The glory of young men is their strength. The splendor of old men is their gray hair.
Parallel Translations
-
The glory of young men is their strength. The splendor of old men is their gray hair.
-
The glory of young men is their strength: and the beauty of old men is the gray head.
-
The glory of young men is their strength; and the beauty of old men is the hoary head.
Cross-references (4)
Passages linked to Proverbs 20:29 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- 1 John 2:14 I have written to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God remains in you, and you have overcome the evil one.
- Proverbs 16:31 Gray hair is a crown of glory. It is attained by a life of righteousness.
- Leviticus 19:32 “ ‘You shall rise up before the gray head and honor the face of the elderly; and you shall fear your God. I am Yahweh.
- Jeremiah 9:23-24 Yahweh says, “Don’t let the wise man glory in his wisdom. Don’t let the mighty man glory in his might. Don’t let the rich man glory in his riches. But let him who glories glory in this, that he has understanding, and knows me, that I am Yahweh who exercises loving kindness, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for I delight in these things,” says Yahweh.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (16 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
Private notes
Saved on this device only — never synced or sent anywhere.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Pro 20:29 The glory of young men [is] their…
Pro 20:29 The glory of young men [is] their strength: and the beauty of old men [is] the gray head.
Ver. 29. The glory of young men is their strength.] If well used in following their callings, and fighting for their countries, as those young men of the princes of the provinces did, {1Ki 20:20} and not in quarrelling and duelling, as those youngsters of Helkathhazzurim, who sheathed their swords in their fellows’ bowels. {2Sa 2:16}
Read full note →
And the beauty of old men is their gray head.] That silver crown of hoary hairs, saith one, which the finger of God doth set upon their heads, makes them venerable in all places where they come; so that they carry an authority or majesty with them, as it were. {See Trapp on "Pro 16:31"}
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain The glory of young men; that wherein they glory…
The glory of young men; that wherein they glory as their privilege above old men.
The beauty of old men is the grey head, i.e. their old age, expressed by the outward sign of it, wherein they glory as their peculiar privilege, as a testimony of their piety and God’s blessing, and as a token of their great experience and wisdom. The design of this proverb is to declare the several advantages of several ages, and the mutual need they have one of another, and thereby to engage them to mutual love and assistance, and to friendly converse, and to make every one contented with his own age and condition, and not to envy nor yet despise his brother, or the difference of their ages, as is very usual among men.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain This shows that both young and old have their…
This shows that both young and old have their advantages, and therefore must each of them be, according to their capacities, serviceable to the public, and neither of them despise nor envy the other. 1. Let not old people despise the young, for they are strong and fit for action, able to go through business and break through difficulties, which the aged and weak cannot grapple with. The glory of young men is their strength, provided they use it well (in the service of God and their country, not of their lusts), and that they be not proud of it nor trust to it. 2. Let not young people despise the old, for they are grave, and fit for counsel, and, though they have not the strength that young men have, yet they have more wisdom and experience. Juniores ad labores, seniores ad honores - Labour is for the young, honour for the aged. God has put honour upon the old man; for his gray head is his beauty. See Dan 7:9.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain The glory of young men is their strength,.... That…
The glory of young men is their strength,.... That is the excellent thing in them, and it is to their honour when it is employed in the service of their king and country, and especially in the service of God and religion; though it does not become them to glory in it, Jer 9:23;
and the beauty of old men is the gray head; an index of wisdom and prudence; see Job 12:12. The design of the proverb is to show that both have their excellencies and usefulness, young men and old men, and should not despise one another; nor either of them be despised in a commonwealth, both being useful in it, the one for strength, the other for counsel; and so in the church of Christ; see Jo1 2:13.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 29. The glory of young men is their…
Verse 29. The glory of young men is their strength] Scarcely any young man affects to be wise, learned, c. but all delight to show their strength and to be reputed strong. Agility, one evidence of strength, their particularly affect; and hence their various trials of strength and fleetness in public exercises.
And the beauty of old men is the gray head.] They no longer affect strength and agility, but they affect wisdom, experience, prudent counsels, &c., and are fond of being reputed wise, and of having respect paid to their understanding and experience.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Pro 20:29. The glory of young men — That…
Pro 20:29. The glory of young men — That wherein they glory as their privilege above old men; is their strength — Namely, of body, and vigour and courage of mind; their fitness for action, their ability to go through business, and overcome difficulties which the aged and weak cannot grapple with. Their strength is their glory, provided they use it well, namely, in the service of God and their country, and not of their lusts; and that they be not proud of it, nor trust to it, remembering that it may soon become weakness, and that while they retain it, its being made a comfort to themselves, and useful to others, depends entirely on the blessing of God. And the beauty of old men is the gray head — That which makes old men venerable is their gravity and experience, which qualify them to give counsel in matters of doubt and difficulty, which are important. The design of this proverb is to declare the peculiar advantages which persons of different ages possess, and the mutual need which they have one of another; and thereby to excite them to mutual love and assistance, and to make every one contented with his own age and condition; and neither to envy nor despise his brother, for the difference of his age and situation in life, as is very usual among men.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Charles Bridges 1846 · Public Domain Every stage of life has its peculiar honor and…
Every stage of life has its peculiar honor and privilege. ’Youth is the glory of nature, and strength is the glory of youth. Old age is the majestic beauty of nature, and the grey head is the majestic beauty, which nature hath given to old age.’†1 Yet these pictures describe the use, not the abuse. It is their youth usefully exercised, especially consecrated to God, and employed for his glory. Otherwise, as an occasion of wantonness,†2 or vain-glorious boast,†3 its strength is its shame, and will end in vanity.†4 The silver crown brings honour, and reverence, and authority — only "in the way of righteousness."†5
Yet the beauty of the grey head is most likely to be found, where the strength and glory of youth have been dedicated to God. The young plant, stunted, and deformed in its youth, will generally carry its crookedness into advancing growth. But who can calculate upon the extent of fruitfulness, where "the beginning of our strength" — "the dew of our youth" — has been given to the LORD? (Psa 92:13-15 .) Let youth and age however each beware of defacing their glory. Each takes the precedence in some things, and gives place in others. Let them not therefore envy or despise each other’s prerogatives. The world — the state — the church needs them both — the strength of youth for energy, and the maturity of age for wisdom.
Read full note →
Footnotes:
†1 Jermin in loco.
†2 2Sa 2:14-16 .
†3 Jer 9:23.
†4 Isa 40:30.
†5 Pro 16:31, and references. Compare Sir 25:6-7 .
Charles Bridges, An Exposition of the Book of Proverbs (1846) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Hairs, and experience. They have a greater contempt of…
CHAPTER XX.
Hairs, and experience. They have a greater contempt of death and pleasures. (St. Ambrose, Hex. i. 8.)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain The glory of young men . . . the…
The glory of young men . . . the beauty of old men--Each age has its peculiar excellence (Pro 16:31).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 29. The glory of young men — Literally, choice…
29. The glory of young men — Literally, choice men, young warriors.
Is their strength — Their strength is the quality in which they most glory, and which they most delight in exhibiting.
Read full note →
And the beauty (better, ornament) of old men is the gray head — Their age, שׂיבה, (sebhah,) hoariness, taken as the symbol of old age, and used for old age itself. The sense of the proverb I suppose to be this: Robust young men glory in their strength, old men in their gray hairs, that is, in their age. Every observant man has noticed that fact.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (29) The beauty of old men is the grey…
(29) The beauty of old men is the grey head.—As suggesting the possession of experience and wisdom. It is the fault of the aged, therefore, if they do not receive the honour due to them, and this arises from their not having so spent their youth and middle age as to make their old age venerable.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain The glory of young men is their strength. That…
The glory of young men is their strength. That which makes the ornament (tiphereth) of youth is unimpaired strength and vigour, which can only be attained by due exercise combined with self-control. The moralist (Ecc_11:9) bids the young man rejoice in his youth, and let his heart cheer him in those happy days, but at the same time remember that he is responsible for the use which he makes of his powers and faculties, for all these things God will bring him to judgment. The Greek gives a needful warning Memnhso neov an wv gerwn esh pote. "In youth remember thou wilt soon be old.
Septuagint, "Wisdom is an ornament to young men." But koach is bodily, not mental, power. The beauty of old men is the grey head. (Pro_16:31) That which gives an honorable look to old age is the hoary head, which suggests wisdom and experience (comp. Ecc 25:3-6). On the other hand, the Greek gnomist warns Polia cronou mhnusiv ou fronhsewv . "Grey hairs not wisdom indicate, but age.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain The glory of young men is their strength.
Pro_20:29
The glory of young men is their strength.
Read full note →
The glory of young men
Power, force, might, strength, are divers names for a thing which always has been, and always will be, admirable in human esteem. In all its forms it is a glorious thing. The man of indomitable will is always an object of reverence to his fellows. In every region of the humanities the man who can do the most, and with the least apparent expenditure of power, acquires a kind of moral chieftainship among his compeers in the same sphere. The text says that strength is the peculiar glory of young men. Other things will come by and by, but this is the thing that comes first. The glory of young men is not their wisdom. Young men are not generally very wise. They make a good many mistakes. The time for wisdom will come, whether the wisdom will come or not. The strength that is to be their glory is physical, bodily strength. A vast multitude of soul-ills come of a much lower kind of ill. Some men are born weak. And it is a very terrible thing, though a very merciful thing for the world. It is Gods law for preventing the perpetuation of moral evil. It is a provision that depraved lives of humanity shall die out if they do not, by conforming to the Divine laws, repair and improve themselves. There are some young men who are shorn of their glory, and have nobody to blame but themselves. What caricatures of humanity one sometimes passes in the street, in the form of young men! And there are old young men, enervated by folly and wickedness, doomed to drag out a weary existence for a few years, with no proper force for any of lifes duties and relations, and self-doomed. Keep, I beseech you, by all the means in your power, a strong, healthy body--vigorous, athletic, nervous, firm. But the text means more than this. Body is not yet manhood. There is moral power. One wants a deal of moral force, especially at lifes beginning, to live a true, and worthy, and noble life. Force is of two sorts: there is quiet force-inertia, and there is active force-motion. Both of these sorts of force go to make manhood. You must try to get moral solidity, gravity, weight, firmness, immovability, steadfastness. The elements of this force are conviction and decision. You must try to get active force, enthusiasm, energy, enterprise. Without this, nothing is done in any department of life. Seek the ability to go out of yourselves, to do and to dare for God. (G. W. Conder.)
The glory of young men
Men look with admiration and with awe upon great power, wherever it is seen. The visitor to Niagara cannot but be moved by the thought of the immeasurable power of that river as it dashes over the declivity. The man of power has always been the object of the veneration of his less talented fellow-men. He has but to move and straightway his movements are chronicled all over the civilised world. There is no sight in all the earth so impressive as is that of young manhood in its youthful power and vigour of faculty, eager for the struggle of life.
I. The strength of young manhood should be controlled. Power is productive of good only when its energies are guided in right channels and directed to right uses by intelligence and wisdom. When power becomes master and goes out from beneath the hand of wise control it is always destructive. The locomotive, Titan giant serving men meekly so long as they hold its movements obedient to their will, goes crashing into the train ahead, because the engineer has lost control of his iron steed; and the shrieks of the wounded and the moans of the dying tell us of the awful death-dealing ability of great power which has become a law to itself. The waters behind the dam at South Fork were harmless, except potentially, so long as they were controlled. They served only to further the peaceful industries of the mountain valley. But, breaking the bonds and acknowledging no ruler but anarchy, they spread desolation in their wake. Powerful though machinery and the forces of nature are, they are pigmies in comparison with a young man. He has done more than they all. What the world is to-day it has been made by young men. Through all time, the greatest victories have been achieved, the wisest and most beneficent reforms instituted, the greatest Christian enterprises undertaken, and the most decided impetus given to the advance of the world by men who have begun to be about thirty years of age. Bichat, French physician and physiologist, had revolutionised the practice of medicine and died before he was thirty-one. John Wesley founded the Methodist Church before he was thirty-six. Luther was thirty-three when he nailed his theses to the door of Wittenberg Church. Wilbrrforce had compelled England to free all her slaves by the time he was thirty-two. At the same age Watt had invented the steam-engine. But on the other hand the destructive influence of the strength of young manhood, when that strength is not wisely controlled, is seen when we glance at the rosters of our jails and penal institutions and discover the fact that the inmates of those institutions are for the most part young men. History also reminds us that Alexander the Great had made his name odious, conqueror of the world though he was, by the time he was thirty-three, and Napoleon had come to ignominy by the time he was thirty-four.
II. But this strength of young manhood should also be conserved, One of the most difficult things to impress upon young men is the fact they will not always be overflowing, as they are in their teens and twenties, with strength and spirits. When God makes a man, He puts into him a certain amount of life-force. When that is consumed, there is no way in which it may be replaced. Ruskin overtaxed himself in his younger days, with the result that the lamp of his genius burned but dimly in later life. Walter Scott did the same, and suffered the same fate. Scientists tell us that there is no reason why a man should not live past the century mark in years, if he be well born and if he conserve his strength. It lies within the power of every well-born man so to use the strength which nature has given him that, as the psalmist says, in old age he shall be fat and flourishing.
III. This strength of young men should also be concentrated. This one thing I do. Success in life depends upon concentration of ones energies upon one thing. Paul was a successful preacher because he was determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The sun casts a genial warmth over a large area, but if we wish to light a fire by it we must take the sun-glass and concentrate its rays upon one point.
IV. This power should also be consecrated. This is the capstone and the keystone of all that we have thus far pointed out. Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. The subordination of every power and faculty to the law contained in the great commandment will in itself lead to the control, the conservation, and the concentration of power and faculty. (R. S. Young.)
The glory of young men
Man has a threefold nature--physical, mental, and spiritual; body, brain, and soul. Therefore there are three kinds of strength--physical, intellectual, spiritual. There is a close connection between health and virtue. Before any vice can fasten on a man, his physical nature must be debilitated. The conditions of health are--
1. We must learn the laws of our physical well-being.
2. We must act and live up to these laws. The laws of health are--pure air, suitable food, and sufficient exercise. You have a healthy craving for innocent recreation. Do not repress it. It is God-implanted, and therefore sacred, sacred as are any of the other Divine instincts within you. You have a many-sided nature, and every side must have a fair chance of development. Intellectual strength. The mind is the measure of the man; it is the empire or kingdom of the soul. The thinker is the acknowledged king of men. A trained mind, developed by reading and reflection, is worth striving for. Moral and spiritual strength. A clever man is greater than a merely strong man, but a good man is greater than either. Moral and spiritual gains are the most enduring. (David Watson.)
The glory of youth and the beauty of age
I. Godliness makes the strength of young men glorious.
1. Because that strength is governed by a glorious inspiration.
2. Because it is directed to glorious ends.
3. Because it endows him with a glorious steadfastness of principle, an unswerving attachment to the right.
4. Because of the glorious reward he will finally attain.
II. Godliness makes the hoary heads of age beautiful.
1. Godly age is beautiful, because of its wealth of experience.
2. Because it is connected with maturity of Christian character.
3. Because of the connection with a holy peace and brightening hope.
III. The beauty of the grey head is the natural and fitting result of the developed glory of youthful strength. Pious strength in the earlier half of life is the seed that ripens into the glad harvest of hopeful, resting readiness which should mark the end.
1. Youthful godliness is likely to secure the beauty of age, because godly principles and practices are best calculated to lengthen life.
2. Because the conduct of youth gives character to age. (Jackson Wray.)
The glory of young men
1. Ideals of manhood have differed with every age. Physical strength was the primary glory of the race. Samson among the Hebrews, Hector among the Trojans, Achilles among the Greeks, and Richard the Lion-hearted among the Crusaders, were as valuable as batteries or battalions now are. Until Christian civilisation changed it, the measure of the man was his muscle, and his passport to respect was his fighting weight. But we live in a different era. Gunpowder and dynamite have abolished physical differences and put all men on a common level. It is not brawn but brain which tell in this age. Christianity has subordinated the material to the mental. There is nothing great in the world but man; there is nothing great in man but mind.
2. But there are two kinds of mental strength--a lower and a higher order, the intellectual and the spiritual. There is something better than a clear, cold intellectuality. Man has a heart as well as a head, emotions as well as thoughts. Some of the most atrocious characters in history were men of giant intellect. The Duke of Alva was accomplished and scholarly. As mental strength is higher in rank than the physical, so moral strength is higher than the merely mental. The most valuable possession in this world for a young man is strength of character. With it poverty, obscurity, and ill-health are not misfortunes. Without it wealth, fame, and physical endurance are not blessings. But how little this is appreciated by youth.
3. Every boy longs to be a man. It is a legitimate ambition. But does he know manhoods perils? The moral innocence of childhood grown into manhood is a thousandfold stronger than reformed manhood, built out of the fragments which were gathered up from the wreck and ruin of the former self.
4. The great arena for the development of moral strength is in conquering ones self.
5. But how shall this hardest of victories be won--the victory of self? Remember Constantines vision. So with you. By the Cross of Christ thou shalt conquer. The testimony of the unrighteous to the worth of religion as a moral armour is an exceedingly valuable testimony. (J. C. Jackson, D. D.)
Muscular Christianity
I. Physical strength. We are prone to glorify and exalt the man of strong intellect at the expense of the muscular man. We are apt to despise physical strength, and look upon it as something very necessary in an ox or horse, but nothing for a Christian to be proud of. The development of physical strength lies very much with ourselves. Physical development is related to mental and moral culture as the foundation to the superstructure which rests upon it. The best students carry their physical and mental training along together. Nor should we lose sight of the influence of physical training upon the morals of the young. Muscular Christianity is the kind of religion that will live, and make itself felt in the world. Mawkish sentimentality is not religion. But if our strength is to be a glory to us it must be consecrated strength. There are those who value their strength, not for the amount of good they can accomplish with it, but for the amount of supposed pleasure or vice their strength enables them to indulge in. Such strength is no glory to young men.
II. Mental strength. No college can confer brains where nature has withheld them; and yet it is true that, as regards intellectual power, we are very much what we make ourselves. It is not those endowed naturally with great talents who rule in the political, social, and religious world. It is those of medium talents, men of activity, diligence, and earnestness, who go up to the top of the ladder--those who deposit their mental capital, such as it is, where it will give the highest interest. Hard work kills very few. The men who live longest are those who combine severe mental labour with proper physical exercise.
III. Moral strength. If a man lack moral strength, he is no giant, but a mere pigmy, in so far as usefulness in the world is concerned. Moral strength consists--
1. In the courage to do the right.
2. To feel our own weakness.
3. Another element in moral strength is a godly life.
A consistent man is a tower of strength. He is a resistless power for good. The godly lives of humble, consistent Christians are the most powerful sermons. (Richmond Logan, M. A.)
The beauty of age
Spring has its charms, peculiar to itself, and so has summer, and so has autumn--each unlike the other, but the last by no means inferior to the others. There is a beauty peculiar to youth, and a beauty that belongs to manhood; is there not a beauty which belongs to age, unlike youth, unlike middle life, but something analogous to the glory of the autumnal foliage? Sometimes we see it. At other times, disease, overwork, trouble, sorrow, are a blight whose wasting has destroyed all beauty. But an old age, a late afternoon, that has escaped this, why should it not be like an autumn afternoon, bright and beautiful? Would it be an improvement to change the turning leaves into fresh green again? Would you rob us of the autumnal beauty, and take the later glory from the hillsides? It is most uncomely in man or woman, when old, to affect youthfulness--in dress and manner, and association, to go back to early life--to endeavour in this to be what one is not. The attempt is always a failure. This is a wheel that can never be turned backward. On the other hand, it is painful to see age anticipated, a premature age affected and taken on. Let the days linger, if they will. Let the leaves continue green, if they may. But there is a beauty, a bloom, a joyousness belonging to the maturity and ripeness of full age. Beauty is not unbecoming age. Bloom is not unbecoming age, neither is joyousness then unbecoming. But let it be itself such as befits age and belongs to it. Let it be the royal purple, running into the dun brown, unlike the verdure of the spring time--its own type of beauty--such as comes only when the sun runs low. In some localities, as the late autumn days are frosty and crisp, you may find by the wayside a flower, there opening its cluster of blossoms in full beauty, in the clear autumn air seeming to have caught the hue of the sky--a pure cerulean blue--the fringed gentian. Why does it blossom so late, with its heavenly hue, unless it be to remind us that there are flowers peculiar to the late autumn of life, and that they should be the evident reflection of heaven? Age may be beautiful with its own adornments. We dwell the longer on this because it is due to age, and because we would dissuade from that mistake, into which some fall, of anticipating and magnifying the sadder aspects of advanced life. As you grow old, be cheerful, if you may. Keep the affections of the heart fresh and warm. If your leaf must fall, forbid it not, while still it hangs, to redden and disport its beauty. If possible, let your sky be open as the sun goes down. (Alfred E. Ives.)
.
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain MAIN HOMILETICS OF Pro_20:29
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Pro_20:29
THE GLORY OF YOUTH AND AGE
Read full note →
I. Each period of life has a value and a glory of its own. There is a beauty in spring to which no other season of the year can approach. The vivid green of the opening leaves, and the meadows and hedge-banks carpeted with early flowers, give to spring a glory all its own. But the other seasons also have their peculiar charms. It is no less pleasant to look upon the landscape at midsummer, when the woods are in their full dress, and the valleys are covered over with corn, or in the autumn, when the harvest is being gathered in, and flowers have given place to fruit. If spring is the time of hope and promise, autumn is the season of realisation and fulfilment, and we are well content that the one should be lost in the other. So it is with the different periods of our human life—each has its special charm and its special advantages. We love to dwell upon the loveliness of childhood, but we should not like to see our sons and daughters remain children for ever, and it is pleasant to look upon and to experience the energy and hope of youth, but there are good things which cannot be ours until we reach to mature life, and even to grey hairs. We have before considered the glory of the hoary head (see on chap. Pro_16:31, page 493); we have only to consider—
II. The peculiar gift and glory of young men. It is, says Solomon, their “strength”—their power to do and to endure in a physical sense, what the aged cannot, by reason of the failure of their bodily powers. When men have passed middle life, they become more and more painfully conscious that if the “inward man is renewed day by day, the outward man is perishing” at the same rate (2Co_4:16), and although their experience is richer, and their wisdom greater, their physical ability and energy is not what it once was. Their ship is laden, it may be, with a far more precious cargo, but the tide is not so strong, and the breeze is not so powerful to waft it on its way as it was in the years that are gone. It is the glory of the young man that his strength is often more than enough for himself, he is able to bestow some upon the weak and needy. But the aged man is often painfully conscious that he has none to spare, that instead he is dependent upon the strength of others. The consideration of the special advantages of each season of human life ought to cheer the aged man and prevent him from regretting the days of youth, and at the same time it ought to make the young man respectful to the old, and willing to listen to their counsel, and so far as it is possible combine the wisdom of grey hairs with the vigour of youth. It also warns the young man against any abuse of his physical powers—against any unlawful indulgence of bodily appetites, and against the formation of unhealthy and indolent habits—which make so many of our youths prematurely old, bringing upon them the frosts of autumn, before they have brought forth its fruits.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain v. 29. The glory of young men is their…
v. 29. The glory of young men is their strength, for they are in the first flush of their manhood, and their physical power is at its best; and the beauty of old men is the gray head, which gives dignity to their appearance.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Blows that make a wound cleanse away evil and…
Blows that make a wound cleanse away evil and beatings make the innermost parts clean
Both statements mean the same thing and are repeated for emphasis. Using physical punishment to correct a person is spoken of as if the evil were dirt and the beatings cleansed him. AT: "Beating a person who has done wrong will correct him and cause him to be a better person" (See: Parallelism and Metaphor)
Read full note →
translationWords
glory
splendor
clean
evil
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.