Bible Commentaries
Proverbs 19

Verses 1-16

4. Further advice for pleasing God 19:1-22:16

As was true in the chapter 10-15 section, this one (Proverbs 16:1 to Proverbs 22:16) also becomes more difficult to outline as it ends, because there are fewer groupings of proverbs.

Verse 7

The first part of this verse is hyperbole. The point is that people avoid the poor-their relatives do, and even more, their friends do. Even their own overtures of friendship are ineffective (Proverbs 19:7 c).

Verse 18

If a parent does not discipline his child while there is hope of correcting him, he is really, though perhaps not consciously, willing for him to die. The child’s folly will lead to his death if his parents do not curb it with discipline. [Note: Whybray, The Book . . ., p. 110.] Some parents allow their children to go astray out of neglect. "Discipline" (Heb. yasser) includes chastisement as well as instruction.

"Better the child is corrected by a parent than by a law enforcement officer in a correctional institution." [Note: Wiersbe, p. 105.]

Verse 19

An uncontrolled temper will repeatedly send its owner into fresh trouble. The implication is that it is futile to bail such a person out of the trouble he gets himself into with his temper.

"Whereas the son is corrected by parental discipline, the hothead must be corrected by allowing the consequences of his own foibles to punish him. The wise father does not interfere in the operation of the cause-consequence of the divinely established penal and remedial moral order. Ironically, the person who ’rescues’ the hothead becomes caught in the unhealthy dynamics of his way." [Note: Waltke, The Book . . . 31, p. 113.]

Verse 24

This humorous picture is of a person so lazy that he cannot even lift his food from his plate to his mouth (cf. Proverbs 26:15). The point is that a lazy person will bear the consequences of his own laziness. This warning is applicable to those who are too lazy to finish the projects they begin. [Note: Whybray, The Book . . ., p. 111.]