Proverbs 4:1 Commentary and Bible Study

We remind ourselves, that this is a book of parables or of similes. It is too easy to come to some of these wonderful proverbs and forget that they are parables, figures, illustrations, and to begin to expound them as though the face value of the illustration was the thing to he applied to the heart. Often there is a valid application of the illustration but we should not stop there. In this chapter there are illustrations drawn from marriage, drawn from the love of a husband to a wife, and a wife to the husband, and it would be too easy to simply expound the virtues of godly marriage, and the duties of wives and husbands, and to forget completely that this is only an illustration. And while it would be valid to take the teaching in a direct manner, it is a parable or an illustration of salvation itself.Now the illustration in this first verse is clearly a continuation of what we have seen before. It is a father instructing his children with regard to how to run the farm, the smallholding, and the family trade. The children inherited the father’s speciality, whatever his particular trade was, for that community, and also had to learn to keep the farm. What is particularly significant about the instruction of the father? Why does the father want to train the children how to plant the seed at the right time, how best to toil the ground, how to know what and how to prune, how to look after the different types of crops, how to grow the right proportions of each at the right times? It might seem a rather foolish question, but it is a significant one. Did he do it simply because he enjoyed instructing? Well some people do enjoy instructing, but generally speaking, people would rather get on and leave that to somebody else. The father did not do it for his own benefit; he did it for the benefit of that next generation, so that the child when he grew up in his turn would prosper. The father dreaded the thought that the son may go bankrupt and may have to go into some form of benevolent slavery within the community to his shame, because he could not keep his children. So we learn from the illustration here. Why do we have the instruction of God? Why do we have the Bible, the principles of the Scripture, and the message of salvation? Is God imposing upon us all kinds of unwelcomed rules and regulations? No, like the father in ancient times, the Lord has revealed his word to us and made this way of salvation for our earthly and eternal benefit.