Proverbs 14:13 Commentary and Bible Study

Solomon describes someone who has suffered some great sorrow, and either his friends come to cheer him up with some recreation, or he makes a determined effort to force his heart to be happy. The effort only partially succeeds, and underneath the cheer which lies on the surface there is a stubborn underlying sorrow that refuses to go away. The two may struggle together for a time, but the sorrow will eventually prevail, because the cause of the sorrow has not been dealt with and the remedy to restore happiness to the heart was artificial.This is a picture of superficial palliatives, remedies that do not work. Trust in them is a symptom of the shallow approach to life that comes with unbelief. The unbeliever does not know how to deal with the fear of death and the many obvious sorrows that present themselves in this life. He has no answer to the guilt of sin and yet it will not go away by itself, so instead he tries a remedy which cannot work but it is all that he can manage. He fills his life with the pleasures of this world in the hope that they will swamp the discomfort of guilt, the sense of alienation from God, and of his own mortality. Even while he tries these remedies and brings them alongside his griefs, he is aware that the relief they bring is only temporary. He senses that relief cannot last and that the consolations of the world are weaker and less real than the sorrows that have never gone away. He therefore knows that he has availed himself of an ineffective cure, but he is committed to unbelief, and refuses to come to God for the true remedy which only he can give. The soul is designed to find its happiness in God alone. It is aware of eternity and cannot be at peace if it lets go of its eternal future. If it yields to persuasion to find satisfaction in this world, it is never fully convinced, and a deep, underlying unease spoils all attempts to immerse itself in the present moment. The gospel urges us to see from an eternal perspective and measure all things by their eternal significance. It calls us to see through the world’s phoney claims and to evaluate them against the truth of God. It alone has power to lift the gloom that settles on the soul because of man’s alienation from God and his mortality.