Proverbs 30:15 Commentary and Bible Study

Solomon now uses gentle poetic imagery to paint various pictures for our instruction. Each one follows the same structure, using the same formula to express it. It first enumerates three items of a certain character, and then, as if forced to expand the list by further reflection, changes the number to four. It is a literary device to show how plentiful are the examples he gives. Five such lists are given in verses 15, 18, 21, 24, and 29, with some additional thoughts added in. All of these are part of Solomon’s testimony and are aimed at bringing us to repentance, to submit to God’s government, and to come to him for salvation. They are observations about our own fallen character and about the changes that God can work in us through the new birth.The first is the imagery of human appetites. God has filled the world around us with illustrations, creatures from whose natures we can learn. They are amoral, but we who are moral see in them reflections of our own moral character, savoury and unsavoury. Solomon does not draw a conclusion from these observations, but leaves us to learn the obvious lessons. He begins with the leech, which some understand to be the horseleech. Its nature is to suck blood and to go on sucking almost till it bursts. It is a creature which can apparently never have enough and is a fitting comparison with the insatiability of human sinful appetites. It has two daughters, which is simply a way of saying that what comes from it bear the same character. Both of these daughters have the same name, for they both have the same character. There is no variation because it can produce nothing else. It and all its progeny are devoted to the same task of blood sucking. ‘There are three things that are never satisfied.’ Like the leech, the examples that follow are to be meditated on as further pictures of insatiability. We are however to apply this to man and to ourselves in particular. It is our sinful desires that can never be satisfied with what they already have, and seem to want more. It is also true that man has an insatiable appetite for life, which only eternity can satisfy.