The Expositor's Bible: The Book Of Proverbs Part 28

And now we may just glance at the effect which the Christly conduct has upon the offender, and the reward which G.o.d has attached to its exercise.

It is one of the most beautiful traces of G.o.d's likeness in even bad men, a characteristic to which there is no parallel in the animal creation, that though pa.s.sion awakes pa.s.sion, wrath wrath, and vengeance revenge--so that savages pa.s.s their whole time in an unbroken series of blood feuds, the hideous retaliation bandied from tribe to tribe and from man to man, generation after generation--the spirit of meekness, proceeding not from cowardice, but from love, disarms pa.s.sion, soothes wrath, and changes vengeance into reconciliation. The gleam of forgiveness in the eye of the injured is so obviously the light of G.o.d that the wrongdoer is cowed and softened before it. It kindles a fire in his spirit, his heart melts, his uplifted hand falls, his angry voice grows tender. When men are so dehumanised as to be insensible to this softening effect, when they interpret the gentleness as weakness, and are moved by the forgiving spirit simply to further injury and more shameless wrong, then we may know that they are possessed,--they are no longer men,--they are pa.s.sing into the category of the lost spirits, whom the forbearance of G.o.d Himself leads not to repentance but only to added sin.

But if you have ever by the sweet spirit of Christ so mastered your natural impulse as to return good for evil lovingly and whole-heartedly, and if you have seen the regenerating effect in the beautiful subjugation of your foe and his transformation into a friend, it is not necessary to say much of the reward which G.o.d has in store for you. Do you not already possess it?

Yet the reward is certainly greater than you are able at once to apprehend. For what a secret is this which you possess, the secret of turning even the malignity of foes into the sweetest affection, the secret which lay in the heart of G.o.d as the spring and the means of man's redemption.[603] The highest reward that G.o.d can give to His creatures is to make them partakers of His nature as He has made them in His own image. When we share in a Divine attribute we enter so far into the Divine bliss; and in proportion as this attribute seems removed from our common human nature, our spirit must exult to find that it has been really appropriated. What further reward, then, can he who avenges not himself desire? The pulse of the Divine heart beats in him; the tides of the Divine life flow through him. He is like G.o.d--G.o.d who opposes to man's ingrat.i.tude the ocean of His pardoning love; he is conscious of that which is the fountain of joy in the Divine Being; surely a man must be satisfied when he awakes in G.o.d's likeness! And that satisfaction comes to every one who has heaped coals of fire on his enemy's head by feeding him in his hunger, and giving him water when athirst. Say not, "I will do so to him as he has done to me, I will render to the man according to his work." Love your enemies; pray for them which despitefully use you.

FOOTNOTES:

[596] Psalm cxl. 9, 10.

[597] Jer. xviii. 23.

[598] Prov. xvii. 5_b_.

[599] _Paradise Lost_, ix., 171.

[600] Burke said of Pitt after his fall, that the manner in which he made his own justification, without impeaching the conduct of his colleagues or taking any measure that might seem to arise from disgust or opposition, set a seal upon his character. (Lecky, "England in the Eighteenth Century," vol. iii., 61.)

[601] See Rom. xii. 20.

[602] Matt. xviii. 35.

[603] _Cf._ the proverb, "When a man's ways please the Lord He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him" (Prov. xvi. 7).

XXV.

_THE KING._

"It is the glory of G.o.d to conceal a thing, but the glory of _kings_ is to search out a matter.

The heaven for height and the earth for depth, and the heart of _kings_ is unsearchable.

Take away the dross from the silver, and there cometh forth a vessel for the finer;

Take away the wicked from before the _king_, and his throne shall be established in righteousness.

Put not thyself forward in the presence of the _king_, and stand not in the presence of great men:

Far better is it that it be said unto thee, Come up hither, than that thou shouldest be put lower in the presence of the _prince_ whom thine eyes have seen."--PROV. xxv. 2-7.

It will be remembered that in the book of Samuel there are two accounts of the monarchy and its origin lying side by side,--different, and to all appearance irreconcilable. One set of pa.s.sages seems to imply that the king was appointed by G.o.d's holy purpose to fulfil the objects of His government. But another set of pa.s.sages seems to represent the outcry for a king as a rebellion against the sovereignty of the Lord, and the appointment of a king as a punishment for the people's sin. It is in agreement with the first idea that provision is made in the Law for a monarchical government; but it is in agreement with the second idea that the actual kings prove to be for the most part incompetent and faithless rulers, "who do evil in the sight of the Lord," and that even the best of them fall into gross sins, or are at any rate guilty of grave errors. Thus David stumbled into a miry pit; Jehoshaphat experienced defeat in his alliance with Ahab; Josiah was slain at the battle of Megiddo; Uzziah was smitten with leprosy; and Hezekiah committed an imprudence which incidentally brought the great calamity upon his country. So it is all through.

Now the only satisfactory explanation that this twofold aspect of the kingship seems to admit of is one which goes deep down into the prophetic and inspired character of Israel and its history. The king in his ideal aspect is throughout a type and a foreshadowing of the Anointed One that was to come; and the actual failure of all the kings to realize the ideal, to govern wisely, to establish righteousness, or even to observe the moral law in their own persons, necessarily threw men's thoughts forward to Him who should sit upon the throne of David, and carry out in ways not yet realized or even conceived the n.o.ble and exalted ideas which cl.u.s.tered round the theocratic throne. Many hasty critics have been swift to see and to censure the ign.o.ble failures of the men who sat upon the thrones of Judah and Israel; some critics have developed with sufficient clearness the n.o.ble ideal which always underlay the monarchy even in the moments of its deepest decline. But comparatively few have seen the significance of this contrast between the ideal and the actual; and consequently only a few have perceived with what a prolonged and emphatic voice the whole story of the Kings spoke of Christ.

The contrast just pointed out in the historic books appears with equal distinctness in this book of Wisdom; the proverbial sayings about the king exhibit the twofold thought; and the reconciliation is only found when we have realized the Kingship of Christ and can bring that idea to explain the ancient forecast. Thus the study of the things concerning the king is to the thoughtful reader of the Proverbs a study of the things concerning Christ. The ideal elements speak of Him; the actual shortcomings cry out for Him.

First we will review what is said to the glory and honour of the king.

He comes before us as the embodiment of righteousness.[604] "It is an abomination to kings to commit wickedness, for the throne is established by righteousness. Righteous lips are the delight of kings, and they love him that speaketh right."[605] "A king that sitteth on the throne of judgment winnoweth away all evil with his eyes.... A wise king winnoweth the wicked and bringeth the threshing wheel over them."[606] As he purges the wicked, so he encourages the righteous: "He that loveth pureness of heart hath grace on his lips, the king shall be his friend."[607] There is a great severity in his government: "The wrath of a king is as messengers of death; and a wise man will pacify it."[608]

"The king's wrath is as the roaring of a lion."[609] On the other hand, his mercy is one with his severity: "His favour is as dew upon the gra.s.s."[609] "In the light of the king's countenance is life, and his favour is as a cloud of the latter rain."[610] "Mercy and truth preserve the king, and his throne is upholden by mercy."[611] The fact is that his government is a viceroyalty. He is the human instrument of the Divine Will. "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord; as the watercourses"--which the farmer directs and leads over his fields according to his purpose--"he turneth it whithersoever he will."[612]

Thus the king expresses precisely "the Lord's favour towards a servant that dealeth wisely, and the Lord's wrath against him that causeth shame."[613] The king manifests the Lord's spirit in dealing with the subject, judging the cause of the poor as the Lord does. "The king that judgeth faithfully the poor, his throne shall be established for ever."[614] He is, in a word, a manifestation--a revelation--of G.o.d Himself. "The glory of G.o.d is to conceal a thing," _i.e._, to be unsearchable and unknowable, "and the glory of kings is to search a matter out;" the king, searching the deep things of G.o.d, and becoming the interpreter of the Divine will to men, is Himself in the place of G.o.d to us. "The heaven for height and the earth for depth, and the heart of kings there is no searching." Reflecting the righteousness, the mercy, the power of G.o.d, his throne is bathed in the celestial light.

"Take away dross from the silver, and there cometh forth a vessel for the finer; take away evil from before the king, and his throne shall be fixed in justice."[615]

In the presence of such a sovereign the subject may well abase himself, even the greatest and wisest may count himself small.

"Glorify not thyself before a king, and in the place of the great do not stand. For better is it that it be said to thee, Come up hither, than that thou shouldest be put lower in the presence of a prince whom thine eyes have seen."[616]

Rebellion against such a sovereign is the merest infatuation. "Against him there is no rising up."[617] "The terror of the king is as the roaring of a lion, he that provoketh him to anger sinneth against his own life."[618] "My son, fear thou the Lord and the king, and meddle not with them who are given to change; for their calamity shall rise suddenly; and who knoweth the destruction of them both."[619]

It is evident that in all this we have an ideal picture. No king that ever sat on an earthly throne, no David or Hezekiah, no Antoninus or Trajan, no Charlemagne or St. Louis, no Alfred or Edward the First, ever in the faintest degree approached the fulfilment of the ideal.

The divinity which hedged them was of quite a different kind from this open vision of G.o.d, this human mediatorship, this absolute subjection to the Divine will. And when we leave the select cla.s.s of great and good kings, and look at the ordinary type of the strong and capable ruler, Saul or Ahab, Alexander or Caesar, Constantine or Diocletian, Clovis or Rollo, William the Conqueror or Henry II., Louis XIV. or Frederick the Great, the Czar Peter or Napoleon, we see at once that we have pa.s.sed into a region of thought and action where the description of the Proverbs becomes unreal and visionary.

There is but one way of explaining the language before us. _It points to Christ._ In Him alone is it or can it be realized. He is the only sovereign that has any union with G.o.d which is at all like ident.i.ty. He is the only Ruler who blends with absolute infallibility severity and mercy. Of what other king could it be said that "purity of heart"

secures His friendship? What other king has made it his first and supreme object to judge faithfully the poor? What other government but His has sought its security in that essential duty and its fulfilment?

It is Christ alone whose favour descends on the heart like dew on the gra.s.s, or as a cloud of the latter rain. His is the only rule against which rebellion is more than a political crime, and becomes an actual sin. Of Him alone can it be said with any breadth of meaning or certainty of fulfilment, "Let no falsehood from the tongue be spoken to the King, and no falsehood shall go out of his mouth. A sword is the king's tongue, and that not of flesh."[620] It is only a king absolutely righteous and absolutely merciful that can ever bear down with effective force upon lies and liars. It is only He that would see in lying the prime sin, the incurable disease, the unpardonable treason.

The King is Christ. Before He came there was in the line of His foreshadowing a typical Divine right of kings. But since His coming all such kingships have been anachronisms. The appeal which used to be made to the Old Testament to support that famous political dogma was indeed its surest refutation and condemnation. For all that is said there of the indefeasible prerogative, coupled as it is with an infallibility of judgment, a perfect moral goodness, and an irresistible power, applied and could apply only to Christ. Where absolute monarchy is not Christship it becomes, as so many familiar pa.s.sages in the Old Testament show, a tyranny and an oppression, a cause of national corruption and decay.

Now this leads us, in the second place, to notice how the actual failure and consequent mischief of the kingship are reflected in the proverbs, and especially those later proverbs which date from the decline and fall of the monarchy. We have only to glance over the books of Samuel and Kings to see what kind of men the occupants of the throne were; few of them show any marked ability, most of them by their folly and stupidity lead their people with hurried strides towards the threatened catastrophe. So far from acting as vicegerents of the Lord, it is their special characteristic that they are the authors of the prevailing religious apostasy. Even the more favourable exceptions, the kings who in the main did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, had not spiritual energy enough to purify the worship and restore the allegiance of their people to the Lord. Now it would be some insolent and witless tyrant who would desolate the country and drive his subjects into revolt. "A raging lion, a ravening bear, a wicked ruler over a poor people. O prince, that lackest understanding and art a great oppressor, he that hateth rapine shall prolong his days."[621] Now it would be a headstrong prince who would scorn all counsel, and, refusing to be advised, would himself retire from the helm of the state. "Where no wise steering is, the people falleth; but in the mult.i.tude of counsellors there is safety."[622] Setting aside the maxim, "Every purpose is established by counsel, and by wise guidance make thou war,"[623] his purposes would be disappointed.[624]

Now the earth would be burdened and tremble with the portent of a servant as king,[625] one who as a servant might be excellent, but once on the throne would reveal all the weaknesses and vices which are essentially servile.[626] Now a liar would occupy the throne, and lying lips ill become a prince.[627] And now, owing to the weakness and folly of the prince, the state would fall into pieces and be torn with wildly contending factions: "For the transgression of a land many are the princes thereof, but by a man of understanding and knowledge right will be prolonged."[628] Under the rule of the wicked, population disappears.[629] And while "in the mult.i.tude of people is the king's glory, in the want of people is the destruction of the prince."[630] Under the tyrant's sway "the people sigh."[631] Their persons are insecure, and their property is taken from them in the form of forced gifts or benevolences.[632] And as the king, such are his servants; his readiness to hearken to falsehood renders them all wicked.[633] The atmosphere of the court becomes corrupt: all truth, sincerity, purity disappear. The courtier is afraid to speak his mind, lest jealous listeners should report the words to the monarch's suspicious ear. The very freedom of social life disappears, and the table of the king becomes a trap to the unwary. "When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently him that is before thee, and put a knife to thy throat if thou be a man given to appet.i.te; be not desirous of his dainties, seeing they are deceitful meat."[634]

Here is the complete and absolute corruption of the Divine royalty.

The description holds true age after age; suggested by the decline of the monarchy in Israel, it applies accurately to the Imperial government at Rome, and it might have been written to describe the character and the government of the Stuarts in England. Strong in what they supposed to be their Divine Right, they became liars and hearkened to falsehood; their servants became wicked; their government perished from its own inherent rottenness. The description holds too of the French monarchy from the time of Louis XIV. to its fall. And it would seem, as indeed we may confidently believe, that the slow and imperceptible decay of the faith in the divine right of kings has been in G.o.d's hands a long preparation for the reign of Him whose right it is to reign, Jesus Christ, the true King of men.

But there is still one other characteristic cause of the perverted kingship, to which attention is drawn in x.x.xi. 2-8: "Give not thy strength unto women, nor thy ways to that which destroyeth kings. It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, nor for princes to say, Where is strong drink? Lest they drink and forget the law, and pervert the judgment of any that is afflicted." These fleshly vices are peculiarly common and peculiarly ruinous to kings, preventing them from pleading "the cause of such as are left desolate," and from "ministering judgment to the poor and needy."[635]

It is in realizing the private life of kings, and in observing how seldom they have practised temperance, chast.i.ty, self-control, and how readily their contemporaries and even posterity have dispensed them from these primary obligations, that we plainly recognise the broad divergence between the facts of earthly monarchies and the description of the heavenly monarchy, and thus are prepared to recognise with grat.i.tude and awe the sole sovereignty of Christ. The cry of the Florentines under the temporary excitement created by Savonarola's preaching was, "Jesus is our King, only Jesus." That is the constant and ever-swelling cry of human hearts. The types and shadows fall away; through the forms the spirit becomes apparent. It is Christ that claims and wins and enchains our loyalty. We are His subjects, He is our absolute Lord; we have no king but Jesus.

There is in every human heart a loyalty which seeks for a fitting object; if it finds no lawful king, it will attach itself to a pretender. What pathos there is in the sacrifice which men have made, and in the deeds which they have dared, for Pretenders who have had no claim upon their devotion or allegiance! "Show me my rightful sovereign," seems to be the implicit demand of us all. And the answer has been given, "Behold, your king cometh unto you," in the lowly person, but commanding majesty, of Jesus. Many have accepted this and have cried, "Blessed is the king that cometh in the name of the Lord."[636]

Shall we not bring our loyalty to Him, recognising the One whom prophets and wise men foretold, and acknowledging in His sway the authority which all other governments, even the best of them, lack? Let no false shame or fear restrain our homage; let not the sneers of those over whom "other lords have dominion" keep our knees from bending, and our tongues from confessing, "The fear of man bringeth a snare; but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe. Many seek the ruler's favour,"--their whole thought is to stand well with the powers that be, and to secure the recognition of the Pretender who happens at any given moment to be directing the affairs of the world,--"but a man's judgment cometh from the Lord," his rightful King,[637] and to stand right with Him is all that need concern us. How well the King of men understood that because He came in humility--His birthplace a manger, His throne a fishing-boat or a wayside well, riding not in chariots of state, "but on an a.s.s, and the foal of an a.s.s;" because His appeal would be, not to the eye, but to the heart; not to the outward, but the inward; not to the temporal, but to the eternal,--men, with their perverted and misapplied loyalties, would reject Him and be ashamed to confess Him.

False kingships have dazzled our eyes, and hidden from us the grandeur of a Sovereign who is among us as one that serveth. From the touch of His humiliation we shrink.

But if the heart recognises and owns its lawful Sovereign; if, captivated by His indescribable beauty and bowed before His indisputable authority, it seeks only in profound obeisance and absolute surrender, to worship and adore and serve, how royal is His treatment, how unstinted are His largesses. "Come up hither," He says, bringing the soul higher and higher, into fuller vision, into more buoyant life, into more effectual service. The evil ruler, we saw, made all his servants wicked. Christ, as King, makes all His servants holy, dwelling in them, and subduing their hearts to Himself in ever truer devotion; He through them carries out His vast designs of love in those portions of His dominion where rebels still rise up against Him, and where poor deluded hearts still fretfully cry, "We will not have this Man to rule over us." "In the mult.i.tude of people is the king's glory." May G.o.d hasten the time when all peoples and tongues shall bow down to and worship our King!

FOOTNOTES:

[604] It will be observed that, speaking generally, the early proverbs present the more favourable side of the kingship, and the later proverbs suggest a period of decline (see Introduction). Possibly the same test may serve to distinguish the pa.s.sages in Deuteronomy and the book of Samuel; the brighter thought that the king was originally intended by G.o.d may come from the early days when the kings still promised well, and the darker thought which crosses the optimistic picture may emanate from the period when their failure and decline were unmistakable.

[605] Prov. xvi. 12, 13.

[606] Prov. xx. 8, 26.

[607] Prov. xxii. 11.

[608] Prov. xvi. 14.