Proverbs 27:20 Commentary and Bible Study

The comparison seems unequal for Solomon sets two inanimate forces against the desire of a living being. Is there nothing else he could have chosen? All the emphasis falls on the second part of the verse – the eyes of man – which we might have thought were the smaller of the two insatiabilities, but which he wants to draw our attention to. The point is that the eyes of man, in other words, the desires of his soul, his longing for more, is of such a remarkable nature that only something as great as hell and destruction can provide an adequate comparison. In order to do this, Sheol and Abaddon must be personified. It is true that although they are inanimate forces, they are created by God as his response to the fall, for death came into the world through sin. Sheol is the underworld, sometimes used to describe the place where the lost perish, and sometimes simply used as a name for the grave, the place where all the dead go. Abaddon means destruction or ruin and takes into account the multitude of ways in which death takes its victims, bringing their lives in this world to an undesired end. The appetite of hell and destruction are seemingly impossible to satisfy, for each generation is swallowed up with no apparent effort and the strongest of lives must yield eventually. There are no exceptions and even those that fight hardest to put off the evil day eventually have to yield.But what about the eyes of man? God has created every human soul as a vast inner universe. Not only so, but we have a sense of eternity that we cannot shrug off. We might ask, How large is a human soul? It is very hard to say. The soul tries to fill itself because it senses such enormous capacities within it. The body of man is wonderful, but the soul of man is more wonderful. We have an awareness that in order for life to be worth living and existence not to become a torment the soul needs to be constantly fed. But the soul requires a supply which this world cannot afford. In our foolishness we try to satisfy our souls with junk food that leaves them suffering nausea. We fail to understand our own nature and think that somehow material things can satisfy the inner appetite of the soul, as if the two did not belong to totally different realms. We accumulate possessions as if these could substitute for the real food that the soul requires. Christ takes us to the logical endpoint of this process and asks us: “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26). The soul, he says, is greater than all the world put together, because it is capable of experiencing more than all the world; it has a desire that is greater than all the world. We fill it with experiences, with strong feelings, with relationships, with power, with knowledge, but all of these fall short. The soul also knows that it appetites disappear into the distant future, into eternity. Our souls are made to experience God and only his infinite and perfect being can satisfy them; that is the way he has made us. We could say then that our souls are of infinite capacity. We need meaning in our lives, and only his meaning is sufficient; only his eternal being can fill the void within us.