Proverbs 1:27 Commentary and Bible Study

This is indeed terrifying language, but it is language which describes something that, until we are awakened by God, we cannot take seriously. For those who do not turn to God there is coming a time when happiness will have fled away. The Hebrew word translated anguish means despair. It is hard to place ourselves in the position of total despair which the soul will be in once it knows that all further opportunity of God hearing us has ended. When God closes the door of salvation and the individual is still on the outside, there is nothing in heaven or earth that will persuade him to open it again. This is something we are not used to. In human experience there is usually always another chance, another opportunity, but there is no appeal from God’s final judgment; there is no other Saviour to whom we can turn once we have rejected the Lord. For the soul to know that its state cannot change in all eternity is to bear a weight which it is not able to bear. But now God’s ear is open and he welcomes our cries. Why will we not seriously call on his name. Why will we leave it too late? Why do we not look ahead to this future day that in his kindness he has warned us of, and realise that we are not there yet, and he is a God whose mercy can still be appealed to?