Proverbs 18:24 Commentary and Bible Study

I will give you an alternative reading which seems to make much more sense, and it is the reading that was adopted in 1904 by the revised version and it follows the observation which just about everybody now accepts that in this verse there is a word that has been overlooked or misunderstood in the Hebrew. ‘A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly’ is better rendered, ‘… may be ruined by those friends’. There is a Hebrew word there in the mix that actually means ‘ruin’, and very similar to a word that has to do with revealing or shewing yourself, and I think it has been misunderstood and this final proverb should read something like this. It is literally ‘A man of friends’ – that is the Hebrew. It is obviously speaking about a person who has lots and lots of friends. He or she zooms about and knows no end of people in all sorts of places and rushes round after them. But he is obviously not a discriminating person. If he had somewhat fewer friends but they were real friends, good friends, friends who shared his values and his standards, he would be much better off. But they are not people who share his values and his standards, and there are lots of them, and so the proverb should read, ‘A man of friends is ruined by them’, or ‘may be ruined by them’, because he becomes more like them, he is enticed by them. He is ruined in that he is always lightweight. He has sold himself to so many people, he doesn’t have any good friends, he has a whole raft of superficial people that he hobnobs with. ‘But’ – and here is the contrast – ‘there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.’ Better to have one than a hundred, one real friend – though the proverb is not actually saying that is how you should solve the problem; it is putting it this way to make a point. Better to have one real friend than a hundred shallow friends who don’t share your values and will even be a bad influence upon you. And as Christian people we are careful like that. We have worldly friends for their benefit because we may be able to reach them. So we maintain cordial relationship with them, but they can’t really be our friends with whom we share deeply; we have so little in common with them. We are more selective when it comes to real friends, because depth of friendship is what is important with people who are like minded.Can you be more friendly with someone who isn’t a brother, than someone who is a brother within the family after the flesh? O yes, easily, because brothers at best may feel an obligation towards each other, but they may also be rivals and have grown up as such. Who knows? You can have a much closer friendship even than that of a blood-brother in the Lord. We often apply these words to Christ who is the supreme friend and that is a wholesome and legitimate thing to do, but the proverb does not actually have that in mind. It says, make friendships, but not with any old person so they are all superficial and there is nothing that really counts, nobody who will be loyal to you, nobody who will warn you when you go astray. So fellowship is choosy.