Proverbs 8:4 Commentary and Bible Study

Now what is a little obscure in our translation but is evident in the Hebrew is that there are two kinds of person being addressed here. ‘Unto you, O men, I call’, and the Hebrew expression is particularly fitting for men of eminence. Then there is a contrast as it goes on to say, ‘and my voice is to the sons of man’, and the Hebrew rather indicates the lowly people, the ordinary people. So here wisdom is pressed upon the high and mighty, the eminent, the people of significance, and it is also pressed upon the ordinary people. And the purpose of our being told this is that the challenge of God and the need for spiritual shrewdness and the message of salvation is for all. It cries to the wealthy and actually it cries to them as though they are far off, and for the lowly there is a more sympathetic cast of language.The reason for that is the gospel. The truth of God is humbling. The truth of God does not come pandering to people who are clever people and privileged people. The message of God comes to humble them too, it treats us all alike. It calls to them in a humbling way, it calls more sympathetically to the lowly and the crushed and the despairing.