Proverbs 11:21 Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished: but the seed of the righteous shall be delivered. The text is a twofold proposition — that combinations against God and godliness only incur failure and penalty; and that the triumph of righteousness is equally sure. There are among men's habits three general kinds of "wickedness," or disobedience to God's laws, entailing upon them three several orders and degrees of retribution or punishment: violations of the laws which govern the spiritual or moral man, the animal man, and the social man. 1. If the mind-laws, which include the intellectual and moral aspects of man, be disobeyed, that is if the process of education be not contemporaneous with the progress of years, the mental faculty languishes in the stagnation of its undeveloped powers, the mental man grows and abides an ignoramus, a stereotyped boor; and if the means of grace be in like manner neglected, the spiritual man rises not into the dignity which the love of God designed for him. 2. If the body-laws, or the principles which regulate the health, be disregarded by habits of excess or even ordinary indulgence or neglect of exercise, the penalty is a diseased body, and personal infirmity. 3. If the estate laws be disregarded, which make industry essential to getting, and frugality essential to saving what is got, and forethought essential in the way of insurance upon life or property, the punishment meets the man in his estate, in his condition of life, that is, in the form in which he has sinned. When we pray for a sound and enlightened mind, do we turn to the Word "whose entrance giveth light"? Do we seek to inform our minds, correct our judgments, and enrich our memories? When we pray for health and strength to labour and enjoy, do we avoid those varieties, artifices, and excesses in food and drink, and those sluggish habits of inactivity and sloth, which make health physically impossible? When we pray for prosperity in our worldly affairs, do we still, on conscientious principles, "labour, working with our hands the thing that is meet"? Do we glorify God in our attention to our business? Where can there be a more cogent, impressive, animating motive than the sterling fact, "Ye are not your own; ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your bodies and spirits, which are His"? Man can no more do without God, or act independently of God and His laws, than the rays of light can dispense with the sun. All the errors of individual character, all the failures in educational theories, all the mistakes of experimental legislation, originate in the fundamental fatal effect of reckoning without God, setting aside the great elemental fact that He is at the root, progress, and issue of all things, and that to put Him out of our calculations, to supersede His constitution, is to start upon false premises, to provoke and compel a failure, to reason and range in a vicious circle, for ever retracing its impracticable, unprogressive steps. "The wicked shall not go unpunished." "The seed of the righteous shall be delivered." (Joseph B. Owen, M.A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished: but the seed of the righteous shall be delivered. |
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