thyself or others; an exhortation to courage (comp. Heb. 12:12). A more excellent way is shown in the following verse.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
10. If thou faint Adversity tests the moral strength of men. To faint under trial is a sign of moral weakness. The interpreters differ as to the exact sense.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
v. 10. If thou faint in the day of adversity,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Pro 24:10. If thou faint, &c. The plain meaning is, “Thou art not a man of courage, if thou canst not bear adversity with an equal mind.” Some, however, paraphrase it, “If adversity deject thee, and break thy spirit, thou wilt be so much the more unable to get out of it.”
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.
If I pause over this single verse, it is but to desire the Reader to make the subject of it personal to himself, and to beg of him to enquire whether Christ be his strength; for this will explain to the full when it is we are weak without him; and why any believer faints in seasons of exercise. According to the strength imparted from Jesus in the actings of our faith upon him, such will be the exact proportion, either of increase or of decline. When we can say, the Lord is my strength and my song, and he is become my salvation; then we shall hear the Lord say, my grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. And then like Paul we shall gladly glory in our infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon us. Psa 118:14 ; 2Co 12:9-10 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Strength of Character
Pro 24:10
The special object of all the training and discipline through which we pass in life is the increase of strength. There are some things which we do, not so much for their own sake as for the sake of their strengthening effect upon the body, mind, or the character. No man goes through gymnastic exercises, for example, merely for their own sake. I do not suppose that any man plays with the dumb-bells simply because he finds in such play amusement enough to satisfy his idea of pleasure. Why, then, does a man pass through gymnastic engagements and exercises? It is to harden himself, to train his body, his muscles, that he may become agile, active, capable of walking, running, enduring, as the case may be. The object is not in the thing itself; it lies beyond the exercises. He says, “For every spin I have at these things I feel more muscular, more active, and better able to endure the fatigues of the day.” So, also, there is much which a child learns at school, which he, in all probability, forgets; yet the very act of learning it is itself an advantage. A child may not be able seven years hence to tell you much about the technicality of the education through which he passed at school, yet there will be left in the child’s mind and character a strength which nothing could have given but the trial and discipline through which he passed during his school-days. A father has sometimes said, “Why should this boy of mine learn Latin, when he is going into trade? he will have no occasion then for the Latin language. A little good sound grammatical English will answer all the purpose of his engagements in life; why should I put myself to the trouble of teaching him a dead language?” Not for the sake of the Latin; in all probability, by the time he has been three years away from school he will be utterly unable to quote one rule in Latin syntax. This is more than probable. Probably many of us, who have been tossed about a good deal in the world, would find it difficult to quote anything of the kind; yet the getting of it, the drill we went through in our Latin exercises, has left upon us a beneficial effect. We cannot explain it; we cannot tell the measure thereof; but there has been an influence at work in the mind, strengthening and quickening us, so that we are now in utter forgetfulness, it may be, of all scholastic and technical Latin able to look on subjects with a robuster intellect and keener eye than we otherwise could have done. The boy who is not very fond of doing much work at school says, “Why should I commit ‘Paradise Lost’ to memory, when I am only going to be a clerk in a warehouse? What can I do with ‘Paradise Lost’? I am invited to commit the whole of the books to memory, and to repeat them aloud. What possible use can such an exercise as that serve in my case?” I answer frankly: “Probably, as a clerk in a warehouse, you will never meet persons who will judge of your abilities by the number of quotations you make from any book in ‘Paradise Lost’; probably you will be able to get on in the world and make a fortune without ever quoting a solitary argument that Milton ever set himself to discuss in verse. Yet it will be an advantage to you as a clerk in a warehouse to commit Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ to memory.” “How so?” “Because it will be a tax upon your attention; it will compel you to read carefully; it will cultivate, develop, strengthen the memory; and though you may never have occasion to quote it, yet the intellectual exercise through which you have passed will give you strength which you may bring to bear upon what may be called the soberer and graver paths and pursuits of after life.” So in all these things we are undergoing preparation. The things themselves, strictly looked at, may be of very little use to us; but they leave behind them influences which will tell in the whole scheme and tone of our after life.
So it is, then, in all the higher concerns of being! The events that are passing around us are to be studied in their moral bearings. Are you suffering to-day? If you rightly accept your suffering, it will prepare you to bear the still keener agonies that are coming to-morrow. The little worries and vexations of daily experience are to prepare us for the martyrdoms and the tragedies which lie beyond. There is no particular object to be served, may be, in the special affliction which you are now undergoing; it looks to you like mere worry, the thing you might have been spared at all events. You say, “I could lay down this right hand upon the block, and have it struck off by the axe of the executioner; something of that kind I should like to do. But to be bitten by these mosquitoes, and to be worried and fretted and chafed by the ten thousand little ills of everyday experience, oh! this is the thing I cannot submit to” not knowing that all these so-called little taxations, these visitations of anxiety and care, which are comparatively insignificant, are to be accepted as a preparation for higher engagements, for more energetic service, for more patient endurance. These things are educational. I know that we may go through them without learning anything from them; or we may so accept them that when the next great trial comes we shall be by so much the better prepared to bear it, and the better qualified to find honey in unexpected places, and joy in storm and darkness and trouble.
With what familiarity the writer of the text speaks of “the day of adversity”! It is not introduced with explanatory words; he does not speak of it as if it were a day for a particular latitude; he does not attach a marginal note, saying, “Probably this will not be known beyond a certain line of longitude, and therefore I wish to explain that by the day of adversity I mean so and so.” No; he speaks of the day of adversity as if it needed no introduction, no hint, as if it were part of the universal language. He proceeds upon the assumption that he has only to name the day to be instantly understood by every living man under the sun. And so it is. Yet we see so many youthful, bright, glowing faces around us! So it is: every life has its day of adversity. Some lives are one long day of trial. There seems in some lives to be a great preponderance of depression, difficulty, disappointment, sorrow, pain; so that a streak of blue sky brings laughter to the face and gladness to the eye, it comes as an astonishment, as a surprise upon the beholder. The strongest of us, with the merriest and loudest laugh, has his bitter hours, his experience of keen pain and agony; and though he may not show all, yet he could, were he to take us into his confidence, tell us that the element of tragedy mingles strangely with that apparently mirthful and joyous life of his. It is, then, in the day of adversity that a man’s character is tested. We do not know what we are until we have fallen into diverse temptations. You point out to me a particular building, and say, “Does not that look strong, beautiful? is it not well-proportioned architecturally? is it not most beautifully decorated?” I say, “So it is, but I cannot pronounce any further opinion upon it till I see how it bears up when the whirlwind gets hold of it.” The house looks well, yes; but I shall defer my judgment until the wind blows and the rain falls and the floods come, and they all conspire and beat upon that house, then I shall know what it is. The paint is fresh and well laid, but what if the building rot at the foundations? It is the day of adversity that tests us; it is affliction that assails us and discovers whether we are gold or not, whether we be not red-lead with a little silver and a good deal of gilding. The day of adversity is the acid that tests us, the aquafortis that bites down through the surface. Trial is the force that gets hold of us and reveals us to ourselves. It says nothing to us, but just lays us before our own vision that we may form our own conclusions. Many a man promises well when there is no fear or difficulty at hand, who cuts up but badly in the time of distress and pain. Many a man speaks you fairly, but what will he do when the clouds gather and the storms break upon your fortunes? Young man, you don’t know yourself, you don’t know what life is until you have been ploughed up in your heart, till your affections have been torn, till your hopes have been turned into disappointment, until the wine of your supposed joy has turned to bitterness in your mouth. You will not be wise in these things till you have encountered the day of adversity.
Adversity makes or mars a man. A man is either the better or the worse for the trial through which he has passed. Afflictions, trials, temptations, either make a man worse or they make him better; they throw him down deeper, nearer the pit, or they lift him up nearer God; they either harden his heart, or they make the heart mellow, tender, sensitive, sympathetic. But rest assured of this, that no man knows himself until he has been caught in the storm, until he has been tried in the fire, until he has passed through the discipline of manifold temptations. Let us be gentle with one another whilst we are undergoing the process. It is one thing to stand off from the furnace and see a brother in it, and to be ourselves undergoing the trial of flame. Do not let us be impatient with our brother who is being tried. Give him time, that he may get his breath again; do not mock his tears. He says, “I know it looks unmanly to be seen in this way.” He who can stoop gracefully to such unmanliness will rise to be a king! This is the result of my pastoral observation. I have watched the ways of men; up many a rickety staircase have I climbed to see the poor in their sorrow and pain and dying; beside the bed of many a rich man have I stood in his last spasms and convulsions. I know what life is a little, therefore. And this taking the whole breadth of a lifetime, not looking at this particular case or at that, but taking the great average of human experience this is my testimony: That Christianity does sustain and comfort and refine men beyond all other influences. It enables them to see that labour itself is rest, and pain is sweet, when accepted in the name and for the sake of Jesus Christ It gives elevation to suffering, a new meaning to dark providences and painful visitations; and where it does not lift a man up to the point of praise and triumph it enables him to be quiet as a weaned child, to be submissive, to fall into his Father’s hands, offering all prayers in one, all desires in one grand liturgy, “Thy will be done”! I have seen a man suffer until his suffering has actually tormented me. It has been a pain to myself. I have called upon him, from time to time, during a period of five years; I have heard his moanings and his complaints; and I have heard him mingle all the utterances of his sufferings with praises and with prayers and with hopes which I dare not re-echo. I have stood in silence as I have heard him I had not been in the same agony, I had not caught that highest lesson of human experience I wondered at his heroism, and felt myself but a craven and a coward! Christianity does sustain and does comfort men in the time of affliction.
An infidel lecturer was explaining his view, his creed, and his method of looking at things; and in concluding his discourse he told his audience that he was quite willing to answer any question that should be put, or any contrary statement that should be made. Whereupon a poor woman, bent and tottering upon a staff, came to the platform, and there was a rustle in the audience as though this poor creature was demented and had utterly forgotten herself. But with a true, strong, yet feminine voice she said: “Mr. Chairman, I have heard the lecture. Twenty years ago I was left a widow with eight children; I had not a crust in the house, I had nothing in the world that was worth calling my own; I may say that I was in a friendless condition. I was then converted by the preaching of the gospel; I was enabled to give my heart to God, through Jesus Christ, his Son; the promises of the Scriptures have been very sweet and precious to me; I have been able to give all my children a bit of schooling; I have never known them to want; we have had but little, but that little has been blessed to us. Now, Mr. Lecturer, what have your principles done for you?” A right challenge! “That,” said he, “is not the question.” “But,” she said, tapping her staff on the platform, “it is the question. What have your principles done for you?” The woman had had a day of adversity; she had tried Christianity in the time of darkness, poverty, pain, and desolation, and Christianity had sustained and comforted her; and now that she heard an enemy attempting to tear it in pieces, she had a right to ask what his principles had done for him. Yes, we must wait till that day comes, the day of adversity, of cloud, of storm, and the shaking of things. Then we shall know what men’s principles have done for them. It is one thing to chatter a blasphemous argument; and another to live a true, profound, beautiful and useful life!
Two men sustaining a great loss in business, the one a Christian and the other an atheist, the Christian man ought to bear his loss very differently from the way in which the atheist bears his. The atheist may have a louder Ha, ha! he may have a more defiant tone; he may stand in some rougher attitude; but the Christian will be more quiet and devout. He will have his pain; he will feel what it is to be crushed in heart; and yet under it all he will know that the everlasting arms are there, and that he is called upon, in the time of loss and desolateness, to glorify the Master whose name he bears.
Now it is here that we as Christian men can show what Christianity has done for us. But if we be as peevish, as restless, as excitable, as men who have no religious faith, what is our faith worth? It we be loud in our reproaches and complaints, in our weakness and moanings, and if we be hardly articulate in our praises and supplications, and utterances of loyalty, what is our faith worth? It is not easy to leave your house and go out into the cold streets, to give up everything; it is not easy, I say; I do not expect a Christian believer to do all this as if it cost him nothing. There will be a wrench, a time of pain, a crisis almost intolerable; and yet, under the pressure of all these contrary and difficult events, there will be a spirit of sweet submission, of deep religious confidence, that where right has been done, if it has ended in failure, joy will assuredly come after a nighttime of weeping. I would preach this to all who need it. Things have gone wrong with some of you, they have gone awry; though you have risen early, sat up late, and schemed and planned and racked your brain, so as to do that which was right towards both God and man, yet things have gone contrary with you, and the day of adversity has set in with all cloudiness and coldness upon your life. It is now you are to show the value of your faith, the value of your prayerfulness; it is now that you are to glorify God. This is the day of your martyrdom; men are watching you; and if out of the darkness of your present obscurity, and the pain of your present adversity, they hear a low, soft, sweet voice of resignation and prayer and praise, they will be constrained to say, “Truly this man is near to God.”
Think what it is to faint as a Christian. It is to distrust God. Circumstances are contrary, winds seem to be beating upon us from all points of the compass, the sea is very rough and the vessel is all but unmanageable, and we faint. What does it mean? Our fainting means that we have lost somewhat of our old confidence in God. We cannot at least sit down and say, “It will be right yet, the sea is God’s, the boat is mine; I myself am his; he has redeemed me by the precious blood of his Son; he will not cast me away, or if he do cast me away it will be that he may find me again; he will be sowing me as a farmer sows his seed, that I may bring forth fruit to his honour and his glory.” We cannot triumph, perhaps, in our desolation; in our friendlessness and poverty we cannot utter the pean of victory; but we can say, though it be with a sob and a terrible spasm of grief, “Thy will be done!” A man who says that with his heart when the wolf is at the door, when there is no fire in the grate, no bread in the cupboard, no money in the bank, no friends about him, has spoken all the lessons that the Cross of Christ can teach the heart of man!
Will you faint in the day of adversity? Then you will be unlike the men who have made history glorious by their much-enduring, uncomplaining heroism. Job was one. He said, when things were breaking to pieces before him, when the earth was being dried up, when the very footprints of his children were being blown out by the cold, cruel wind, when all the earth was to him one gigantic graveyard, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!” He did not faint in the day of adversity. Habakkuk came up afterwards and said, “Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.” He was prepared for the day of adversity. With what preparation was he qualified? With a deeply religious preparation. Nothing can break through the darkness of such days but the light of divine truth; nothing can heal such wounds but the balm of the grace of the Cross of Christ. Have there been no Christian heroes? Job and Habakkuk were Old Testament men. Are there not men in the New Testament who hold an equally high tone and an equally noble attitude? Yes. And Paul shall represent them. When they told Paul that the day of adversity was at hand, that bonds and imprisonments awaited him in every city, that every step he took was a step into danger, he said, “None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I may finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus.” That was his tone in the day of adversity. When he was plagued with a thorn in the flesh, when his nights and days were but experiences of pain, and he cried mightily unto the Lord for the removal of his torment, and God said unto him, “My grace is sufficient for thee,” he was quieted like a child in his father’s arms. He spoke no more about the day of adversity, but the day of prayer and renewed consecration. As for the grand old men that come up from olden time, behold their port! “They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth!” See how they deported themselves in the day of adversity! We are in this great succession. They are no medium men who are in front; it is over no common dust that our pathway lies; we set our feet in the footprints of the giants, and we are to follow them as they followed Christ Yes, it was the Saviour who showed us how to act in the day of adversity, in Gethsemane pains, in Gethsemane darkness; it was he who taught us that all-including prayer, “Thy will be done!” That was the Lord’s prayer. That other prayer of his was a prayer that children may learn; but this is a prayer that consecrates Gethsemane for ever! This should be the first prayer that a man learns; and when he has learned that prayer thoroughly, the next thing to learn is the song of heaven! God grant that when the battle is set, and the foe comes upon us in the fierceness of his wrath, we may be more than conquerors through him that loved us!
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
Pro 24:10 [If] thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength [is] small.
Ver. 10. If thou faint in the day of adversity. ] Afflictions try what sap we have, as hard weather tries what health. Withered leaves fall off in a wind: rotten boughs break when weight is laid on them; so do earthen vessels when set empty to the fire. “As is the man, so is his strength,” said they to Gideon. Joseph’s “bow abode in strength, though the archers sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him; and the arms of his hand were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob.” Gen 49:23-24
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
If thou faint, &c. Adversity is sent to try our strength; and, if we fail, it is proved to be weakness. Illustrations: Jacob (Gen 42:36); David (1Sa 27:1); Elijah (1Ki 19:3, 1Ki 19:4); Jonah (Jon 4:8).
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Pro 24:10
Pro 24:10
“If thou faint in the day of adversity, Thy strength is small.”
It is the crisis that separates the men from the boys. “If you show weakness in a crisis, your strength is small.” “Exceptional strain is a fair test of a man’s mettle. It is the hireling, not the true shepherd, who will plead bad conditions, hopeless tasks, or pardonable ignorance.” The man who truly loves the Lord will be faithful, “even unto death.”
Pro 24:10. Adversity (Opposition, trials, reverses) test ones strength (faith, courage, emotional composure). Some can stand more adversity than others. We should all strive to be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might (Eph 6:10). No man should be content to remain weak, yet there are those who faint (lose heart, fall apart, give up) when hardships come. Such lack depth: He hath not root in himself…when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, straightway he stumbleth (Mat 13:21). Here is where determination and depth of character are important. One cannot be an overcomer without them. The world is divided into two classes: the overcomers and the overcome.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
thou: 1Sa 27:1, Job 4:5, Isa 40:28-31, Joh 4:8, 2Co 4:1, Eph 3:13, Heb 12:3-5, Rev 2:3, Rev 2:13
small: Heb. narrow
Reciprocal: Est 4:13 – Think not Psa 49:5 – days Pro 3:11 – neither Jer 12:5 – thou hast Jer 45:3 – I fainted Col 1:11 – unto
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Pro 24:10. If thou faint in the day of adversity If thou art impatient and unable to bear sufferings; if thy resolution flag, and thou give way to despondency or dejection of mind; thy strength is small Hebrew, is narrow, it lies in a little compass; it is strait, as thy condition is; for there is an elegant allusion in the word rendered small, or narrow, in this clause, to that rendered adversity in the former. The sense is, This is a sign that thou hast but little Christian strength or courage, for that is best known by adversity.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
24:10 [If] thou {b} faintest in the day of adversity, thy strength [is] small.
(b) Man has no trial of his strength till he is in trouble.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
The day of distress is a day when trouble comes. If a person does not persevere but quits under the pressure of trouble, he shows that he does not have strength of character, which is a fruit of possessing wisdom (cf. Pro 24:5 a). We never know our true strength until we find ourselves in situations that demand much from us. Weak people plead adverse conditions so they can justify quitting. [Note: Kidner, p. 154.]