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Bible Notes - Tabernacle Commentaries
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Proverbs 15:26
Comments
Few unbelievers consider that God takes any notice of their thoughts. They view their own minds as private territory and feel free to let anything they like pass through them. If they trouble themselves at all about their behaviour, it is their outward behaviour they give attention to. They can hardly bring themselves to believe that God sees even this, but they certainly know that their fellow man sees it. This concerns them far more than that God sees them, for their shame arises from the fact that they have been discovered by another human being, not because they have any real conviction of sin. But their thoughts are an abomination to the Lord – all of them. Even the thoughts which the wicked imagine they should be commended for, thoughts of kindness to their children, thoughts of honesty in returning what is lost to its owner; even these thoughts God finds fault with. Those without faith may easily take such thoughts and use them as weapons against God: ‘See, I am righteous after all, in spite of all that your word says against me. I am capable of doing good.’ But even as they say this, they prove that self-righteousness was the motive that propelled them, not love for God. The wicked are particularly resentful to God when their deepest sins are exposed. They feel no great surprise that surface sins should be exposed, but when they have taken the trouble to hide sins deeply from God and still he manages to find fault with them, then their anger is aroused. Following the KJV, the second half of the proverb looks at the situation the other way round. The pure are those who are regarded as pure by the Lord, for they are absolutely pure through the imputation of Christ’s purity to them, and they are relatively pure because God has written his law in their hearts at the new birth. Not only are their thoughts acceptable to the Lord, but the expression of their thoughts in words manifests those good thoughts within them, and this manifestation is pleasant to the Lord. He loves the speech of his saints, arising from good intentions to their neighbour and the desire to honour his name in the world.
Application
Questions
‘But the words of the pure are pleasant’, or as some render it, ‘words of pleasantness (or delightfulness) are pure’, making ‘pure’ the predicate not the subject. The Hebrew seems to contrast thoughts with words, wicked with pleasantness, and abomination with pure, but the KJV arrives at its translation by supplying the phrase ‘the words of’ borrowed from the end of the verse, and turning ‘pure’ into a description of the man rather than of his words.
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