Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Proverbs 28:14
Happy [is] the man that feareth always: but he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief.
14. feareth ] i.e. to do wrong, with a wise and godly caution. , LXX. Comp. the N.T. use of and its cognates, Heb 5:7; Heb 11:7.
mischief ] “Or, calamity,” R.V. marg.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The fear here is not so much reverential awe, as anxious, or nervous sensitiveness of conscience. To most men this temperament seems that of the self-tormentor. To him who looks deeper it is a condition of blessedness, and the callousness which is opposed to it ends in misery.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Pro 28:14
Happy is the man that feareth always.
The happiness of fearing alway
He who sincerely confesses and forsakes his sins will be afraid of sin for the future, having felt the smart of it.
I. What is the fear that men ought to maintain alway? It is a fear of God for Himself, and a fear of other things for God, or in reference to Him. We ought to entertain–
1. A filial and reverential fear of God. Slavish fear will never make a man happy. Slavish fear is mixed with hatred of God; filial fear with love to Him.
2. We must entertain a fear of jealousy over ourselves.
3. A fear of caution and circumspection. This makes a man walk warily.
II. Some things in relation to which we should entertain this holy fear.
1. With respect to himself. Happy is the man who keeps a jealous eye over himself. Be jealous over your principles, your hearts, your tongues, and your senses.
2. With respect to our lusts and corruptions. He is happy who can say he fears nothing so much as sin. Fear the sin of your nature; sins by which you have been formerly led astray. These forsaken lovers will again make suit to you, and will get in upon you, if you grow secure. Fear little sins. There is no sin really little, but many most dangerous ones that are little in mans esteem.
3. With respect to our graces. Grace is a gift to be stirred up. It is in hazard of decay, though not of death. The way to keep the treasure is to fear.
4. With respect to our duties. The whole worship and service of God is called fear; so necessary is our fear in approaching Him.
5. With respect to our attainments. They are in hazard of being lost.
III. The necessary qualification of this duty. Alway. This fear must be our habitual and constant work. This fear should season all we do, and be with us at all times, cases, conditions, places, and companies. Because–
1. We have always the enemy within our walls. While a body of sin remains within us, temptations will always be presenting themselves.
2. Because there are snares for us in all places and in all circumstances. There are snares in our lawful enjoyments; snares at home, in the field, waking, and at table. Many ditches are in our way, and many of these are so concealed that we may fall completely into them before we are aware. At all times we are beset.
IV. The advantage attending this duty. Happy. For–
1. This prevents much sin, and advanceth holiness of heart and life. He that fears to offend God is most likely to keep His way.
2. It prevents strokes from the Lords hand. Where sin dines judgment will sup. Holy fear prevents falls.
3. This fear carries the soul out of itself to the Lord Jesus Christ, the fountain of light, life, and strength. Improvement:
(1) You who are in a joyful frame, join trembling with your mirth.
(2) You that are in a mourning frame, fear alway.
(3) You that have not met with Christ; what shall I say to you?
Fear lest your sharing in Christian privileges leave your affections more deadened, and your consciences more seared. To all of you I say, Fear alway. (T. Boston, D.D.)
A holy fear
What is this Bible-enjoined fearing? It is not the paralysis of terror, the shrinking and subsiding into nothingness of the craven spirit within. It is the ballast of the soul. Calm cautiousness. It is our Scotch maxim, Ca canny! Retrospective, introspective, perspective, circumspective. Nervousness of experience, caution, cannyness of reflection, the fearing here embodies.
I. The action. Feareth. It is evangelical fear, for only the gospel can bring it. It is three-faced. The first outlook of it is towards God. The fear of God is not that turbulent tornado of terror that tears up and destroys; it is the gentle fall of the summer rain on the thirsty soil; it is the soft dew-descent of the Holy Ghost; it is the fear of God for himself. It is the holy hush in His almighty presence, the calm instinct of regeneration that gives sympathetic dignity to the soul. It is the strength of the Lord. Another outlook of this fear is towards yourself. Your worst enemy is your next-door neighbour, and on his gate is your own name. He is yourself. To draw illustration from mining, your heart is full of inflammable gas. Sin fills every chink, and it is all ready for the tempting flame. Another outlook of this fear is towards your surroundings. Look up, look in, but also look round. The world is an intertwined network of devildom. Take care, beware!
II. The time for this action. The longest day has a nightfall. In this activity of the soul no swinging bell heralds a release; without a break or gap the night-shift succeeds to day, and the day-shift to night, and the same worker is in both. Happy is the man that feareth alway. At all times, in all circumstances, in all companies, you are in danger of going to the bottom. Alway fearing is alway safe.
III. The consequence of it. Happy is the man. Because for time and eternity he is ready. It is never waste of wind or time to keep to the path, even though it wind and wind like an eternal corkscrew. He is happy because this fear saves him from the fear of man. That fear ever bringeth a snare. The Christian filled with the gospel fear of God is happy, too, because it empties the soul. You and I are unblessed to-day because we are too full. (John Robertson.)
The happy influence of fear
He is not an unhappy man whose heart is continually governed by this fear. It has a happy influence upon his soul, to guard it from the temptations of Satan and the world, and to keep it close to the Redeemer. It tends not to obstruct but to promote the exercise of faith and hope and joy in the Lord. Thus fear is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, and a blessed means of establishing the heart in the love of God. It is a happy sign of an interest in the everlasting covenant of mercy, and in that special favour of God which is the source of all our joys. But wretched is the man who is not afraid to sin against his Maker and Judge. His heart is hard as the nether millstone. (George Lawson, D.D.)
Holy fear
Holy fear is a searching the camp that there be no enemy within our bosom to betray us, and seeing that all be fast and sure. For I see many leaky vessels fair before the wind, and professors who take their conversion upon trust, and they go on securely, and see not the under water till a storm sink them. (H. G. Salter.)
But he that hardeneth his heart shall fan into mischief.
Hardening the heart
The whole system of moral and religious duty is expressed as the fear of God. The religion which makes fear the great principle of action, implicitly condemns all self-confidence, all presumptuous security; and enjoins a constant state of vigilance and caution, a perpetual distrust of our own hearts, a full conviction of our natural weakness, and an earnest solicitude for Divine assistance.
I. What he is to fear, whose fear will make him happy. The primary object of fear is sin. The dread of sin produces the dread of temptation. The continual recurrence of temptation and the imbecility of nature make many doubtful of the possibility of salvation. In fear many have fled from possibilities of temptation into deserts and monasteries. But this is not the worthy way of meeting fear. And in cloisters men do not escape from themselves. True fear is a constant sense of the Divine presence, and dread of the Divine displeasure. True fear inspires prayer.
II. What is meant by hardness of heart. Hardness of heart is a thoughtless neglect of the Divine law: such an acquiescence in the pleasures of sense, and such delight in the pride of life, as leaves no place in the mind for meditation on higher things. To such men Providence is seldom wholly inattentive. They are often called to the remembrance of their Creator, both by blessings and afflictions; by recoveries from sickness, by deliverances from danger, by loss of friends, and by miscarriage of transactions. As these calls are neglected, the hardness is increased, and there is danger lest He whom they have refused to hear should call them no more. This state of dereliction is the highest degree of misery.
III. How, or by what causes, the heart is hardened. The most dangerous hardness proceeds from some enormous wickedness, of which the criminal dreads the recollection, and finding a temporal ease in negligence and forgetfulness, by degrees confirms himself in stubborn impenitence. A less dangerous hardness consists, not in the perversion of the will, but in the alienation of the thoughts: by such hearts God is not defied; He is only forgotten. Of this forgetfulness the general causes are worldly cares and sensual pleasures. Such men are usually either stupidly or profanely negligent of these external duties of religion, which are instituted to excite and preserve the fear of God. A great part of them whose hearts are thus hardened may justly impute that insensibility to the violation of the Sabbath. Many enjoyments, innocent in themselves, may become dangerous by too much frequency. Whatever tends to diminish the fear of God, or abate the tenderness of conscience, must be diligently avoided.
IV. The consequence of hardness of heart. Shall fall into mischief–both into wickedness and misery. He that hardeneth his heart shall surely become both wicked and miserable. (S. Johnson, LL.D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 14. Happy is the man that feareth alway] That ever carries about with him that reverential and filial fear of God, which will lead him to avoid sin, and labour to do that which is lawful and right in the sight of God his Saviour.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Happy is the man, because he shall thereby avoid that mischief which befalls fearless sinners, which is expressed in the next clause, and procure that eternal salvation which they lose.
That feareth, to wit, the offence and judgments of God; who having confessed and forsaken his sins, as was now said, is afraid to return to them again, and careful to avoid them, and all occasions of them.
Alway; in all times, companies, and conditions; not only in the time of great trouble, when even hypocrites will in some sort be afraid of sinning, but in times of outward peace and prosperity.
That hardeneth his heart; that goeth on obstinately and securely in sinful courses, casting off due reverence to God, and just fear of his threatenings and judgments.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
14. feareththat is, God, andso repents.
hardeneth his heartmakeshimself insensible to sin, and so will not repent (Pro 14:16;Pro 29:1).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Happy [is] the man that feareth alway,…. Not men, but the Lord; there is a fear and reverence due to men, according to the stations in which they are; but a slavish fear of man, and which deters from the worship of God and obedience to him, is criminal, and brings a snare; and a man, under the influence of it, cannot be happy: nor is a servile fear of God intended, a fear of wrath and damnation, or a distrust of his grace, a continual calling in question his love, and an awful apprehension of his displeasure and vengeance; for in such fear is torment, and with it a man can never be happy; but it is a reverence and godly fear, a filial one, a fear of God and his goodness, which he puts into the hearts of his people; a fear, indeed, of offending him, of sinning against him, by which a man departs from evil, and forsakes it, as well as confesses it; but is what arises from a sense of his goodness: and it is well when such a fear of God is always before the eyes and on the hearts of men; in their closets and families, in their trade and commerce, in all companies into which they come, as, well as in the house of God and the assembly of his saints, where he is to be feared; as also in prosperity and adversity, even throughout the whole course of life, passing the time of their sojourning here in fear: and such a man is happy; the eye of God is on him, his heart is towards him, and he delights it, him; his secret is with him, he sets a guard of angels about him, has laid up goodness for him, and communicates largely to him;
but he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief; that hardens his heart from the fear of the Lord; neither confesses his sin, nor forsakes it; bids, as it were, defiance to heaven, strengthens and hardens himself in his wickedness, and by his hard and impenitent heart treasures up to himself wrath against the day of wrath; he falls “into evil” k, as it may be rendered, into the evil of sin yet more and more, which the hardness of his heart brings him into, and so into the evil of punishment here and hereafter.
k “in malum”, V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Tigurine version, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Schultens.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
14 Well is it with the man who feareth always;
But he that is stiff-necked shall fall into mischief.
The Piel occurs elsewhere only at Isa 51:13, where it is used of the fear and dread of men; here it denotes the anxious concern with which one has to guard against the danger of evil coming upon his soul. Aben Ezra makes God the object; but rather we are to regard sin as the object, for while the truly pious is one that “fears God,” he is at the same time one that “feareth evil.” The antithesis extends beyond the nearest lying contrast of fleshly security; this is at the same time more or less one who hardens or steels his heart ( ), viz., against the word of God, against the sons of God in his heart, and against the affectionate concern of others about his soul, and as such rushes on to his own destruction ( , as at Pro 17:20).
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
14 Happy is the man that feareth alway: but he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief.
Here is, 1. The benefit of a holy caution. It sounds strangely, but it is very true: Happy is the man that feareth always. Most people think that those are happy who never fear; but there is a fear which is so far from having torment in it that it has in it the greatest satisfaction. Happy is the man who always keeps up in his mind a holy awe and reverence of God, his glory, goodness, and government, who is always afraid of offending God and incurring his displeasure, who keeps conscience tender and has a dread of the appearance of evil, who is always jealous of himself, distrustful of his own sufficiency, and lives in expectation of troubles and changes, so that, whenever they come, they are no surprise to him. He who keeps up such a fear as this will live a life of faith and watchfulness, and therefore happy is he, blessed and holy. 2. The danger of a sinful presumption: He that hardens his heart, that mocks at fear, and sets God and his judgments at defiance, and receives not the impressions of his word or rod, shall fall into mischief; his presumption will be his ruin, and whatever sin (which is the greatest mischief) he falls into it is owing to the hardness of his heart.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Awe and Defiance of the Lord
Verse 14 assures a happy or blessed state for the man whose life is dominated by holy awe of the LORD and His teachings, Pro 23:17; Neh 5:14-15; Job 1:5; Psa 16:8-9; Php_2:12-18; but he who hardens his heart in defiance of the LORD shall fall into wickedness and its resulting misery, Pro 13:15; Pro 5:21-23; Rom 2:8-9; Rom 3:16-18.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
(14) Happy is the man that feareth alway lest he should fall, and so, distrusting himself, seeks heavenly aid (Php. 2:12).
He that hardeneth his heart.(Comp. Exo. 8:15, sqq.)
Shall fall into mischief.As he will have lost the guidance and protection of God.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
14. Feareth always That is, to offend God, or do injury to men, and hence is watchful, prayerful.
But hardeneth his heart Resists this gracious fear, and deems its violation a slight matter, and thus soon becomes presumptuous in sin.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Pro 28:14 Happy [is] the man that feareth alway: but he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief.
Ver. 14. Blessed is the man that feareth always. ] That is “in the fear of the Lord all day long.” Pro 23:17 Duo sunt timores Dei, servilis et amicalis, saith Bede: There is a twofold fear of God – servile and filial; perfect love casts out the former, breeds and feeds the latter. By this “fear of the Lord it is that men depart from evil,” that they shake off security, that they abound in God’s work, that they may abide in his love, that they set a jealous eye upon their own hearts, and suspect a snake under every flower, a snare in every creature, and do therefore “feed with fear,” and “rejoice in fear,” “pass the whole time of their sojourning here in fear,” yea, “work out their whole salvation with fear and trembling.” Oh the blessedness of such!
But he that hardeneth his heart.
Shall fall into mischief.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Happy. See note on Pro 3:13.
that feareth alway, &c. Illustrations: Joseph (Gen 39:9; Gen 42:18); Nehemiah (Neh 5:15).
he that hardeneth, &c. Illustrations: Jews (Jer 8:12); Gentiles (Rom 2:3-5); Herod (Mat 14:1-10).
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Pro 28:14
Pro 28:14
“Happy is the man that feareth alway; But he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief.”
“Happy is the man who lives in fear of sin: reckless men come to grief.
Pro 28:14. Ones attitude toward God is under consideration. He will either fear God (the reverence and godly fear mentioned in Heb 12:28 and Ecc 12:13) and depart from evil (Pro 16:6), or he will harden his heart so he wont fear, and he will continue in his sins. Rom 2:5 speaks of this hardness and impenitent heart, and they do go together. Pro 23:13 says we should not envy sinners (that leads to sinning) but to be in the fear of Jehovah all day long.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Happy: Pro 23:17, Psa 2:11, Psa 16:8, Psa 112:1, Isa 66:2, Jer 32:40, Rom 11:20, Heb 4:1, 1Pe 1:17
but: Pro 29:1, Exo 7:22, Exo 14:23, Job 9:4, Rom 2:4
Reciprocal: Pro 14:16 – the fool Pro 19:26 – wasteth Pro 21:29 – hardeneth Pro 24:16 – but Jer 44:10 – neither Mat 26:35 – Though 1Co 10:12 – General 2Co 7:11 – fear Heb 3:8 – Harden
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
FEAR AND ITS ANTIDOTE
Happy is the man that feareth alway. Perfect love casteth out fear.
Pro 28:14 (with 1Jn 4:18).
Fear has a place in the Gospel, may we but find it. The object of fear may be either a thing or a person.
I. We fear a thing which, being possible, is also undesirable or dreadful.We do not fear that which is impossible; we do not fear that which is pleasant or neutral. Our Prayer Book, commenting in the Catechism upon the Lords Prayer, bids us call three things evil, not pain, not sickness, not loss, not bereavement, not even natural death, but just these only: (1) sin and wickedness; (2) our ghostly enemy; (3) everlasting death. These three things then are the proper objects of Gospel fear.
II. The fear of God as a Person, even the dread of God as a Person, is essentially of a high order.To feel that there is One above me, a living Being, to Whom I am accountable, if it be but as my Judge, to Whom I am something, if it be but as a malefactor and a victimthere is something elevating in the very conception. But this, if it stop here, is the religion of nature, of fallen nature, of the thing made and corrupted crouching beneath the hand of its maker. This mere dread, though it is a higher thing than indifference, is no part of the Gospel. From this kind of fear the convinced man, if he yields himself to Christs teaching, will pass on into a higher.
Dean Vaughan.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Pro 28:14. Happy is the man that feareth always Who, in all times, companies, and conditions, maintains in his mind a holy awe of God, and a reverence for him, his glory and majesty, his wisdom and power, his holiness and justice, his greatness and goodness; that is always afraid of offending him, and incurring his displeasure; that keeps his conscience tender, and has a dread of the appearance of evil; that is always jealous of himself, and distrusts his own sufficiency, and lives in expectation of troubles and changes; so that, when they come, they do not surprise him: he that keeps up such a fear as this in his mind, will live a life of faith, prayer, and watchfulness, and therefore he is happy, blessed, and holy; for he hereby avoids that mischief which befalls fearless and careless sinners, as is expressed in the next clause, and obtains that eternal salvation which they fall short of. But he that hardeneth his heart That goeth on obstinately and securely in sinful courses, casting off all due reverence for God, and just fear of his threatenings and judgments; shall fall into mischief Shall fall into still greater guilt and misery.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
28:14 Happy [is] the man that {g} feareth always: but he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief.
(g) Which stands in awe of God, and is afraid to offend him.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Fearing sin is in view here, not having a timid disposition or fearing God. [Note: Ross, p. 1106.] The contrast of hardening the heart supports this view.