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287 illustrations — Lessons from history, biography, and world events
Yet a great intellect dissociated from moral control becomes a scourge and terror.
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Exell observes a crucial two-fold aspect in this verse: the same divine way operates as *strength* (Hebrew *maoz*, fortress) to the righteous and as ruin to the wicked.
The scorner dismisses all religious forms as hollow "cant," corrupting the young and weak-minded through cynical manipulation.
The ancient preacher Francis Taylor, B.D., explicates this metaphor with Victorian clarity: lawful children flow forth like streams blessed by Elohim Himself.
The lowly afflicted bear a yoke of trial chosen by God—their particular crook in the lot.
The perverse actively attempt to seduce the righteous from their path—a reality that reveals moral agency itself.
Exell (1887) distinguished between natural rest—the common privilege of thousands—and the particular rest of the good, which flows from freedom from fear.
Proverbs 3:5 presents not a rejection of reason, but its proper boundary. The question posed by Joseph S. Exell remains vital: what are reason's limits? Shall we accept only what our intellect comprehends, refusing truth that transcends rational explanation? Consider...
Had Elohim never vouchsafed positive revelation to mankind, we should feel after virtue as one groping in darkness.
As Proverbs 2:5 commands us to "find the knowledge of God," we must recognize that Elohim reveals Himself through Scripture, not through natural observation or philosophical reasoning.
It is a corruption of self-love, a form of self-flattery.
God Himself ordains the family as His constitutive institution, granting parents rank immediately beneath His own throne.
Most possess considerable advantages: the pure teaching of Scripture, the living voices of parents and ministers, and the Spirit of Elohim unfolding truth to conscience.
Exell's Victorian commentary catalogues six species of this spiritual blindness with surgical precision.
First, to take partial views of His glorious gospel.
This duty offends the natural mind and cannot be softened for worldly taste; it rests upon God's command alone, for our salvation hangs in the balance.
The pulpit offered dull platitudes while Christ's followers never asked: How would He have acted if He had vegetables to sell or horses to drive?
The Book of Proverbs unites secular and spiritual wisdom without artificial division, revealing that godly living encompasses all dimensions of existence.
Exell's Victorian homiletic analysis illuminates two essential truths about spiritual sustenance.
The Preacher employed a single lamp to illuminate the young man's delusion about the strange woman's house: the lamp named "At the last." This is no ordinary light but Ithuriel's spear itself, which according to Milton's *Paradise Lost*, dispels all...
This teaching rests upon nature's own law—that no creature exists in isolation, but all things experience mutual action and reaction within Elohim's creation.
Solomon warns that the seductress "spreads a thousand snares"; escape one entanglement only to find yourself caught by another.
Temporal possessions obtained in harmony with God's will and employed in benevolence produce genuine happiness.
(Proverbs 3:4) What constitutes a truly religious life?