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When Elohim's scythe swung through the harvests of that empire, desolation followed.
Man alone among creatures possesses articulate speech—the power to transmit thought from mind to mind.
First, the *object* of true worship: "Men shall worship Him"—that is, Jehovah.
Israel shall be borne away from her land suddenly and violently, as by the winds of heaven.
The word carries an evil connotation—recalling the serpent's cunning in Genesis 3—yet here Solomon redeems it to mean discernment rather than deception.
The Apostle Paul warns against a dangerous illusion: the believer who imagines himself beyond the reach of temptation.
First, we must preserve childlike simplicity of character—the freshness and moral innocence the gospel restores.
As Joseph Exell clarifies in *The Biblical Illustrator* (1887), the proverb means: "Unsteady as the sparrow, as the flight of the swallow, is a causeless curse; it cometh not to pass." Exell identifies two categories of causeless imprecations.
Melancthon mourned in his day the divisions among Protestants, and sought to bring them together by the parable of wolves and dogs.
We must distinguish between the purpose for which property is sought and the moral purpose answered by the process itself.
This is not arbitrary cruelty but the operation of a law that has governed history from its beginning.
Strachey observed that the Medes cared not for gold, but for blood—even the blood of boys and infants.
The wise man offers five devastating consequences of adultery: it impoverishes men, threatens death, debauches the conscience with guilt, ruins reputation with perpetual infamy, and exposes the adulterer to the jealous husband's rage.
The oozing stream from a bursting reservoir becomes a torrent; the torrent becomes a deluge.
The *hierarchs* (ἱεράρχης, those holding highest spiritual rank), distinguished from secular magistrates as recorded in 1 Chronicles 24:6, faced humiliation beyond mere political defeat.
The fountain of wisdom springs from Elohim alone—not from human cunning or the false oracles consulted by the Gentiles, even by Socrates himself in his weightiest affairs.
Sin is a tyrant usurping dominion where it was never meant to rule.
The Victorian scholar John Devotion, M.A., observed that genuine, unfeigned praise—bestowed for commendable conduct useful to the community—serves as a precise measure of moral and religious character.
The "wheel" is not primarily an instrument of torture, but a threshing tool.
The Wise Teacher presents three critical warnings about approaching places of moral danger.
The nineteenth-century expositors recognized that merchants alone possess the *ptocheia* (faculty) to sharpen their wits through calculated risk and distant vision.
Exell's Victorian exposition illuminates this distinction through precise categories.
The wise *thirsty ground* drinks in rain; likewise, the wise in heart long for and live upon God's Word.
Some suppose we must love our neighbour with the same *selfish* affection we naturally direct toward ourselves, yet such self-love is sinful and cannot be our model.