Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Proverbs 20:27

The spirit of man [is] the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly.

27. spirit ] Lit. breath ( , LXX.). The word, in this unusual sense, may probably have been chosen to recall Gen 2:7: the Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath (the same word as here) of life. “The breath of the higher life, above that which he has in common with the lower animals, coming to him direct from God, such a life, with all its powers of insight, consciousness, reflection, is as a lamp which God has lighted, throwing its rays into the darkest recesses of the heart,” Dean Plumptre in Speaker’s Comm.

candle ] Rather, lamp, A.V. marg. and R.V.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

The spirit of man – The breath of Gen 2:7, the higher life, above that which he has in common with lower animals, coming to him direct from God. Such a life, with all its powers of insight, consciousness, reflection, is as a lamp which God has lighted, throwing its rays into the darkest recesses of the heart. A still higher truth is proclaimed in the Prologue of Johns Gospel. The candle, or lamp of Yahweh, derives its light from the Light that lighteth every man, even the Eternal Word.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Verse 27. The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord] God has given to every man a mind, which he so enlightens by his own Spirit, that the man knows how to distinguish good from evil; and conscience, which springs from this, searches the inmost recesses of the soul.

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

The spirit, i.e. the reasonable soul.

Is the candle; is a clear and glorious light set up in man for his information and direction.

Of the Lord; so called, partly because it comes from God in a more immediate and peculiar manner than the body doth, Ecc 12:7; and partly because it is in Gods stead to observe and judge all a mans actions.

Searching all the inward parts of the belly; discerning not only his outward actions, which are visible to others, but his most inward and secret thoughts and affections, which no other man can see, 1Co 2:11. The belly is here put for the heart, as it is frequently. The soul can reflect upon and judge of its own dispositions and actions; which plainly showeth that the heart is not so deceitful, but that a man by diligent study of it, and the use of the means appointed by God, may arrive at a certain knowledge of its state and condition, in reference to God and to salvation.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

27. The spirit . . . LordMen’sminds are God’s gifts, and thus able to search one another (comparePro 20:5; Pro 18:8;Pro 18:17; 1Co 2:11).

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

The spirit of man [is] the candle of the Lord,…. The rational soul of man is a light set up in him; this is what is commonly called the light of nature; it was a bright and burning light at first, but through sin is become a very feeble one; by which men have only a glimmering view of divine things, of God and his worship, and of what he would have done, or not done; by this light men do but grope after him, if happily they may find him and know his will; it is but like a candle light at best, in comparison of divine revelation, or the Gospel of the grace of God, which has shone out like the sun in its meridian glory; and especially in comparison of the sun of righteousness, Christ Jesus, and the light of the divine Spirit; yet this is a light set up by the Lord, a candle of his; it comes from the Father of lights, he is the author and maintainer of it; it is a spirit and understanding which is by the inspiration of the Almighty; see Ge 2:7;

searching all the inward parts of the belly; or heart; the thoughts, intents, and purposes of it; which are the things of a man that only the spirit of man knows; by this candle, or light, he can look into his own heart, the inmost recesses of it, and reflect upon his thoughts and schemes, and judge in some measure whether right or wrong; there is a conscience in man, which, unless seared, passes sentence on what is in man, or done by him, and either excuses or accuses; see 1Co 2:10 Ro 2:14.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

With a proverb of a light that was extinguished, Pro 20:20 began the group; the proverb of God’s light, which here follows, we take as the beginning of a new group.

27 A candle of Jahve is the soul of man,

Searching through all the chambers of the heart.

If the O.T. language has a separate word to denote the self-conscious personal human spirit in contradistinction to the spirit of a beast, this word, according to the usage of the language, as Reuchlin, in an appendix to Aben Ezra, remarks, is ; it is so called as the principle of life breathed immediately by God into the body ( vid., at Gen 2:7; Gen 7:22). Indeed, that which is here said of the human spirit would not be said of the spirit of a beast: it is “the mystery of self-consciousness which is here figuratively represented” (Elster). The proverb intentionally does not use the word , for this is not the power of self-consciousness in man, but the medium of bodily life; it is related secondarily to nshmh ( ), while ( ) is used, is an expression unheard of. Hitzig is in error when he understands by here the soul in contradistinction to the spirit, and in support of this appeals to an expression in the Cosmography of Kazwni: “the soul (Arab. al – nefs ) is like the lamp which moves about in the chambers of the house;” here also en – nefs is the self-conscious spirit, for the Arab. and post-bibl. Heb. terminology influenced by philosophy reverses the biblical usage, and calls the rational soul , and, on the contrary, the animal soul , ( Psychologie, p. 154). is the particip. of , Zep 1:12, without distinguishing the Kal and Piel. Regarding , lxx , vid., at Pro 18:8: denotes the inner part of the body (R. , to be deepened), and generally of the personality; cf. Arab. batn alrwh , the interior of the spirit, and Pro 22:18, according to which Fleischer explains: “A candle of Jahve, i.e., a means bestowed on man by God Himself to search out the secrets deeply hid in the spirit of another.” But the candle which God has kindled in man has as the nearest sphere of illumination, which goes forth from it, the condition of the man himself – the spirit comprehends all that belongs to the nature of man in the unity of self-consciousness, but yet more: it makes it the object of reflection; it penetrates, searching it through, and seeks to take it up into its knowledge, and recognises the problem proposed to it, to rule it by its power. The proverb is thus to be ethically understood: the spirit is that which penetrates that which is within, even into its many secret corners and folds, with its self-testing and self-knowing light – it is, after Mat 6:22, the inner light, the inner eye. Man becomes known to himself according to his moral as well as his natural condition in the light of the spirit; “for what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?” says Paul, 1Co 2:11. With reference to this Solomonic proverb, the seven-branched candlestick is an ancient symbol of the soul, e.g., on the Jewish sepulchral monuments of the Roman vi Portuensis. Our texts present the phrase ; but the Talm. Pesachim 7b, 8a, the Pesikta in part 8, the Midrash Othijoth de-Rabbi Akiba, under the letter , Alphasi ( ” ) in Pesachim, and others, read ; and after this phrase the Targum translates, while the Syr. and the other old versions render by the word “Lord” ( Venet. ), and thus had before them.

Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament

      27 The spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly.

      We have here the dignity of the soul, the great soul of man, that light which lighteth every man. 1. It is a divine light; it is the candle of the Lord, a candle of his lighting, for it is the inspiration of the Almighty that gives us understanding. He forms the spirit of man within him. It is after the image of God that man is created in knowledge. Conscience, that noble faculty, is God’s deputy in the soul; it is a candle not only lighted by him, but lighted for him. The Father of spirits is therefore called the Father of lights. 2. It is a discovering light. By the help of reason we come to know men, to judge of their characters, and dive into their designs; by the help of conscience we come to know ourselves. The spirit of a man has a self-consciousness (1 Cor. ii. 11); it searches into the dispositions and affections of the soul, praises what is good, condemns what is otherwise, and judges of the thoughts and intents of the heart. This is the office, this the power, of conscience, which we are therefore concerned to get rightly informed and to keep void of offence.

Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary

The Spirit of Man

Verse 27 refers to the spirit God breathed into man, the spirit that made him an eternal being, different from the animals, Gen 2:7. This spirit of man has the capability of being illuminated by and responding to the Divine Spirit, Job 32:8; Ecc 12:7; Act 7:59; Act 17:27; Rom 1:20; 1Co 2:9-11.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

MAIN HOMILETICS OF Pro. 20:27

THE CANDLE OF THE LORD

We understand by the spirit of a man the self-conscious egothat which takes cognizance of the inner life, and which reasons and passes judgment upon all a mans perceptions, emotions, and volitions.

I. Mans spirit is a candle, because it is not self-originating. When we speak of a candle, the idea of a borrowed light comes before us; with us there is but one source and fountain of material light, and that is the sun, which, although it is but a candle of the Lord placed in the midst of our solar system, so far transcends all our artificial lights in its glory and permanence, that in comparison with them it seems self-existent and eternal. As a matter of fact, we know that all the artificial light stored up for us in combustible materials around us had its origin in that great father of lights, the sun, and that these lesser lights require kindling before they give forth brightness. So with the spirit of manit is not self-existent and eternal, nor did it kindle itself, it owes its existence to that God who is the intellectual and moral light of the universe, because He is the source of all knowledge and goodness. That same Divine Creator, who said Let there be light and there was light, who set the sun in the heavens to rule the day, made man in His own image by breathing into the human body that spiritual life which makes man a living soul, and distinguishes him from the animal creation around him. We can no more claim to be the author of our own spirits than the sun can claim to have called itself into existence.

II. Mans spirit is a candle, because it is a revealing power. All light is revealing; it first makes evident its own existence and then reveals the existence of objects outside itself. When the sun comes forth above the eastern horizon like a bridegroom from his chamber, it reveals its own glory, and it makes manifest all things upon which its rays fall, and nothing is hidden from the light thereof. So in a less degree is it with every flame of light, and so is it with the mysterious spirit of man. It is self-revealing and self-evidencing, and in and by its light we become conscious of the existence of material forms and spiritual beings, and moral and physical influences outside ourselves.

III. Mans spirit is a candle which is intended to prevent self-deception. Knowledge of any description is good and desirable, but there are two beings of whom it is moral death to remain in ignoranceourself and God. The spirit of a man is the power by which he apprehends both, and this proverb deals exclusively with mans power to know himself, and especially with his power to take cognizance of himself as a moral and responsible being. As the sun, when it darts forth its rays upon the earth, does not leave us in twilight, and in uncertainty as to what is around us, and as the candle brought into a dark chamber shows us, maybe, the dust and the cobwebs, as well as the costly drapery on the walls, so this God-kindled light searches into the innermost thoughts, and feelings, and motives, and shows to every man who does not wilfully turn away from the sight, both the good and the evil that is in him. True it is that, as a moral light, it does not shine so brightly as it did when man came forth from his Makers hand, and that he who hateth light because it is a reprover of his sin (Joh. 3:20) may to some extent obscure its brightness, yet every man possesses light enough within to show him his need of a light outside and above himeven of that true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world (Joh. 1:9).

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS

The candle which God has kindled in man has, as the nearest sphere of illumination which goes forth from it, the condition of the man himselfthe spirit comprehends all that belongs to the nature of man in the unity of self-consciousness, but yet more, it makes it the object of reflection; it penetrates, searching it through, and seeks to take it up into its knowledge, and recognises the problem proposed to it, to rule it by its power. The proverb is thus to be ethically understood.Delitzsch.

The essential connection between the life of God and the life of man is the great truth of the world, and that is the truth which Solomon sets forth in the striking words of my text. The picture which the words include is one of the most simple. A candle stands upon a table in a dark room, itself unlighted. Fire is brought into the room; a blazing bit of paper holds the fire, but it is blown and flutters, and any moment may go out; but the blaze touches the candle and the candle catches fire, and at once you have a steady flame which burns bright and pure and constant. The candle gives forth its manifestation to all the neighbourhood which is illuminated by it. The candle is glorified by the fire, and the two bear witness that they are made for one another by the way in which they fulfil each others life. That fulfilment comes by the way in which the inferior substance renders obedience to the superior. The wax acknowledges the subtle flame as its master and yields to its power, and so, like every faithful servant of a noble master, it gives itself most unreservedly up, and its own substance is clothed with a glory that does not belong to itself. The granite, if you try to burn it, gives no fire; it only opposes a sullen resistance, and as the heat increases splits and breaks but will not burn. But the candle obeys, and so in it the scattered fire finds a point of permanent and clear expression. The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, says Solomon. God is the fire of this world. It is a vital principle, a warm pervading presence everywhere. What thing in outward nature can so picture to us the mysterious, subtle, quick, productive, and destructive principle; that which has always elevated mens hearts and solemnized their voices when they have said the word God, as this strange thing, so heavenly, so unearthly, so terrible, and so gracious, so full of creativeness, and yet so quick and fierce to sweep whatever opposes it out of its path? The glory, the beauty, the marvel, the mystery of fire! Men have always felt the fitness of fire as being the closest of all the elements around the throne on which their conception of Deity is sitting. Man and all other beings, if such beings there are capable of watching our humanity, see what God is in gazing at the manhood God has kindled. The universe is full of the fire of divinity; men feel it in the air as they feel an intense heat which has not yet broken out into a blaze. There is meaning in a great deal of the unexplained, mysterious awfulness of lifethe sense of God felt, unseen. The atmosphere is burdened with heat that does not burst out into fire, and in the midst of this solemn burning world there stands up a man, pure and Godlike. In an instant it is as if a heated room had found some sensitive inflammable point where it would kindle into a blaze, and prospects of Gods felt presence become clear and definite. The fitfulness of the impression of divinity is steadied into permanence. The mystery changes its character, and is a mystery of light and not of darkness. The fire of the Lord has found the candle of the Lord, and burns clear and steady, guiding and cheering instead of bewildering and frightening us, just as a man obedient to God has begun to catch and manifest His nature. I hope you will find this truth comes very close to your separate lives, but let me remind you first what essential dignity clothes the life of man in this world. Such philosophy as belongs to our time would deprecate the importance of man in the world, and rob him of his centralness. His position in such philosophies is this: that the world was not made for man. With us the old story that the Bible told, the book of Genesis with its garden of Eden, and its obedient beasts waiting until man should tell them what they should be called, stands firmly at the beginning of the worlds history. The great notion of the centralness of man in the Garden of Eden re-asserts itself in every cabin of the western forests, or the southern jungles, where a solitary settler and his wife begin as it were the human history anew. There once again the note of Genesis is struck, and man asserts his centralness, and the beasts hesitate in fear till he shall tame them to his service, or bid them depart. The earth under his feet holds its fertility at his command, and what he does upon the earth is echoed in the storms. This is the great impressive idea which over the simplest life of man is ever growing, and with which the philosophies that would make little of the sacredness and centralness of man must always have to fight. This is the impression which is taken up, and steadied, and made clear, and turned from a petty pride to a lofty dignity and a solemn responsibility, when there comes such a message as this of Solomon. He says that the true sacredness, and superiority, and centralness of man is in the likeness of his nature to Gods, and that capacity of spiritual obedience to Him, in virtue of which man may be the earthly declaration and manifestation of God to all the world. So long as that truth stands, the centralness of man is sure. The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord. This is the truth of which I wish to speak to youthe perpetual revelation of God by and through human life. I. You must ask yourself, first, what God is. See how at the very bottom of His existence, as you conceive of it, there lie these two thoughtspurpose and righteousness; how impossible it is to give God any personality, except as the embodiment of these two qualities, the intelligence that plans, and the righteousness that lives in duty. How could any knowledge of these qualities, of what they are, of what sort of being they will make, exist upon the earth, if there were not a human heart in which they could exist, and from which they could be shown? Only a person can truly utter a person; only from a character can character be echoed. You might write it over the skies that God was just, but it would be at best only a bit of knowledgenever a Gospelnever something which it would gladden the hearts of men to know. That comes only when a human life is capable of a justice like Gods justice, and is clothed with His justice in the eyes of men. I have just intimated one thing that we need to observe: mans utterance of God is purely the utterance of a quality; it can tell me nothing of the quantities that make up His life. That God is just, and what it is to be just, I can learn from the just lives of the just men about me; but how just God is, to what unconceived perfection, to what unexplained developments that majestic quality of justice may extend in Himof that I can form no judgment that is worth anything from the justice I see in my fellow-men. II. This seems to me to widen at once the range of the truth I am stating. If it be a quality of God, which man is capable of uttering, then it must be the simple quality of manhood that is necessary for the utterance, and not any specific quantity, not any assignable degree of human greatness. Whoever has the spirit of man may be the candle of the Lord. A larger measure of that spirit may make a brighter light; but there must be a light wherever any human being, in virtue of his essential humanness, by obedience becomes luminous with God. There are the men of manhood, spiritually the leaders of the race; how they stand out! how all men feel their power as they come into their presence, and feel that they are passing into the light of God! They are puzzled when they try to explain it. There is nothing more instructive and suggestive than the bewilderment men feel when they try to tell what inspiration is. He who goes into the presence of any powerful nature, feels sure in some way he is coming into the presence of God; but it would be melancholy if only the great men could give you this conviction. The world would be darker than it is if any human spirit, as soon as it became obedient, did not become the Lords candle. A poor, bruised life, if only it keeps that human quality, and does not become inhuman, but is obedient to God, in its blind way becomes a light. A mere child with his pure humanity, and with his turning of his life towards God from Whom he camehow often he may burn with some suggestion of divinity, and cast illumination upon problems and mysteries so difficult that he himself has never felt them! Little lamps burning everywhere. III. We have here the key to another mystery that often puzzles us. What shall we make of some men rich in attainments and well educated, who stand in the midst of their fellow-men dark and helpless? Let us let the light of Solomons figure upon it. Simply this: they are unlighted candles; they are the spirit of man furnished to its very finest, but lacking the last touch of God; like silver lamps all chaste and wrought with wondrous skill, all filled with choicest oil, but all untouched by fire. IV. There are multitudes of men whose lamps are certainly not dark, and yet who certainly are not the candles of the Lord,with a nature richly furnished, yet profane, impure, worldly. Such a man is not another unlighted candle. He burns so bright and lurid that often the pure light grows dim within its glare. But if it be possible for the human candle, when the subtle components of a human nature are all mingled carefully in it; if it be possible that, instead of being lifted up to heaven, and kindled at the pure beam of Him who is eternally and absolutely good, it should be plunged down into hell, and lighted at the cruel flames that burn out of the dreadful brimstone pit, then we can understand the sight of a man who is rich in every energy of manhood cursing the world with the exhibition of the devilish instead of the Godlike in his life. V. There is still one other way, more subtle and sometimes more dangerous than this, in which the spirit of man may fail of its functions as the candle of the Lord. The man may be lighted, and the fire at which he is lighted may be, indeed, the fire of God, and yet it may not be God alone he shows forth upon the earth. I can picture to myself a candle which should in some way mingle the peculiarity of its own substance with the light it sheds. So it is, I think, with the way in which a great many men manifest God. They have really kindled their lives at Him. It is His fire that burns in them. They are obedient, and so He can make them His points of exhibition, but they are always mixed with the God whom they show. They show themselves as well as Him; just as a mirror mingles its own reflection with the things that are reflected from it and gives them a curious convexity because it is itself convex. This is the secret of pious bigotry, of holy prejudices; it is the candle putting its own colour into the flame it has borrowed from the fire of God. The feeble man makes God seem feeble, the speculative man makes God look like a doubtful dream, the legal man makes God seem as hard and steel-like as law. VI. I have tried to depict some difficulties which beset the full exhibition in the world of the great truth of Solomon. Man is selfish and disobedient, and will not let his light burn at all; man is wilful and passionate, and kindles his light with ungodly fire; man is narrow and bigoted, and makes the light to shine in his own peculiar colour; but all these are accidentdistortions of the true idea of man. How can we know that? Here is the perfect man, CHRIST! I bring the man of my experience and the man of my imagination into the presence of Jesus, but they fall short of Him, and my human consciousness assures me they fall short of the best ideal of what it is to be a man. I am come a light into the world, said Jesus; he that hath seen me hath seen the Father. In Him was light, and the life was the light of men. So wrote the man who of all men knew Him best. I think I need only bid you look at Him and you will see what it is to which our feeble lights are struggling. There is the true spiritual man who is the candle of the Lord, the Light that lighteth every man. It is entirely a new idea of life, new to the standards of our ordinary living, which is there revealed. All ordinary appeals to men to be up and doing, and to make themselves shining lights, fade away and become insignificant before this higher message which comes in the words of Solomon in the life of Jesus. What does that higher message say to you and me? That your full relationship to God can only be realised by obedience to Him, when you will shine by His light; then you cannot be dark, for He shall kindle you; then you shall be as incapable of burning with false passion, as you shall be quick to answer the true; then the devil may hold his torch to you, as he held it to the heart of Jesus in the desert, and your heart shall be as uninflammable as His. As soon as God touches you, you shall burn with a light so truly your own that you shall reverence your own mysterious life, and yet be so truly His that pride shall be impossible. In certain lands, for the most holy ceremonies they prepare the candles with the most anxious care. The very bees that distil the wax are sacred. They range in gardens planted with sweet flowers for their use alone. The wax is gathered by consecrated hands, and the shaping of the candles is a holy task performed in holy places, with the singing of hymns, and in an atmosphere of prayer. All this is done because the candles, when they are made, are to burn in the most elevated ceremonies and on the most sacred days. With what care must the man be made whose spirit is to be the candle of the Almighty Lord! It is his spirit that the Lord is to kindle for Himself; therefore the spirit must be the precious part of him. The body must be valued only for the protection and education that the spirit may gain by it. The power by which his spirit shall become a candle is obedience; therefore obedience must be the struggle and desire of his life; obedience, not hard and forced, but ready, loving, and spontaneous; obedience in heart, the obedience of the child to the father, the obedience of the candle to the flame; the doing of duty not merely that the duty may be done, but that the soul in doing it may become capable of receiving and uttering God; the bearing of pain not merely because the pain must be borne, but that the bearing of it may make the soul able to burn with the Divine fire that found it in the furnace; the repentance of sin and the acceptance of forgiveness not merely that the soul may be saved from the fire of hell but that it may be touched with the fire of Heaven, and shine with the light of God as the stars, for ever.Philips Brooks.

This candle of the Lord is a slight and diminutive light. A lamp is no such dazzling object. A candle has no such goodly light as that it should pride and glory in it; it is but a brief and compendious flame, shut up and imprisoned in a narrow compass. How far distant is it from the beauty of a star! how far from the brightness of a sun! This candle of the Lord, when it was first lighted up, before there was any thief in it, even then it had but a limited and restrained light. God said unto it: Thus far shall thy light go; hither shalt thou shine and no further. Adam, in his innocency, was not to crown himself with his own sparks. God never intended a creature should rest satisfied with his own candle-light, but that it should run to the fountain of light, and sun itself in the presence of God. What a poor happiness had it been for a man only to have enjoyed his own lamp. The candle of the Lord is a light discovering present, not future things, for did you ever hear of such a lamp as would discover an object not yet born? Would you not smile at him that should light a candle to search for a futurity? Let, then, this candle content itself with its proper object. It finds work enough, and difficulty enough, in the discovery of present things, and has not such a copious light as can search out the future. The light of reason is a certain light. Lamplight, as it is not glorious, so it is not deceitfulthough it be but limited, it will discover such things as are within its own sphere with a sufficient certainty. The letters of natures law are so fairly printed, they are so visible and capital, that you may read them by this candlelight. Although there is not vigour enough in any created eye to pierce into the pith and marrow, the depth and secrecy of being It is a directive light. The will looks upon that, as Leander in Musus looked up to the tower for Heros candle, and calls it, as he doth there: Lamp which to me, on my way through this life, is a brilliant director. The will doth but echo the understanding, and doth practically repeat the last syllable of the final decision; which makes the moralist well determine that moral virtues cannot exist without intellectual powers. Other creatures, indeed, are shot more violently into their ends; but man hath the skill and faculty of directing himself, and is, as you may so imagine, a rational kind of arrow, that moves knowingly and voluntarily to the mark of its own accord. It is an aspiring light. I mean no more by this than what that known saying of Augustine imports: Thou hast made us, O Lord, for Thyself: our heart will be restless till it return to Thee. The candle of the Lordit came from Him and it would fain return to Him. For an intellectual lamp to aspire to be a sun is a lofty strain of that intolerable pride which was in Lucifer and Adam; but for it to desire the favour, and presence, and enjoyment of a beatifical sun, is but a just and noble desire of that end which God created it for. If you look but upon a candle, what an aspiring and ambitious light it is! It puts on the form of a pyramid, occasionally and accidentally by reason that the air extenuates it into that form: otherwise it would ascend upward in one greatness, in a rounder and completer manner. It is just thus in the candle of the Lord; reason would move more fully according to the sphere of its activity, it would flame up to heaven in a more vigorous and uniform way; but that it is much quenched by sin therefore it is fain to aspire and climb as well as it can. The bottom and base of it borders upon the body, and is therefore more impure and feculent; but the apex and cuspis of it catches toward heaven. Every spark of reason flies upward. This Divine flame fell down from heaven and halted with its fallas the poets tell us of the limping of Vulcanbut it would fain ascend thither again by some steps and gradations of its own framing.Culverwell.

For Homiletics on Pro. 20:28, see Pro. 20:26.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

(27) The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord.The spirit of man, breathed into him at first by the Creator (Gen. 2:7), and afterwards quickened and illumined by the Divine Spirit, is the candle of the Lord, given to man as an inward light and guide.

Searching all the inward parts of the belly.That is, of the inmost heart of man; testing all his thoughts, feelings, desires, by Gods law, approving some, condemning others, according as they agree with it or not. The word belly is equivalent to heart or soul in Job. 15:2; Job. 15:15; Job. 32:19. (Comp. Joh. 7:38.)

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

27. The spirit , ( neshamah,) construct , ( nishmath,) Gen 2:7; not , ( rua’hh,) spirit, a word with which it is sometimes coupled, kindred to which is the word nephesh, the breath, inspiration, or inbreathing of the Almighty, which giveth understanding. (Job 32:8.)

Inward parts of the belly Put by synecdoche for “the inner man.” Comp. Pro 20:30; Pro 18:8; 1Co 2:10. “Who knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him;” that is, a man is conscious of the schemes, plans, and purposes of his own mind; and no man can know these but himself, unless he reveals them. Man’s intelligent consciousness that by which he cognises the operations of his own mind and his moral consciousness conscience by which he discerns his moral status and the moral quality of his thoughts, emotions, passions, and the actions that proceed from them this intelligent self-consciousness, implying a rational and moral nature, is the gift of Jehovah the lamp or light of Jehovah within him, distinguishing him from all other beings in this world. Compare Rom 1:19-20; Mat 6:22-23; Joh 1:4; Joh 1:9.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

v. 27. The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, the spiritual and moral powers of man, under the direction of Jehovah, penetrate into his innermost being, searching all the inward parts of the belly.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

Pro 20:27. The spirit of man. The soul of man is as a burning lamp, which God hath kindled in the midst of us, which enlightens us, and discovers to us all that passes; it is that breath of life which the Lord hath breathed into us. Lord Bacon refers the latter part of this verse to the inquisitive search of man’s mind into all kinds of things; for though the wise man says in Ecclesiastes 3 that it is impossible for man to find out all the works of God; yet this doth not derogate from the capacity of man’s mind; but may be referred to the impediments of knowledge (such as the shortness of life, disputations among learned men, and refusals to unite their studies and labours; unfaithful and depraved tradition of sciences: with many other inconveniences, wherewith this present state is surrounded): For, that no parcel of the world is denied to man’s inquiry or invention, he declares in another place, where he saith, The spirit of man is as the lamp of God, wherewith he searcheth into the inwards of all secrets. See Adv. of Learning, as above.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

The Scriptural Doctrine of Conscience

Pro 20:27

What is the Scripture doctrine of conscience? The Bible is before us; let us look at it, simply as a record, and inquire what is its particular doctrine on conscience. Does it recognise conscience at all? Does it concern itself about conscience? Does it ever become very earnest about conscience? Is the matter treated incidentally, in a measure casually and offhandedly, or remotely referred to? or does it constitute what may be called a principal line in the record? Observe, we treat the Bible in this initial argument simply as a document. We do not ask who wrote it, where it came from, by whose authority it speaks; we simply want to know, in the first instance, what the Bible says in reference to this great and anxious question of the human conscience.

It cannot be denied that from beginning to end the Bible recognises the fact that man has a conscience. I am not aware that the Bible says, There is a God; or that the Bible begins human history by saying, There is a conscience: in both respects it would seem that a great assumption is made. The very first sentence in the Bible is the greatest sentence in all literature. There Is nothing else that can cover it wholly for pregnancy, suggestiveness, comprehensiveness, sublimity; and so certain words were spoken to man which could not have been spoken to him except under certain assumptions and conditions. It is better that it is so. There would have been, perhaps, a more dignified formality in a specific sentence to the effect, There is a God: there is a conscience: there is a heaven; but the Bible, by whomsoever inspired or incited, makes great assumptions, starts upon certain conditions and propositions, and works its way from these, and so works its way as to justify the reasonableness and truthfulness of the assumptions upon which its mystery, argument, and exhortation are founded. Does a child come into the world with a conscience? That might be turned into a metaphysical inquiry, and might occasion the human mind great trouble as to analysis and specific statement. But there is a practical way of dealing even with an inquiry so profound. Does a child come into the world with responsibility, judgment, imagination, faculty of any kind? Verily appearances are against it. Looking fairly upon a child, without prejudice, appearances go heavily against it as to its being a responsible creature, as to its having any poetic fire, moral sense, spiritual faculty, or destiny beyond the little day in which its body breathes. But can we limit the argument to the area of appearances? Must we not go further? Must we not interpret one life by another? We have not to deal with a solitary or isolated infant, and get up a large amount of wonder about it, conjecturing whatever can it be, wherever has it come from, to what end can it be moving? Human history is now old enough to fall back upon itself, with certain lights and explanations. Therefore I do not see that language would be outraged, or reason put to any extremity, if we said, The child belongs to the human family; being a member of the human family, it must possess certain instincts, germs of reason, certain hints of faculty, certain suggestions of possibility: at present they amount to next to nothing; if you had to set them all down on paper by a separate estimate, and in easily-added figures, you would not have much to do in an arithmetical way. No doubt appearances are so far against the child. But human history is all in its favour. Who will believe that the child is dumb? When all the world has given the child up as dumb, the mother will still expect to hear some little articulation, and she will be quite sure she has heard it. So who will say the child has no conscience? give it time. No understanding? give it time: let it be developed. God has never spoken to lion or eagle, to whale, or largest, finest beast of the forest, as he has spoken to man. Every speech made to man has assumed that man could answer. “There is a spirit in man” a ghost, another, truer self than is seen by the eye. You can find an oak in an acorn: no man ever found an oak in a paving-stone. We must, therefore, look into the plasm, that very first hint of life and purpose and issue; and so looking I, for one, cannot see, let me repeat, that language would be outraged if we said, standing over a little child, This child has judgment, sense, moral faculty, spiritual power, all in germ, all undeveloped, all unawakened; but give time, bring the right ministries to bear upon the child, and then the issue will show how the child is constituted.

The Bible proceeds upon the assumption that man has what may be called a conscience, a moral sense, a faculty that can in some measure understand, worship, and serve God. I am not aware that there is any hint in the Bible that would serve as a proof that this moral sense is the gift of society or of law. It would seem to precede all society, and to be its beginning and extension; it would seem to lie deeper than all law, and to give law whatever real value it possesses. Society does not give a man imagination, or talent, or genius, or high faculty; it may sharpen all these, create opportunities for the exercise of all these, but the gift is within, the secret of God is in the heart, some sign, token, pulse, throb, call it by what name we may something in the man that says, I was made to keep society with God. One man says, I can think, therefore I am. Another might add, I can pray, and therefore I am spiritual, almost divine. It cannot but be interesting to find in ourselves not round about ourselves, like so many decorations and investitures made by society certain elements, pulsations, aspirations, which attest that we are better than the best beast, that between us and the greatest of the unintelligent creation there lies the diameter of an unmeasured universe. It seems to me, therefore, on reading the Bible through, that everywhere the existence of conscience is assumed, not as having been created by society or law, but as being in man, part of man without which, indeed, he could not be man in the truest and highest sense of that complex term.

The Bible further declares that the conscience or moral sense may be trained upward or downward, may be sanctified or corrupted, strengthened or weakened. Conscience does not stand apart, taking no interest in the fray of life; it is in some sense the most active and energetic of all the ministries of our nature, and it cannot escape the general atmosphere in which we live. Even conscience may be desecrated; the choicest golden vessels of the temple may be stolen and may be carried away to the tents of the Philistines. Paul says, “Herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men;” “Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience.” There is a history of adjectives. There is a moral history and a natural history of epithets. Who could imagine that “good” would have come and set itself against “conscience,” to explain it and to help it? Who would gild refined gold? Is not this painting the lily that a word like “good” should attach itself to conscience? Is not this a despicable patronage? Does “conscience” want adjectival commendation or exposition? Is not the very word itself a star to which nothing can be added by way of completing its magnitude or increasing its radiance? You will find in answer to this inquiry that many epithets or explanatory words have been attached to the high term conscience to show what was meant in particular relations and conditions and at special times. The natural history of words finds a copious and instructive chapter at this point. Conscience is not necessarily good, but it may be trained to goodness. I have so read the Bible as to believe that the Bible will never allow there can be a good conscience towards man until there is first a good conscience towards God. Am I right in my reading? I am not using the word in any secondary sense, as socially tolerable, decent, useful; but good in its own true sense all pure, without flaw, sincere, transparent, profound goodness. The Bible always insists that there must be first a right relation to God before there can be a right relation to man. Thus the Bible is unlike any other book. It will not be content with secondaries, except as recognising them as such, saying, You are secondary, you are but reformers, you are helps, but what you must be at and get at is a right relation towards God. In no official or institutional sense, but in the profoundest sense, a man must be religious before he can be philanthropic. Man cannot understand man’s value until he has held communion with God. May we not justify this by Christ’s words? “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets,” namely: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.” The process cannot be reversed or inverted. Attempts may be made in that direction, but how much do those very attempts owe to high religious and Christian education in the first instance? To love your neighbour is impossible, in Christ’s sense of the term, until you have first loved God. The religious love brings with it all the ‘”acuity and fervour of the soul, makes the soul realise itself, and then sends it back into the world, solemn with reverence, tender with pity, hopeful with God’s own love, sacrificial as in sympathy with the very Cross of Christ. Meanwhile, observe how we stand. We are not asking, Is all this true or not true? We are simply endeavouring to find the doctrine of a particular book on a particular subject; and the contention is that Jesus Christ would never allow the possibility of neighbourly love, in its highest, deepest, and fullest sense, except as sequential upon true, honest, deep, sacrificial love of God. What applies to love would seem to apply at least to conscience. “Herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men.” Life is not a trick, a social arrangement, a series of attitudes, or exchanges of courtesies; social life itself is a great religious mystery when properly treated, and can only be handled effectually and beneficently by men who have been closeted with God in long solitude, in the solitude of a dual companionship an irony and a contradiction in words, but easily reconciled by the soul who has spent much time with the Father. If this be at all true, it is simply vain for any man to attempt to have a good social conscience without his first having an honest religious conscience. Not that he may not be intermediately and secondarily very good, most useful, reliable in many respects, calculated to bear a certain amount of pressure with mathematical exactness; but the man who can endure all things, and can bear all sorrow, is the man who has been with God and learned of Jesus Christ; then no mathematician can calculate the amount of pressure which he can bear; then the mathematicians do not gather around the pillars of his life, and say, By so much may the rivers run without injuring the pedestal on which he stands; they fall back and say, This is an equation that has never fallen within our mathematical reasoning; the man must be explained by God; he is right in the sanctuary, he has been weighed in the heavenly places, his heart is ideally, and by the law of aspiration at least, right with God; therefore he comes down and handles the affairs of life with a mastery and a beneficence impossible to any man who has not connected himself with the living fountain, the unseen and eternal spring. A poor, shifty, thriftless life, a surface pool, a little thing that the sunbeam can dry up, is that life that does not come up out of the Rock of Ages or flow down from the fountains of eternity. We live and move and have our being in God: otherwise we are plucked flowers, or artificial creations, and our destiny is to die.

Thus far and in this way have I read the Bible. So strong is the apostolic conviction upon this point that the apostle will insist upon the conscience itself being brought under what may be called evangelical conditions and discipline. Says he, “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” “Having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience.” So then he would treat life as being wrong at its very centre and spring; whether by personal conduct, whether by some mysterious action of the law of heredity, however it is, the apostles all concur in saying, The work must be done within, and all reforms that are to be complete and lasting must be interior reforms and must work out towards the exterior, carrying life, health, and beauty with them. Except the heart be clean the life cannot be pure; except the conscience adjust itself by the meridian of eternity it cannot tell to life what time it is, what duty is, and how duty is to be done. The apostle is, therefore, by so much argumentatively clear; he will not hold any dispute with us, or any conference that implies acquiescence and friendliness, unless we yield at once to the doctrine that we must be born again, we must pass through a regenerative process. Name it as you please, attach what verbal definition you may to the mere way of saying it, there must, according to apostolic doctrine, be a great mystery of re-birth accomplished in the soul, heart, spirit, conscience, before the hands can be clean, or may put themselves lawfully forward to serve the altar of heaven.

But the conscience, on the other hand, may be corrupted, ill-used, slain. I have referred to the use of certain qualifying terms. Take another “Having their conscience seared with a hot iron,” having the pith taken out of it the life, the fibre, the vitality, the meaning; having a conscience like a withered leaf, like a piece of burning wood; everything taken out of it that was divinely created, with voices and ministries meant to inspire and direct, control and ennoble, the whole life. Take another qualifying term “Even their mind and conscience is defiled”: the wreck is within, the ruin is spiritual, the tremendous collapse whatever the theologians may choose to name it has taken place within the man; his are no flesh-wounds, no cutaneous diseases; there is something the matter with him that cannot be touched by earthly physicians, or by invention or ingenuity of his own. The Bible says that all redeeming help must come from the creating God. This doctrine is applied to the conscience as well as to the soul in its more general and comprehensive definitions.

Then the conscience may not only be corrupted, seared, defiled, but it may be turned into a pedant and be forced to ridiculous uses. “If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” The conscience may be made to do servile work, to patronise bad things. The conscience may be appointed managing-director of the most accursed confederacies ever invented by the depravity of man. Conscience, therefore, requires continual culture, watching, assistance; it must for ever draw its vitality from the God of righteousness.

Now we must in the uses of conscience distinguish between the eternal right and the secondary right. The word “right” requires continual definition. It does not always stand for the same thing. Like the term “law,” in the apostolic reasoning, it must be distinguished in its uses, and only by an analytical discrimination can it be saved from perversions the most disastrous. But how are we to ascertain the eternal right? There should be no difficulty about that. How are we to ascertain the institutional or secondary right? There ought to be no difficulty about that. Let us see whether we can render one another any little assistance in that direction. I should say that rest is the eternal right: that the time when it should be taken is the institutional right. Never must we trifle with the eternal right of every human being to rest. As to whether it shall be on the first day, or on the last, or in the middle of the week, there you touch what is secondary and institutional; there you may have change, modification to your heart’s content; there indeed you may enjoy fullest liberty: but you have no liberty in the matter of treating the rest itself. One man esteemeth one day, another man esteemeth another day: let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind; but let no man lay wicked or violent hands upon the divine gift and ordinance of rest to every human creature.

Faith I should declare to be the eternal quantity that mysterious life which may be called the faith-life, the living out of oneself, the tender dependence, the filial expectation, the assured relationship to God; that is the eternal quantity: but creed, catechism, church, institution, organisation, these are secondary and intermediate, and there what liberty is offered by the very genius of the Bible! How the Apostle Paul gives lavishly of this gift of liberty, about eating, and washing, and fasting, and observance, and ceremony! He says: Be kind to one another; make allowances for one another: we cannot all think alike upon these matters; but no man must interfere with the central and eternal quantity of faith, larger than any creed, larger than any church. The creed is temporary. It may have been up to date the very best thing that could be written. But no creed can be permanent unless it be inspired. And when did God inspire a creed-maker? If we claim inspiration for the miscellaneous Bible, the multitudinous Bible, the unmethodised, unsystematised, yet coherent and harmonious Bible, we must not be claiming it too lavishly for mechanisms, formulas, human inventions. Change the creed as civilisation changes; readjust your terms as education advances; re-set all your theological positions and dogmas if you please: but you must not interfere with the eternal quantity, Faith that upper soul, that deeper life, that truer-self; that marvellous system of tentacles that hooks on to the Eternal Life call him Jehovah, Jove, or Lord. You must not take away the idolater’s faith when you take away his idol. Even the idolater may know the mystery of self-translation, and may have no explanation of the mystery which makes his spiritual life august and grand. Do not destroy his idol even until you can substitute it with the living God. Destruction may be carried too far, unless you are prepared with the work of construction, which ought to go on almost concurrently with the destructive process.

I should say that worship is the eternal right, but that methods of worship are the secondary right. Worship with a written formula, if you so please, and can realise most profitably, and God bless you in the exercise and use of a noble, all but inspired liturgy; if you can worship God better by free, spontaneous, unprepared addresses to the throne of the heavenly grace, by all means approach your Father along the broadest, amplest, most hospitable way: but you must never interfere with the right of worship. You can address yourselves wisely to methods, operations, systems, plans, mechanisms, all these may undergo continual change; you may change your form of worship every day in the week: but the worship itself abides, the eternal quantity.

Take a simple illustration which even a child can understand. Suppose we appoint that worship should begin at eleven o’clock in the morning. There you have two rights. There is nothing in the eleven o’clock; that is a point agreed upon, partly by compromise, partly by study of the situation, partly by cognisance of special circumstances in the city, in the parish: but it is right we should be there at eleven o’clock, because we have agreed upon it. What is the eternal right? Punctuality. No man must interfere with that He is a thief who palters with that. Punctuality is the eternal quantity, the eternal right; the eleven o’clock is but the point at which that right takes visible effect, or embodies itself in concrete realisation. But punctuality abides. You may change the eleven o’clock, you may change your time of meeting every Sabbath in the year, but having changed it you cannot interfere with the spirit of punctuality. There is a substance; there is also a shadow: there is the eternal right; there is the secondary accommodation.

But let us beware how we make a pedant of conscience, how we expend our strength on punctilios when we ought to spend it upon principle, real things. Never have a conscience that is not founded upon reason. In so far as conscience can vindicate itself by reason it will make headway in society. Reason always triumphs. It has a long weary fight, a destructive struggle sometimes, but it comes up at the last, and sits by right upon the throne, judging all men. Do not judge another man’s conscience by your own on all these secondary matters. In proportion as you are addicted and here we come back to the central principle in love and loyalty to the eternal right will you be large and liberal in the uses of the secondary right. Find a man who is punctilious about little things, about details, about passing matters, and you find a man who has never been in the sanctuary of the inner right. Find a man who has communed with God, drunk the very spirit of Christ, become imbued with the very meaning of the gospel, and he, Paul-like, gives great liberty, looks with magnanimous complacency even upon the controversies of the Church, asking only that they shall be conducted gently, quietly, lovingly, and that a good deal of allowance should be made by one man for the peculiarities of another. When did Paul a Pharisee of the Pharisees learn this lesson? To what school did he repair to study this philosophy? The man who said this, who gave this liberty, also said, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Out of such lofty tabernacles he came to distribute amongst men rights and franchises and opportunities and privileges with the lavish hand of a princely donor. But about this conscience in the house, and in business. You may be killing your children with your conscience, because it may be an irrational conscience. Children will have amusement. You never can put down drama and dancing and recreation and jubilance; you never can cut off the foam and efflorescence and blossoming of life without doing great injury; and in attempting to do all this you may defeat yourself. That child of yours, whom you have oppressed with your conscience because you will not allow certain recreations, comes quietly in every night after having been enjoying them, and looks at you in the face with a blankness which you would understand if you were not so conscientiously stupid. Why not make your home the great joy of life, saying, Boys and girls, let us all do here what we can to alleviate life’s burdens and life’s darkness, and let us all be children together, so far as we may: do nothing behind me you would not do before me, and if I can join you I will, and the old man shall be as young as any of you? Then home will be church, and church will be almost heaven. Beware of the perverted conscience, the soured conscience, the right that is only secondary being put in place of the right that is primary and eternal. How is all this to be learned? Only by communion with Christ. Blessed Christ, Son of God! what liberty he gives; he said, If you like to wash your hands, well; if you prefer not to do so because the ceremony is unmeaning and fruitless, then sit down and enjoy the hospitality of the house. The Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath. When men rebuked him because he went to eat with publicans and sinners, He said, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” When they said, “This man eateth with sinners,” he did not disdain the sneer; he took it as the highest eulogium that could be pronounced upon him by such lips. But let us beware lest we enjoy the secondary liberty without sustaining the primary relation. Do not play with sacred things. Be right at both ends. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself:” “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Do not live an empty, superficial, linear life, but live a full, solid, cubic, square, all-round life the very life of God. If any man says, “Such a life would I live,” all God’s angels will take up their abode with him; yea, the Spirit of God will be his instructor, and sanctifier, and loving friend.

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

Pro 20:27 The spirit of man [is] the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly.

Ver. 27. The spirit of a man is the candle of the Lord. ] Some read it, The breath of a man, that is, his life, is the candle of the Lord, and sense it thus: Look how men deal by their lights or lamps, so doth God by our lives. Some we put out as soon as lighted; others we let alone till half wasted, and others again till wax and wick and all be consumed. So some die younger, some older, as God pleaseth. But the word Neshamah here used, as it holds affinity with the Hebrew Shamajim, Heaven, so it doth with the Latin word mens, the mind, or reasonable soul, which indeed is that light that is in us by an excellence, Mat 6:23 that “spirit of a man that knows the things of a man,” 1Co 2:11 that candle that is in a man’s belly or body, as in a lantern, making the least mote perspicuous. This is true by a specialty of that divine faculty of the soul, conscience, which is frequently called the “spirit of a man,” as being planted by God in all and every part of the reasonable soul, where she produceth occasionally several operatious, being the soul’s schoolmaster, monitor, and domestic preacher; God’s spy, and man’s overseer, the principal commander and chief controller of all his doings and desires.

“ Conscia mens ut cuique sua est, ira concipit intra

Pectora pro facto spemque metumque suo. ”

– Ovid.

Surely it is a most celestial gift, saith one. a It is so of God and in man, that it is a kind of middle thing between God and man; less than God, and yet above man. It may be called our God, saith another, b in the sense that Moses was Pharaoh’s; having power to control and avenge our disobediences with greater plagues than ever Moses brought on Egypt. Therefore that was no evil counsel of the poet: Imprimis reverere teipsum. c And,

“ Turpe quid ausurus, re, sine teste, time. ”

a Bifeild on 1 Pet. ii.

b Huet. of Cons.

c Auson.

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

spirit = breath. Hebrew. neshamah. See App-16.

candle = lamp or light. Same word as in Pro 20:20.

the belly. Put by Figure of speech Metalepsis (App-6) for the heart, and the heart for its thoughts.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Pro 20:27

Pro 20:27

“The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah, Searching all his innermost parts.”

“The word `spirit’ here is from the literal Hebrew word `breath’; and it refers to that “breath of life” which God breathed into mankind in the person of Adam (Gen 2:7). It is that which distinguishes man from an animal. “It is the equivalent of conscience, God’s lamp, that searches out the innermost recesses of a man’s heart. This is a very important verse. “It stands alone in the Old Testament in its affirmation that the Divine element in human life is the conscience.

No matter how wicked a man may be, there is still within him that conscience which came from God; and which, regardless of his sins, bears witness, in some degree, to what he should be instead of what he is. There is no way by which any man can utterly destroy that inner witness of God. Some radical commentators such as James Moffatt and Toy omitted this verse; but it is significant that it still stands in the RSV. Satan himself is unable to take it out of the Bible.

Pro 20:27. 1Co 2:11 speaks of this spirit of man: Who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him? That which man has from Jehovah that animals are not credited with having and that searches out ones innermost thoughts is the conscience. Man has this important facility within him because God wanted him to have it. When ones conscience operates, his thoughts either accuse or excuse him for his actions (Rom 2:15), depending upon whether he has violated or carried out what he understands to be right. The conscience is a Siamese twin of ones intellect: whatever ones intellect tells him is right or wrong, his conscience accepts the same position and works accordingly (Act 26:9-11; Act 23:1).

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

The Lamp of the Lord

The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord.Pro 20:27

1. The picture which these words suggest is very simple. An unlighted candle is standing in the darkness, and some one comes to light it. A blazing bit of paper holds the fire at first, but it is vague and fitful. It flares and wavers, and at any moment may go out. But the vague, uncertain, flaring blaze touches the candle, and the candle catches fire, and at once you have a steady flame. It burns straight and clear and constant. The candle gives the fire a manifestation-point for all the room which is illuminated by it. The candle is glorified by the fire, and the fire is manifested by the candle. The two bear witness that they were made for one another by the way in which they fulfil each others life. That fulfilment comes by the way in which the inferior substance renders obedience to its superior. The candle obeys the fire. The docile wax acknowledges that the subtle flame is its master and it yields to his power; and so, like every faithful servant of a noble master, it at once gives its masters nobility the chance to utter itself, and its own substance is clothed with a glory which is not its own. The disobedient granite, if you try to burn it, neither gives the fire a chance to show its brightness nor gathers any splendour to itself. It only glows with sullen resistance, and, as the heat increases, splits and breaks, but will not yield. But the candle obeys, and so in it the scattered fire finds a point of permanent and clear expression.

2. Now the text asserts that the spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah. The phrase is strong and emphatic. It is not that the Lord has put a lamp in the spirit of man; it is much more than that; the spirit itself is the lamp. The spirit of man is a torch, a lighthouse, planted in the centre of the temple of his nature, shedding its sacred light upon the inmost abysses of his being, searching all the inward parts of the moral nature. This inward lamp lighteth every man that cometh into the world. The multitudes of our race destitute of the written revelation have nevertheless this inward revelation. The human spirit instinctively apprehends certain great spiritual truths without reasoning upon them. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves; which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another. The human spirit is a revelation from God and is itself a Divine Scripture as sacred as the written Word itself. It may be darkened by the mist and miasma arising from the corruptions of our nature, so also may the written revelation be perverted and beclouded by ignorance, prejudice, by selfish passions and unbelief, but this inward lamp is extinguished in none, not even in the most savage or debased of the human race. Under every possible condition of life, the spirit of man witnesses, with voices more or less distinct, to certain great fundamental verities relating to both God and man.

In the Odes of Solomon, we read (Ode 25): Thou didst set me a lamp at my right hand, and at my left, and in me there shall be nothing without Light, and I was clothed with the covering of thy Spirit, and I have risen above that of skin, for thy right hand lifted me up, and removed sickness from me, and I became mighty in the truth, and holy by thy righteousness. Again we read (Ode 40): My spirit exults in His love, and in Him my soul shines.

I

The Spirit of Man is a Lamp

The ancient world believed that fire and life were one and the same thing. Life was a flame, a lamp, a torch. The human soul was of the nature of fire; and fire, being the common element of the gods and their creatures, was the soul of the universe. Now the ancients were entirely right as regards animal life, for that depends upon the constant burning up of the food which we eat, by the help of the air which we breathe. Our bodies move about and are warm, just like so many locomotive steam-engines because of the fire that is always burning within them. Life is really a fire, and the food we eat is the fuel that feeds it. And so one of the heathen images for death, which we see sometimes on gravestones and cemetery gates, is a torch turned upside down.

But man is a complex, compound, mysterious being, possessing a threefold nature,body, mind, spiritthese three, and the greatest of these is the spirit. The body demands light, air, food, clothing, a habitation to dwell in. The mind is the thinking, the reasoning power; with this he acquires knowledge of men, of things, of the universe, of its laws and forces. The spirit is the religious, the worshipping part of his nature. This renders him capable of receiving God, of enjoying God, of communing with God, and of resembling God. There is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. God may pass through a rock, but that rock cannot be inspired, for it has no spirit. God may pass through the animal, but the animal cannot be inspired, for it has no spiritual nature. It would be out of place and unnatural to speak of an inspired dog or an inspired horse; but man, in the possession of spirit, may be conscious of the incoming, the indwelling of the Spirit of God. That Divine Spirit can, and does occasionally, communicate to the human spirit thoughts and feelings that can find full expression only in exclaiming with Paul whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth.

1. The spirit is a lamp because it is endowed with the light of reason. The Book of Proverbs lays great stress upon instruction and understanding; it commends knowledge as one of the main paths that lead to a full and worthy life, and that because all true knowledge culminates in the knowledge of God. Religious people have not always had a fitting appreciation of the worth of knowledge: they have occasionally talked as if reason were the enemy of faith, and as though we had to choose between head and heartor rather as though the head had to be cut off in order that the heart might beat the more strongly! But there is no conflict between faith and reason, between religion and science; we need not turn down the lamp of the understanding in order to luxuriate in some dim religious light, so-called. As the Apostle says, Ye are all sons of light, and sons of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. All truth is from Godall truth leads to God; let us welcome it and trust it; let us hear instruction, and refuse it not.

2. The lamp burns with the light of conscience. Every human being has a conscience, yet few people know its nature; just as everybody drinks water, but few people understand its chemical composition. In the case of the water we drink, fortunately we are refreshed just as fully with the peasants ignorance as with the chemical knowledge of Michael Faraday. It is not so, however, with conscience. The more fully we understand its nature and lawsother things being equalthe better can we follow its guidance, and the nobler lives we may lead. So, in addition to the interest attaching to the subject as a fascinating problem in the science of mind, it has also a great interest as a question bearing directly upon practical life. For conscience will not tell us in every case just what is the right thing to do. We have often seen equally conscientious people on opposite sides. The first and most important thing is that there should shine and burn in us an unquenchable conviction that there is a right, and that we ought under all circumstances to follow the dictates of our awakened moral sense. We have to believe that these dictates are from Godnot the variable rules of mere expediency and opportunism, but of Divine authority; and as in the symbolism of the older Churches a sacred lamp was kept alight in the sanctuary, which it was held sacrilege to extinguish, so we must beware of putting out or darkening, by sophisms and self-deception, that candle of the Lord which He has lit in our spirits.

Being convinced that the inner light was universal, Fox had the courage to believe that heathen people were led of the Spirit of God. Thus in America, when a doctor denied that the Indians possessed any such light, Fox called an Indian, and asked Whether or not, when he lied or did wrong to any one, there was not something in him that reproved him for it? The Indian said there was. Here Fox anticipated a view that has since been forced upon Christian thought by the comparative study of religions. He believed that God had not left Himself anywhere without witness, and he maintained this faith before the knowledge of non-Christian religions brought it into prominence. He did not hesitate to call this inner light the inward Christ, even among the heathen who knew not Christs name. For he assumed that the witness of God was one, and that this Spirit which reproved the Indian was the Spirit which would bring him to Christ. This may still be considered assumption, but it is an assumption the Christian must make.1 [Note: H. G. Wood, George Fox, 145.]

It would seem, indeed, as though the sense of sin did not reside in the act at all, but only in the sense that the act is committed in defiance of light and higher instinct. But however much we may philosophize about sin or attempt to analyse its essence, there is some dark secret there, of which from time to time we are grievously conscious. Who does not know the sense of failure to overcome, of lapsing from a hope or a purpose, the burden of the thought of some cowardice or unkindness which we cannot undo and which we need not have committed? No resolute determinism can ever avail us against the stern verdict of that inner tribunal of the soul, which decides, too, by some instinct that we cannot divine, to sting and torture us with the memory of deeds, the momentousness and importance of which we should utterly fail to explain to others. There are things in my own past which would be met with laughter and ridicule if I attempted to describe them, that still make me blush to recollect with a sense of guilt and shame, and seem indelibly branded upon the mind. There are things, too, of which I do not feel ashamed which, if I were to describe them to others, would be received with a sort of incredulous consternation, to think that I could have performed them. That is the strange part of the inner conscience, that it seems so wholly independent of tradition or convention.2 [Note: A. C. Benson, The Silent Isle, 133.]

II

God Kindles the Lamp

1. All nature tells us that God is light, and that He ever seeks for opportunities of manifesting that light which is so often imprisoned and only waiting to be released by the touch of man. We are constantly finding that there are great resources for light in this world of ours, more than we had ever imagined. Not even at night, when this hemisphere is in the shade and does not enjoy the light of the sun, does God leave it to darkness. Then the moon and stars shine forth: but beyond all that, then does man draw upon the resources of light which lie buried or hidden in nature till he learns how to call them forth. In the history of the ages there is no progress greater than in the discovery of the possibilities on the part of man of producing light. This age supplies exceptional illustrations of this. Man is finding, as he never did before, that nature has light-giving capacities which need only be touched to be brought forth; that God has filled even the material world with possibilities of grand outbursts of light. What would God have us learn from all this? That there is more light in His universe than we had ever thought; that He, true to His own nature, has placed in it capacities for outshining which are chained up for the present, but which He calls men to unloose, so that they may burst forth into light.

It is not surprising that, prominent among the idolatries of the world, there should be found the worship of fire and of light. Once become an idolater, and it becomes easy to worship firethat wonderful thing in nature which we find everywhere and in every object, even in ice; that which you can strike out of everything, especially when you strike with a suddenness that seems to take it unawares. The old flint and tinder were but an outward visible sign of an inward visible presence everywhere. Gods fire is to be found in all nature; often latent, but at such times it seems to be watching for opportunities of manifestation. Deep beneath the surface of the earth there is a lake of fire which is checked only by mighty forces, and which, here and there, finds an outlet for its seething, restless waves in volcanoes that heave, and groan, and belch out liquid lava. The heavens, too, are full of kindling orbs. Fire is well-nigh omnipresent, and omnipresence is one of the attributes of Deity.1 [Note: 1 D. Davies, Talks with Men, Women and Children, vi. 211.]

2. Gods favourite method of letting His light shine is through man. Mans spirit kindles more brightly with Gods light than all the suns in the heavens. Gods favourite method of making Himself known is through man. The choice lamp of the Lord is the spirit of man. He has lit up tapers in suns which flame in the heavens, but when God would use His best lamp, He comes to menThe spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord. For only a person can truly utter a person. Only from a character can a character be echoed. You might write it all over the skies that God is just, but it would not burn there. It would be, at best, only a bit of knowledge, never a gospel, never something which it would gladden the hearts of men to know. That comes only when a human life, capable of a justice like Gods, made just by God, glows with His justice in the eyes of men, a candle of the Lord.

We have seen monuments, tablets, tombstones with names, dates, events recorded that were not readable on account of the dust and moss of years which had accumulated and covered the inscription. It is not necessary to engrave the stone afresh; only sweep away the accumulation of years, and you shall know to whose memory that stone was raised. So if you will rub off the incrustations of sin and error gathered over the human soul you will find the Great NameGodwritten deep and large in the very depth of the spirit. Just as the flower has an instinctive tendency to turn towards the sun, so man, even in his lowest estate, has certain instincts which impel him towards God and to cry, My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: When shall I come and appear before God? You possess capacities, you have wants which the Infinite alone can fill and satisfy. Until the God you have lost is restored to His rightful Sovereignty in your heart, the deepest cry of your spirit will be, O that I knew where I might find him!1 [Note: R. Roberts.]

(1) God lets His light shine in ordinary human life. He transfigures even the physical in man. You have seen many a human face that has become angelic through the outshining of the Divine presence. You have seen Gods light in a mans heart shine forth through his countenance, though that countenance has been by no means naturally beautiful. Some wondrous brightness in the eye or radiance in the face told us that there was a lamp inside. But where God shines most is through the spiritual in man. Look at the history of Divine revelationfor there we have the greatest outshining of God, from the earliest age until nowand say whether there was anything that revealed so much of God throughout the old dispensation as the inspired utterances of Divinely enlightened men? God set their hearts aflame; thus they spoke to men in melting words. They were the lamps of God to their age and generation. God has never been without witness; He has never been without His chosen lights, His messengers who have testified of His truth, His love, and His purity. Take away from this world and from the record of it the lives of holy men, brilliant because consecrated by a Divine touch that kindled them into a flame, and what have you left?

The benighted traveller in the snow has sometimes caught sight of a candle in a shepherds hut. It has been to him the most joyful of all moments; it is the promise of rest. Even such, I think, is the thought of the proverb. The man who uttered it knew well the saying of the old book of Genesis that when God had wandered six days through creation He rested in man. He had been led on by the glimmer of one candlethe light of a human soul. It was the only place of rest the Father saw in all the vast expanse. There was no other dwelling for the spirit of my Father but my spirit. He could not find shelter in any other home. Not where the bee sucks could my Father dwell. Not where the bird sings could His heart be glad. Not where the cattle browse could His life repose. Not where the stars shine could He find His household fire. One far-off candle alone gave the sign of home. It was my spirit.1 [Note: G. Matheson, Leaves for Quiet Hours, 144.]

(2) When at length God gave the greatest of revelations, a revelation which was the consummation of all preceding ones; when the Sun of Righteousness arose with healing in His wings; then when the morning stars which heralded the light had disappeared in the brightness of His rising, when the Son of God came He took not on Him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham. When God would shine forth in all the brightness of His grace, thank God, it was in human form. His greatest gift was in the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: a man though God: human though Divine. He who came thus in human form was the effulgence of the Fathers glory, the express image of his person.

One of the heroes of the old Greek legends of whom the Greeks were very fond was called Prometheus. His name means forethought. He was the friend of the human race, and the inventor and teacher of the arts which adorn life. The Greeks believed that Prometheus took away from man the evil gift of being able to foresee the future; and that he was the first who brought fire to men, and taught its use. Pitying the misery of men, who knew not how to cook, he stole fire from heaven, and gave it to them. He also formed men out of clay or mud, and made them alive by putting in a spark of fire, or causing the winds to breathe life into them. But we who have the Bible in our hands know that the Lord Jesus Christ is the real Prometheus. His human soul, indeed, is a lamp which God kindled at Bethlehem nearly nineteen hundred years ago. But as the God-man, He is a Fire,the Dayspring from on high,the true Light which, coming into the world, lighteth every man. In him is life; and the life is the light of men. He is come to send fire on the earththe fire of grace, and refining fire, as well as the fire of judgment. He baptizes with the Holy Ghost and with fireto enlighten the mind, and purify the conscience, and warm the heart with the Divine love.1 [Note: C. Jerdan, Messages to the Children, 38.]

I think I am beginning to feel something of the intense pride and atheism of my own heart, of its hatred to truth, of its utter lovelessness; and something I do hope, that I have seen very dimly of the way in which Christ, by being the Light and Truth manifested, shines into the heart and puts light there, even while we feel that the Light and Truth is still all in Him, and that in ourselves there is nothing but thick darkness. I do not know whether you have been led to think as much as I have lately about all those texts which represent Him as Light, as shining into the heart, and in connexion therewith, as wrestling with the powers of darkness. There was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. He that caused the light to shine out of darkness shine into your heart. They afforded me very great delight some time ago when nothing else would; an intense thick darkness, darkness that might be felt, brooding over my mind, till the thought that had been brought to me as if from Heaventhe light of the Sun is not in you but out of you, and yet you can see everything by it if you will open your eyesgave me more satisfaction than any other could. Since then another train of feeling led me to experience the intense misery of pride and self, as if that were the seal of the darkness, and that I could find no relief but in joining the two thoughts together: it was pride, it was self, it was sin, which separated between me and God, which produced the darkness. Christ had taken that away, and therefore the true Light shineth.2 [Note: The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, i. 119.]

III

The Office of the Lamp is to Shine

1. The lamp of God in our nature gives forth a self-searching light.It searches the hidden recesses of a mans own nature. It is that by which God seeks to make it impossible for us to sin with impunity. It is the Lords light in man that protests against the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, and brings to view lifes privileges and responsibilities. It is the flame in the heart that claims relationship with Him who is light and in whom is no darkness at all.

I cannot do this, said a Christian merchant, in reference to some business operations in which he was asked to take part, I cannot do this. There is a man inside of me that wont let me do it. He talks to me of nights about it, and I have to do business in a different way. Thank God for the restraining testimony of conscience! Let us always listen to the witness, and follow its guidance. Let Lord Erskines rule be ours. That rule he stated publicly at the bar in these unmistakable words: It was the first command and counsel of my youth, always to do what my conscience told me to be my duty, and leave the consequence to God. I have hitherto followed it, and have no reason to complain that any obedience to it has been even a temporal sacrifice; I have found it, on the contrary, the road to prosperity and wealth, and I shall point it out as such to my children. Akin to this was John Wesleys rule: To follow my own conscience, without any regard to consequences, or prudence, so called, is a rule which I have followed for many years, and hope to follow to my lifes end.1 [Note: J. T. Whitley.]

2. The lamp is to be Gods witness in the world.God says to each of us: Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. The Christian, wherever he goes, is to show forth certain clear-shining qualities which will commend his Christianity, and so lead men, whether consciously or unconsciously, to Christ. Lives are the best preachers; and many an obscure Christian man or woman, filled with the constraining love of Christ, practising day by day the dear simplicities of the gospel, preaches a sermon which he who runs may read, or listen to, and whose closing notes are not heard on this earth at all. Lives are the best preachers; it is they alone that adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.

You remember those lovely lines which Shakespeare places in Portias mouth when she returns from Venice to her home in Belmont:

That light we see is burning in my hall.

How far that little candle throws his beams!

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

And we are candlesour spirits the candles of the Lord; lights whose clear shining may haply show to some perplexed soul the absolute worth of right-doing, the glory of steadfastness, the reward of trust, the joy of self-giving, self-forgetting love, the infinite affection of Godthe way home to Him who is ready to receive the soul that longs for Him.1 [Note: J. Warschauer, The Way of Understanding, 177.]

When I was a boy and lived on a farm in the North-Western frontier, we used to go to church in an old log schoolhouse in the woods. Evening meetings in those days were always announced to begin at early candle-light. There were not even oil-lamps in the old schoolhouse. There was an unwritten rule in the neighbourhood that each family attending the service should bring at least one candle. The first man who arrived lighted his candle and put it up in one of the wooden candlesticks, or set it on the window-sill, fastened at the base in a little tallow-drip, dripping the tallow hot and then steadying the candle in it before it cooled. So every man who came in lighted his candle, and as the congregation grew the light grew. If there was a small congregation, there was what might be called a dim religious light, and if there was a large congregation, the place was illuminated by the light of many candles. Now it should be like that in the spiritual illumination which we give in the world. Every one of us should add our own light to the combined illumination of all other faithful souls.2 [Note: L. A. Banks, The Problems of Youth, 298.]

In Athens, long ago, games used to be held in honour of the Grecian gods and heroes. One of these was a torch-racethat is, a race of torch-bearerswhich was run at night in honour of Prometheus. The starting-point was a mile and a half out of the city, in the olive grove where Plato had his Academy, this spot being chosen because Prometheus had a sanctuary there. The winning-post was within the city; and the runner who reached it first with his torch still burning gained the prize. In like manner our Christian life here on earth is the race that is set before us. We shall have run that race well, if, when we come at last into Gods presence, our lights are still burning. They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.1 [Note: C. Jerdan, Messages to the Children, 40.]

3. This lamp needs continual tending.Man is selfish and disobedient, and will not let his life burn at all. Man is wilful and passionate, and kindles his life with ungodly, fire. Man is narrow and bigoted, and makes the light of God shine with his own special colour. In certain lands, for certain holy ceremonies, they prepare the candles with most anxious care. The very bees which distil the wax are sacred. They range in gardens planted with sweet flowers for their use alone. The wax is gathered by consecrated hands; and then the shaping of the candles is a holy task, performed in holy places, to the sound of hymns, and in the atmosphere of prayers. All this is done because the candles are to burn in the most lofty ceremonies on most sacred days. With what care must the man be made whose spirit is to be the candle of the Lord! It is his spirit which God is to kindle with Himself. Therefore the spirit must be the precious part of him. The body must be valued only for the protection and the education which the soul may gain by it. And the power by which his spirit shall become a candle is obedience. Therefore obedience must be the struggle and desire of his life; obedience not hard and forced, but ready, loving, and spontaneous; the obedience of the child to the father, of the candle to the flame; the doing of duty not merely that duty may be done, but that the soul in doing it may become capable of receiving and uttering God; the bearing of pain not merely because the pain must be borne, but in order that the bearing of it may make the soul able to burn with the Divine fire which found it in the furnace; the repentance of sin and acceptance of forgiveness, not merely that the soul may be saved from the fire of hell, but that it may be touched with the fire of heaven, and shine with the love of God, as the stars, for ever.

You are a part of God! You have no place or meaning in this world but in relationship to Him. The full relationship can be realized only by obedience. Be obedient to Him, and you shall shine by His light, not your own. Then you cannot be dark, for He shall kindle you. Then you shall be as incapable of burning with false passion as you shall be quick to answer with the true. Then the devil may hold his torch to you, as he held it to the heart of Jesus in the desert, and your heart shall be as uninflammable as His. But as soon as God touches you, you shall burn with a light so truly your own that you shall reverence your own mysterious life, and yet so truly His that pride shall be impossible. What a philosophy of human life is that! O, to be nothing, nothing! cries the mystic singer in his revival hymn, desiring to lose himself in God. Nay, not that; O to be something, something, remonstrates the unmystical man, longing for work, ardent for personal life and character. Where is the meeting of the two? How shall self-surrender meet that high self-value without which no man can justify his living and honour himself in his humanity? Where can they meet but in this truth? Man must be something that he may be nothing. The something which he must be consists in simple fitness to utter the Divine life which is the only original power in the universe. And then man must be nothing that he may be something. He must submit himself in obedience to God, that so God may use him, in some way in which his special nature only could be used, to illuminate and help the world.1 [Note: P. Brooks, The Candle of the Lord, 17.]

Long ago one could have seen, in not a few churches, upon Christmas Eve, two small lights, symbolizing the Divine and human natures, being gradually brought together until they blended in one brilliant flame. This truth was also typified in the cloven tongues of fire that hovered over the disciples heads upon the day of Pentecost. So with the restoration of the vital connexions between man and God through Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit shall commingle with our spirit, intensifying the holy flame, so that it shall penetrate to the farthest reaches of life and character. Our moral vision shall be corrected, so that truth and error, right and wrong shall appear to us in sharply-defined contrast. He shall lead us into all truth.

Come, Light serene and still,

Our inmost bosoms fill;

Dwell in each breast:

We know no dawn but Thine;

Send forth Thy beams divine,

On our dark souls to shine,

And make us blest.2 [Note: W. King.]

Literature

Banks (L. A.), The Problems of Youth, 298.

Brooks (P.), The Candle of the Lord, 1.

Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, vi. 211.

Jerdan (C.), Messages to the Children, 36.

Matheson (G.), Leaves for Quiet Hours, 144.

Parkhurst (C. H.), Three Gates on a Side, 35.

Roberts (R.), My Jewels, 245.

Robinson (W. V.), Sunbeams for Sundays, 160.

Warschauer (J.), The Way of Understanding, 166.

Waylen (H.), Mountain Pathways, 95.

Christian World Pulpit, lxxv. 311 (W. King).

Homiletic Review, xx. 137 (J. T. Whitley).

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

spirit: Gen 2:7, Job 32:8, Rom 2:15, 1Co 2:11, 2Co 4:2-6, 1Jo 3:19-21

candle: or, lamp, Pro 20:20

searching: Pro 20:30, Heb 4:12, Heb 4:13

Reciprocal: Psa 18:28 – candle Luk 11:36 – the whole

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Pro 20:27. The spirit of a man That is, the rational soul; is the candle, &c. Is a clear and glorious light, set up in man for his information and direction. It is said to be the candle of the Lord, because it comes from God in a more immediate manner than the body, Ecc 12:7; and because it is in Gods stead, to observe and judge all our actions. Searching all the inward parts of the belly Discerning not only mans outward actions, which are visible to others, but his most inward thoughts and affections. The belly is here put for the heart, as it is frequently. The soul can reflect upon, and judge of, its own dispositions and actions; and by the use of the means which God hath appointed, especially the word of God, and prayer for supernatural light, may arrive at a certain knowledge of its state and condition, in reference to God and salvation.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

20:27 The {i} spirit of man [is] the lamp of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly.

(i) The word of God gives life to man and causes us to see and try the secret of our dark hearts, Heb 4:12.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

God searches out our innermost thoughts and feelings. Solomon compared our "spirit" (lit. "breath," Heb. nishmat, cf. Gen 2:7) to a lamp God uses to investigate all the darkened crannies of our being in this very graphic proverb. Here the spirit is almost equivalent to the conscience (God’s Word also searches, cf. Heb 4:12).

"Breath typically goes in and comes out of a person, giving life; but it also comes out as wisdom and words." [Note: R. C. Van Leeuwen, "The Book of Proverbs," in the New Interpreter’s Bible, 5:188.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)