Proverbs 25:2 Commentary and Bible Study

The meaning is very plain. God knows all things intuitively and comprehensively. He requires no search, no enquiry to be made. He needs no formal archives or records to be kept. Everything that God knows he knows all the time and considers all things at once. He is not limited as we are, capable of viewing in our minds just one thing at a time. He knows all things always. And indeed to show us that and to demonstrate his complete superiority and supremacy over the created order, he hides many things from us. And we realise as human beings, even if we are unbelievers, that there is a vast amount of matter that we simply do not know. We are intimidated by our universe. We may explore it, and we have a commission from God to do so and investigate it and learn all we can about it, and yet in a sense we are made so small by it and it is part of God’s way of pointing out his vast supremacy and superiority over the created order. Not only does he make us stretch for knowledge and work for it, but also there are many, many things hidden from us. One day we shall know just how much, how vast is the amount of knowledge which we are not capable of understanding and knowing while on earth. There are glorious things to discover and to learn one day in the eternal glory. ‘It is the glory of God.’ It adds to his reputation in our eyes and stimulates our worship that God conceals much from us. He is thereby made unique and special, and we are called to faith and to trust in him.But when you come to earthly kings, it is entirely different. The king, or any government, has an absolute responsibility to research and to find out the truth at any number of levels. We think of criminal acts. How can you govern, how can you appoint judges and law enforcement agencies without diligent search and fairness to find out who is guilty of what and how? You cannot govern intuitively all the time. You may be a father and you may try to operate by intuition. Well, you may be right now and then, but intuition will let you down so often; you need to know the facts. In administering the behaviour of the children you have got to be fair, and you have got to get to the bottom of things, and you have got to have sensible policy for the family, and make sound decisions and wise decisions and kind decisions.How different God’s knowledge is to that of the greatest of men on earth! Actually the Hebrew for honour is the same word used in both cases. It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the glory of kings to search them out. The king or the government deserves to be admired in so far as they work diligently at it, and they try to establish their policies and decisions with care and research and enquiry and particularly the administration of justice and so on.