Proverbs 6:17 Commentary and Bible Study

The Lord won't bless with wisdom if there isn't a concern for personal holiness. Modern translations prefer, ‘a proud eye’ to ‘a proud look’, but obviously it is what is done with the eye that is in mind. The way this person looks at something, you can see they are despising it; the way they look at someone, you can tell they feel superior to that person. This look says, ‘I am special, I am better than you; I am superior, you are inferior.’ Pride is such a foul ugly thing. It seizes hold of people in so many areas of their lives. It may be that we feel proud of our superior knowledge, or it may be that we feel proud of ourselves because of some conspicuous ability we may have. It may be about our position in life, even our birth, something that we have no control over. One person considers himself wellborn. For another it is appearance. Wealth and even opinions drive pride. Some people even elevate their controversial opinions to the status of binding principles, which they and they alone have grasped. Whatever it is, it makes us proud and a haughty look comes into our eyes. And it is usually ludicrous, because if we are good at one thing, we are usually pretty poor at a whole raft of other things that we choose not to consider, or not to look at. We shut those off and we focus our mind on the thing we imagine we are good at. It is like the idol of olden times. The ordinary person's idol may only be made of wood and simply overlaid with a thin layer of some precious metal, but when the person looked at it, he began to regard it as though it was pure gold. That is how we look at ourselves sometimes, we do not see the warts, we do not see the heart sins.‘A lying tongue.’ This is among those things which God hates. This is another way in which we could fool ourselves and playact the Christian life. Sometimes we can hang on to a sin, some sin that we will not give up, and yet we go around saying to our friends, ‘The Lord this, the Lord that, the Lord did this to me, the Lord did that to me,’ and it is a lot of hot air, because the word of God says that while that sin is in the life, it is repulsive to God. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves of these things. We can playact, we can say the right things, when in fact if we were honest with ourselves, our personal experimental walk with God is at a very low ebb. Solomon is quite deliberate when he suggests that the tongue is almost an autonomous, out of control, thing. Lying has that effect. What an insult it is to the person who you are lying to! Why have you ever thought of it like this? I am not only lying, and deceiving, but that person who I am lying to is looking at me with believing eyes. And in a sense I am just abusing them, taking advantage of them. People lie for vanity: they tell stories about themselves or exaggerate their accomplishments. Or they lie for gain, or they lie to cover up, and to excuse and so forth. They lie to gossip and to injure. The lie is usually coupled with some other sin. It is seldom alone, and of course hypocrisy is going on.‘Hands that shed innocent blood.’ Is it not interesting that that is mentioned in the same breath as a liar, or a proud person. That jolts us into realising how offensive the proud look and the lying tongue are to God. But of course ’hands that shed innocent blood’ is to be taken figuratively also. It describes anybody who takes advantage of somebody else for their own gain. Anybody who takes advantage of a wife or a husband, letting them do all the work for their own ease and comfort, is really coming under the same category as - hands that shed innocent blood. Some people have been living like this for years, letting others take all the burdens for their own comfort and for their own gain. It does not necessarily have quite the same vicious end result, but really it is the same family of sins. Well, we have to search our hearts, what kind of people are we if we want to struggle free from sin, and please the Lord.