Ver. 1. The Proverbs.] Or, Master sentences; maxims, axioms, speeches of special precellence and predominance; received rules that must overrule matters, and mightily prevail in the minds of men. The principal, no doubt, they are of those three thousand mentioned in 1 Kings 4:32, and far beyond those golden sayings of Phocylides (profanely preferred before those holy parables by that apostate Julian, ausu nefario), as having in them more sentences than words, and being so far above all human praise for weight and worth, that, as Salust writes of Carthage, I had better speak nothing of them than too little, since too much is too little. Of Solomon.] Who better, a deal, deserves to be styled “Master of the sentences” than Peter Lombard; and to be esteemed πανσοφος και παντα ανθρωπεια επισταμενος, as one saith of Homer; or as another saith of Jerome, that he was a man, quem nullum scibile latuit, that knew all that was knowable by a man. King of Israel.] King in Jerusalem, (Ecclesiastes 1:1) which was now the Israel of Israel, as Athens was, in its flourish, said to be the Greece of Greece; yea, the soul, and sun, and eye of Greece; yea, the common school of all mankind. For King Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth both in riches and in wisdom. “And all the world sought to Solomon, to hear his wisdom, which God had put into his heart.” (1 Kings 10:24) For “the more wise the preacher was, the more he taught the people knowledge, and caused them to hear, and searched forth many parables”; (Ecclesiastes 12:9, marg.) even “words of delight.” (Proverbs 1:10, marg.) [See Trapp in “Pr 1:10”] יל שׁ מ ל שׁ מ, Dominari, quae vitae dominae et moderatrices esse debent. Επη χρυσεα. De Euripide Cicero pronunciavit plures esse in eo sententias quam verba. Xenophon. Ελλας ελλαδος.—Euripid. φυχη και ηλιος, και οφθαλμος Ελλαδος.—Demost. Κοινον παιδευτηριον παντων ανθρωπων.—Thucyd. and Diodor.
Ver. 2. To know wisdom.] That is, To give others to know; to wise them, as in Daniel 12:3; to give the knowledge of salvation; (Luke 1:77) to show men “great and mighty things which they know not,” (Jeremiah 33:3) but may here hence be taught better than out of Lipsius’s Beehive or Machiavel’s Spider web.
Ver. 3. To receive the instruction.] Tertullian calls the Bible (and the Proverbs by a specialty) nostra digesta, from the lawyers; and others our pandects, from them also. Is there not a thin veil laid over them, which is more ratified by reading, and at last wholly worn away? Surely as by much reading the statute book men grow worldly wise; and as a friend (it is Chrysostom’s comparison) that is acquainted with his friend will get out the meaning of a letter or phrase which another could not that is a stranger, so it is in Scripture. And herein, as one well observeth, the poorest idiot being a sound Christian, goeth beyond the profoundest clerks that are not sanctified, that he hath his own heart instead of a commentary to help him to understand even the most needful points of the Scripture. A complete body of the laws of any country or of any system of law.
Ver. 4. To give subtilty.] Serpentine subtilty, (Genesis 3:1) sacred sagacity, a sharp wit, a deep reach, a Spirit that “searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God,” (1 Corinthians 2:10) and transformeth a man “into the same image from glory to glory.” (2 Corinthians 3:18) Equidem scio multos esse qui hoc non credant, et non paucos qui ea rideant, nosque insanire arbitrentur, saith Peter Martyr, sed istos rogatos velim, &c.: that is, I know well there be many that will not believe it, and not a few that will deride it, and think we are mad in ascribing so much to the Scriptures. But oh that they would be entreated to make trial awhile, and to take to the reading of the Bible! Male mihi sit (ita enim in tanta causa iurare ausim) nisi tandem capiantur: sentient denique quantum divina hac ab humanis distent, &c. Let me never be believed, if they perceive not a plain and palpable difference between these and all human writings whatsoever. And to the same purpose Erasmus, expertus sum in meipso, saith he, I can speak it by experience, that there is little good to be gotten by reading the Bible cursorily and carelessly; but do it duly and dillgently, with attention and affection, and you shall find such an efficacy as is to be found in no other book that can be named. To the simple.] Fatuo, אחפ, fatuello -Lipsius’s diminutive; to the silly simple, whose learning hangs not in his light, who holds not himself too wise to be taught, who is not uncounsellable, unpersuadable. Bis desipit qui sibi sapit; he is two fools that is wise in his own eyes. (Proverbs 3:7) Plurima ignoro, sed ignorantiam meam non ignoro. Little though it be that I know, yet this I know, that I know but little. To the young man.] Though rude and rash, headlong and headstrong, untameable and untractable as “a wild ass’s colt”; (Job 11:12) though addicted to “youthful lusts,” (2 Timothy 2:22) and madly set upon sin, yet he may “cleanse his ways by cleaving to God’s word,” (Psalms 119:9 Ecclesiastes 11:10) and become a young saint, an old angel; whereas otherwise, like young lapwings, he is apt to be snatched up by every buzzard. Pet. Mart. in Rom. Ep. dedicat. Erasm., Praefat. in Lucam. Chytraeus. Arist., Ethic., lib. i.