Verse of the day · September 13

Does shame follow pride in Proverbs 11:2, or arrive with it?

Wisdom belongs to the man who reckons himself the chief of sinners.

When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is wisdom.
Proverbs 11:2

Pride is a sin a man has reason to be ashamed of on his own account, before anybody else has looked at him. It is a shame for a man who springs out of the earth, who lives upon alms, who depends upon God, and who has forfeited all he has, to be proud. That is the standing of the man the proverb is about. It gives his pride and his shame the same verb, and it uses that verb twice.

The one follows the other, John Gill writes — or rather, he says, they keep pace together, and as soon as one comes the other comes. The cases he gives are the angels that sinned, then Adam and Eve, then Haman, then Nebuchadnezzar, and others. In none of them did the disgrace have to be waited for.

Pride is also a sin which other men cry out shame on and look upon with disdain, Matthew Henry writes. He puts the making of that contempt on the man himself: he that is haughty makes himself contemptible. What the room gives back to him answers something he has already done to his own standing in it.

Above the room, it is a sin for which God often brings men down. Nebuchadnezzar is Henry's instance too, with Herod beside him, and he dates the ruin tightly: their ignominy immediately attended their vain-glory. His verbs for the bringing down all point at the same place. God resists the proud, contradicts them, and counterworks them, in the thing they are proud of. The Geneva Notes locate the fault in a man's calling: he thinks to be exalted above it, and God brings him to confusion. What he is brought down in is the height he claimed, so nothing has to be fetched from anywhere else to shame him with.

Henry takes the proverb's two clauses as one movement: he that exalts himself is here abased, and contempt put upon him; he that humbles himself is here exalted, and a high character given him. As with the proud there is folly, and will be shame, so with the lowly there is wisdom, and will be honour. Folly and wisdom are what a man has in hand already. Shame and honour are what is still coming to him. Of those four the proverb keeps two, and they do not match: the shame is the consequence, and the wisdom is the possession.

With the lowly is wisdom, and Gill records a rendering of that clause which carries the first half's verb across into it: or wisdom shall come, in a reading he takes from the Jewish expositor Jarchi. Read that way, both halves of the proverb are arrivals rather than states. JFB give the clause a verb of increase and say that the humble grow wise, and they set two more proverbs beside it.

Gill's lowly are the ones who reckon themselves the least of saints and the chief of sinners, and who own that it is by the grace of God they are what they are. With them is true wisdom, and the consequence of that wisdom, he says, is honour and glory. They are wise unto salvation, and in the way to honour and glory — on the road toward it rather than holding it. Such humble souls shall be exalted.

Henry's honour begins as an ordinary social fact — a man's wisdom gains him respect and makes his face to shine before men. Then he allows for the case where the respect never comes. If any be so base as to trample upon the humble, God will give them grace which will be their glory. The glory in that clause is grace, and it is given where the respect was withheld.

Shame did not have to be sent for. It came in with the pride, and it landed where the man had raised himself. The second clause — but with the lowly is wisdom — was reached by watching people. Those of a humble spirit are safe, and quiet, and easy; they have communion with God, and comfort in themselves. Honour, where men grant it, comes after all of that. What can be seen in them before any of it comes is the wisdom.

Drawn from Matthew Henry, John Gill, the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown commentary and the Geneva Bible notes. How these teachings are made

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