Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Proverbs 13:25
The righteous eateth to the satisfying of his soul: but the belly of the wicked shall want.
Pro 13:25
The righteous eateth to the satisfying of his soul.
The satisfaction of the body determined by the condition of the soul
Bodily satisfaction is an essential element in our happiness so long as we are in this world. The text implies that the satisfaction of the body depends upon the condition of the soul; and this is a great truth greatly neglected. Consider what bodily satisfaction requires.
I. Bodily health. No food can satisfy a diseased body, a body whose organs and functions are out of order. But the condition of the soul has much to do with physical health. The anxieties, ill-tempers, recriminations, impure passions of a wicked heart, will soon reduce the body to disease, feebleness, and ruin. On the other hand, a true, virtuous, and happy soul tends to physical health. A merry heart doeth good like medicine. One thought can disorganise a healthy body and do much to restore a diseased one.
II. Bodily supplies. The supplies necessary to satisfy the body should be–
1. Of a right kind. A body restless with hunger would scarcely be satisfied with confectionery. Now, the condition of the soul has much to do with the kind of food. The soul not only modifies our natural appetites, but creates artificial ones, and hence supplies provisions for the body which are unnatural and unhealthy. The soul, by its working on the bodys appetites, has brought to the bodys table compounds unsatisfying and deleterious.
2. A right amount. An insufficient amount, even of right provisions, would leave the body unsatisfied. But the question of sufficiency also depends greatly on the soul. Indolence, extravagance, intemperance, bad management, often so reduce mens material resources that they are left utterly destitute of the necessary food. These thoughts, we think, give an important meaning to the text, The righteous eateth to the satisfying of his soul: but the belly of the wicked shall want. A corrupt soul will evermore have a dissatisfied body. (Homilist.)
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Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 25. To the satisfying of his soul] His desires are all moderate; he is contented with his circumstances, and is pleased with the lot which God is pleased to send. The wicked, though he use all shifts and expedients to acquire earthly good, not sticking even at rapine and wrong, is frequently in real want, and always dissatisfied with his portion. A contented mind is a continual feast. At such feasts he eats not.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Gods favour and blessing gives the righteous man a competent estate, and a heart to use it, and comfort and satisfaction in it; whereas wicked men commonly want either all these blessings, or some of them.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
25. The comparative temporalprosperity of the righteous and wicked, rather than contentment anddiscontent, is noted.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
The righteous eateth to the satisfying of his soul,…. He is blessed with a sufficient competency to live upon; and he is contented with what he has, and uses it moderately; he has enough to eat, and is contented with his portion, and eats no more than sufficeth; he eats to the satisfying of his appetite, and no more; he does not indulge to luxury and excess: and so as to spiritual things; he eats to the satisfying of his soul, with the goodness and fatness of God’s house, with the word and ordinances, with the promises of the Gospel, and with Jesus Christ, the bread of life; with these he is satisfied, as with marrow and fatness;
but the belly of the wicked shall want; not only spiritual food, which he has no appetite for, but corporeal food; he shall starve in the midst of plenty, not having a heart to put that food into his mouth, and fill his belly with it, as nature requires, through his covetousness; or, having spent his substance in rioting and wantonness, wants bread to satisfy the craving of his appetite.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
25 The righteous has to eat to the satisfying of his soul;
But the body of the godless must suffer want.
Jerome translates freely by insaturabilis (he has want = has never enough), but in that case we would have expected ; also in 25a would have been used. We have thus before us no commendation of temperance and moderation in contrast to gluttony, but a statement regarding the diversity of fortune of the righteous and the godless – another way of clothing the idea of Pro 10:3. is a segolate form, thus an infin. formation, formally different from the similar , Pro 3:10. Regarding , vid., Psychol. p. 265f.; it is a nobler word than “ Bauch ” [belly], for it denotes not the external arch, but, like (R. , concavus ), the inner body, here like Pro 18:20, as that which receives the nourishment and changes it in succum et sanguinem . That God richly nourishes the righteous, and on the contrary brings the godless to want and misery, is indeed a rule with many exceptions, but understood in the light of the N.T., it has deep inward everlasting truth.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
25 The righteous eateth to the satisfying of his soul: but the belly of the wicked shall want.
Note, 1. It is the happiness of the righteous that they shall have enough and that they know when they have enough. They desire not to be surfeited, but, being moderate in their desires, they are soon satisfied. Nature is content with a little and grace with less; enough is as good as a feast. Those that feed on the bread of life, that feast on the promises, meet with abundant satisfaction of soul there, eat, and are filled. 2. It is the misery of the wicked that, through the insatiableness of their own desires, they are always needy; not only their souls shall not be satisfied with the world and the flesh, but even their belly shall want; their sensual appetite is always craving. In hell they shall be denied a drop of water.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Divine Recompense
Verse 25 contrasts the assurance that material needs of the righteous will be supplied with the forecast that the wants and cravings of the wicked will eventually be denied (soul in this verse refers to desire or appetite), Pro 10:3; Pro 11:31; Pro 13:21-22.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Pro. 13:25
WANT AND SATISFACTION
I. The limited truth of the assertion in relation both to the righteous and the wicked. Read in the light of personal experience, and in the light of history, it is found true, and is found not true in the case of the righteous. Elijah ate to satisfaction beside the brook Cherith, while many of his idolatrous countrymen suffered want. But Paul was often in hunger (2Co. 11:27), while Nero lived in luxury. Christians have died from hunger, and others have had all their bodily wants supplied all their lives, and sometimes by most remarkable providential interpositions. Godliness is often profitable in this sense for the life that now is (1Ti. 4:8), but not always, and wickedness often brings a man literally to the condition of the prodigal when he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat; but many a wicked man, like him of the parable (Luk. 16:19), have fared sumptuously every day from their cradle to their grave. To take our text as absolutely true of material food would be to contradict the testimony of Scripture itself.
II. Its absolute truth in relation to both characters.
1. That wickedness gives a man no real satisfaction is a fact of experience. Men have testified over and over again that while they lived in sin they knew nothing of real heartsatisfaction and rest, and have borne witness to the words of St. Augustine, who spoke from experience when he said, Thou hast made us for thyself, and the heart is restless till it finds rest in Thee. A man who feeds upon unwholesome food is always in want, because that upon which he feeds is not suited to meet the demands of his physical frame, so is it with the soul of a godless man.
2. The history of the world testifies that it is so. The unrest of the ungodly is the explanation of much of the ambition, of many of the selfish schemes of some men, as well as of the voluntary asceticism, the self-imposed sufferings of others. The key to both is that they have spent money for that which is not bread, and their labour for that which satisfieth not (Isa. 55:2). The teaching of Christ confirms it. Want was the condition of the prodigal; he wanted the bread which his fathers home and table alone could supply. Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you (Joh. 6:53). On this subject see Dr. Arnots remarks on Pro. 13:12 in the comments on that verse.
3. That there is satisfaction in sainthood is declared by Christ, and testified to be true by all His followers. The bread upon which a renewed man feeds is the Divine wordthe thoughts of God in the abstract, and the personal thought or word Jesus Christ. As the living Father hath sent Me and I live by the Father, so he that eateth Me shall live by Me (Joh. 6:57). And life is but another word for satisfaction. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of His heart shall flow rivers of living water (Joh. 7:38). Millions of men and women in all circumstances, both poor and rich in worldly wealth, have set to their seal that God is true (Joh. 3:33) when He invites men to hearken diligently unto Him, and eat that which is good, and let their souls delight themselves in fatness (Isa. 55:2).
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
One of the confidences of the wicked is that he, at least, has his pleasure in this world. The inspired Solomon denies it. He himself has left us an experience (Ecclesiastes 1). The righteous man seeks righteousness and peace, and these things do satisfy him. He seeks them, not as the world does, under a mistake, but for what they really are. He seeks them more and more as he knows them better, and shall be seeking them and enjoying them through eternal ages. But the wicked, even in his belly, wants. His delights, even of the more carnal sort, are not to be directly gazed at. If they are, they vanish. He cannot trust himself to theorise over any solid pleasures. So hollow are they that he would not live over again the history of the past, and so poor that he grows tired of enjoying them.Miller.
Have he more or less, he hath that which satisfies him. Nature is content with little, grace with less. If Jacob may have but bread to eat and raiment to put on it sufficeth him; and this he dare be bold to promise himself. Beg his bread he hopes he shall not, but if he should, he can say with Luther (who made many a meal of a broiled herring), Let us be content to fare hard here: have we not the bread that came down from heaven?Trapp.
To have to eat is the common mercy of God, who openeth His hand and feedeth all things living. To have enough to eat is a great mercy in itself, and greater than mans nature, which hath never enough of sinning anyway deserveth; but to be satisfied with that which is enough is a peculiar property bestowed on the righteous. The belly of the wicked wanting enough to eat in some degree is punished for feeding too greedily on the husks of sin. Wanting all food is more hardly punished, and it may be for the hardness of their hearts in resisting all instruction; but that it shall want though it have enough, this is a severe punishment of wickedness, though thought to be the least. The wise man doth not speak of the want of the mouth of the wicked as showing that the mouth should have Sufficient, and yet the belly be punished with want in not being satisfied.Jermin.
HOMILETIC TREATMENT OF THE CHAPTER AS A WHOLE
The true Christian education of children.
(1) Its basis: Gods Word (Pro. 13:1; Pro. 13:13-14);
(2) Its means: Love and strictness in inculcating Gods Word (Pro. 13:1; Pro. 13:18; Pro. 13:24);
(3) Its aim: Guidance of the youth to the promotion of his temporal and eternal welfare (Pro. 13:2 sq. Pro. 13:16 sq.)Langes Commentary.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(25) The righteous eateth to the satisfying of his souli.e., has enough for his wants. (See above on Pro. 10:3.)
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
25. To the satisfying of his soul What his need requires to the proper sustenance of his life.
Belly , ( beten,) stomach. A righteous man’s desires are moderate, and he lives in the temperate enjoyment of God’s blessings; but wicked men frequently bring themselves to poverty by their luxury and extravagance; and others, in consequence of the insatiableness of their desires, never have enough. Compare Pro 10:3; Psa 34:10.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
v. 25. The righteous eateth to the satisfying of his soul,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
REFLECTIONS
READER! amidst many sweet and blessed things which this chapter furnisheth for improvement in reflection, I feel my mind particularly led to contemplate yet more the grace of our Jesus, in his wonderful condescension as here expressed, in making himself poor, when possessed of all the riches of heaven and earth. There is somewhat in this view of Christ, extremely engaging; and when connected with that view, we consider the cause and design of it, surely it holdeth out one of the most delightful subjects the human mind is capable of contemplating.
Jesus, though Lord of all, made himself servant of all: and went on in a continued series of humiliation, until that he humbled himself unto the accursed death of the cross. So that it was grace in all his actions; grace in his first design, and grace in every purpose. And what an everlasting revenue of love, praise, and glory, must result from such acts of beneficence!
But, Reader! as an improvement from this view of Jesus, think what on opposition to this loveliness of Christ, must be the self-righteous; and if Christ be so truly amiable in this condescension, how truly unamiable must be the proud in his own self-importance! There is that maketh himself rich, and yet hath nothing. To be nothing is bad enough: and yet it is to be worse than nothing, when a man fancieth himself he is something, when in reality he is nothing. To be poor indeed in good works, and without holiness before God; and yet talking of our good works and holiness: to be blind to our own sin, and blind to Christ and his righteousness; and yet confident of our own worth; and fancying we have no great need of a Saviour: to be naked of all spiritual-cloathing to appear in before God; and yet taking to ourselves a covering, but not of God’s Spirit. – Reader! I pray you pause: can there be upon the face of the earth a more pitiable character? To have the spots of death upon us, and yet unconscious that we are sick. Oh! that souls in this state would hear, and attend to the blessed words of Christ. I counsel thee (saith Jesus) to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich: and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see. Precious Jesus! thou, who givest this counsel, give grace also to follow it!
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Pro 13:25 The righteous eateth to the satisfying of his soul: but the belly of the wicked shall want.
Ver. 25. The righteous eateth to the satisfying of his soul. ] Have he more or less, he hath that which satisfies him. Nature is content with a little, grace with less; Cibus et potus sunt divitiae Christianorum. food and drink are the divinity of Christians, If Jacob may but have “bread to eat, and clothes to put on,” it sufficeth him; and this he dare be bold to promise himself. Beg his bread he hopes he shall not; but if he should, he can say with Luther (who made many a meal with a broiled herring), Mendicato pane hic vivamus; annon hoc pulchre sarcitur in eo quod pascimur pane cum angelis, et vita aeterna, Christo, et sacramentis? a Let us be content to fare hard here: have we not the bread that came down from heaven?
But the belly of the wicked shall want.
a Luth. in Ps. cxxxii.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Pro 13:25
Pro 13:25
“The righteous eateth to the satisfaction of his soul; But the belly of the wicked shall want.”
The Douay Version of the Bible renders the second clause, “The belly of the wicked is never to be filled. There is here a profound truth regarding fleshly appetite, which must be controlled and directed to God-approved purposes; because it is impossible fully to gratify the appetites of the flesh. The drunkard literally dies of thirst for alcohol; and nobody knew any better than Solomon that a thousand women were insufficient to gratify his sexual lust. The belly of the wicked can’t be filled!
Pro 13:25. The righteous may not be wealthy, but they will have enough (Mat 6:33; Psa 37:25). The Prodigal Son (Luk 15:14) exemplifies the latter statement.
Proverbs of Solomon – Pro 13:1-25
Open It
1. What is something you crave?
2. Why do you think parents should or should not spank their children?
3. When was the last time someone asked you to get involved in some sort of get-rich-quick scheme?
Explore It
4. What does a wise child do? (Pro 13:1)
5. What do the unfaithful crave? (Pro 13:2)
6. What does the person who guards his or her lips also guard? (Pro 13:3)
7.Whom does righteousness guard? (Pro 13:6)
8.How should we and should we not use money? (Pro 13:7)
9. What advantage does a person have who is poor? (Pro 13:8)
10. What does pride breed? (Pro 13:10)
11. How should a person accumulate wealth? (Pro 13:11)
12. How did Solomon describe the teachings of a wise person? (Pro 13:14)
13. How does a prudent person act? (Pro 13:16)
14. What is the result of ignoring discipline? (Pro 13:18)
15. What happens to those who spend time with wise people? (Pro 13:20)
16. What reward do righteous people receive? (Pro 13:21)
17. What does a good person leave for his or her grandchildren? (Pro 13:22)
18. What is the person who loves his or her child careful to do? (Pro 13:24)
Get It
19. What does it mean to have a craving for violence?
20. What should a person do to guard his or her lips?
21. Why is guarding ones own lips so difficult to do?
22. In what way does righteousness guard a person of integrity?
23. How is Solomons advice about accumulating wealth like or unlike any financial advice you have been given?
24. Why are people tempted by get-rich-quick schemes?
25. How do wise teachings turn a person from death?
26. In what way do you ignore discipline in your life?
27. Why is it easy to ignore discipline?
28. Why does a good person leave an inheritance to his or her grandchildren?
29. In what way does a parent who does not discipline his or her child hate the child?
30. Why would a person who loves his or her child use discipline?
31. What is the value and purpose of disciplining children?
32. Of what do parents need to be careful in using discipline to correct children?
Apply It
33. What is one specific step you will take this week to guard what you say?
34. What do you want to change about the way you handle money?
35. As a parent, what can you do to make your correction of your children more loving, consistent, or purposeful?
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
righteous: Psa 34:10, Psa 37:3, Psa 37:16, Psa 37:18, Psa 37:19, 1Ti 4:8, Heb 13:5
the belly: Pro 6:11, Pro 24:34, Deu 28:48, Deu 32:24, Isa 65:13, Isa 65:14, 2Th 3:10
Reciprocal: Gen 25:29 – and he Hos 4:10 – they shall eat Joe 2:26 – ye shall Mat 14:20 – were Luk 9:17 – eat
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
This proverb illustrates the difference between a proverb and a promise. It expresses a condition that is generally true in this life-all other things being equal. However, God never promised that He would keep every righteous person from starving to death (cf. Mat 6:33; Leviticus 26). David’s statement that he had never seen the righteous forsaken or his seed begging bread (Psa 37:25) was a personal testimony, not a guarantee that God will always provide all the physical needs of all the righteous.