A stone is heavy, and sand is a burden; but a fool’s provocation is heavier than both.
Parallel Translations
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A stone is heavy, and sand is a burden; but a fool’s provocation is heavier than both.
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A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty; but a fool’s wrath is heavier than them both.
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A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty; but a fool's vexation is heavier than they both.
Cross-references (7)
Passages linked to Proverbs 27:3 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Daniel 3:19 Then Nebuchadnezzar was full of fury, and the form of his appearance was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He spoke, and commanded that they should heat the furnace seven times more than it was usually heated.
- 1 John 3:12 unlike Cain, who was of the evil one, and killed his brother. Why did he kill him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s righteous.
- Genesis 49:7 Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel. I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.
- 1 Samuel 22:18-19 The king said to Doeg, “Turn and attack the priests!” Doeg the Edomite turned, and he attacked the priests, and he killed on that day eighty-five people who wore a linen ephod. He struck Nob, the city of the priests, with the edge of the sword, both men and women, children and nursing babies, and cattle and donkeys and sheep, with the edge of the sword.
- Proverbs 17:12 Let a bear robbed of her cubs meet a man, rather than a fool in his folly.
- Genesis 34:25-26 On the third day, when they were sore, two of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, each took his sword, came upon the unsuspecting city, and killed all the males. They killed Hamor and Shechem, his son, with the edge of the sword, and took Dinah out of Shechem’s house, and went away.
- Esther 3:5-6 When Haman saw that Mordecai didn’t bow down, nor pay him homage, Haman was full of wrath. But he scorned the thought of laying hands on Mordecai alone, for they had made known to him Mordecai’s people. Therefore Haman sought to destroy all the Jews who were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus, even Mordecai’s people.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Pro 27:3 A stone [is] heavy, and the sand…
Pro 27:3 A stone [is] heavy, and the sand weighty; but a fool’s wrath [is] heavier than them both.
Ver. 3. But a fool’s wrath is heavier than them both.] Himself cannot rule nor repress it, but that he dies of the sullens sometimes, as that fool Nabal did. Much less can others endure it without trouble and regret, especially when so peevish and past grace as to be angry with those that approve not, applaud not his folly. How angry was Nebuchadnezzar, how much hotter was his heart than his oven against those three worthies, for refusing to fall down before his golden mawmet! How unsufferable was Herod’s anger in the massacre at Bethlehem, and the primitive persecutors for the two first ages after Christ, that I come no lower. See my Common Place of Anger.
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 Heavier; more grievous and intolerable, as being without cause,…
Heavier; more grievous and intolerable, as being without cause, without measure, and without end.
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 These two verses show the intolerable mischief, 1. Of…
These two verses show the intolerable mischief, 1. Of ungoverned passion. The wrath of a fool, who when he is provoked cares not what he says and does, is more grievous than a great stone or a load of sand. It lies heavily upon himself. Those who have no command of their passions do themselves even sink under the load of them. The wrath of a fool lies heavily upon those he is enraged at, to whom, in his fury, he will be in danger of doing some mischief. It is therefore our wisdom not to give provocation to a fool, but, if he be in a passion, to get out of his way. 2. Of rooted malice, which is as much worse than the former as coals of juniper are worse than a fire of thorns. Wrath (it is true) is cruel, and does many a barbarous thing, and anger is outrageous; but a secret enmity at the person of another, an envy at his prosperity, and a desire of revenge for some injury or affront, are much more mischievous. One may avoid a sudden heat, as David escaped Saul's javelin, but when it grows, as Saul's did, to a settled envy, there is no standing before it; it will pursue; it will overtake. He that grieves at the good of another will be still contriving to do him hurt, and will keep his anger for ever.
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 A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty,.... As…
A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty,.... As was the stone which was at the well's mouth, where Laban's flocks were watered, which could not be rolled away till all the shepherds were gathered together, Gen 29:2; and like the burdensome stone Jerusalem is compared to Zac 12:3; and as that at the sepulchre of Christ, rolled away by the angel, Mat 28:2. And sand is a very ponderous thing; difficult to be carried, as the Septuagint render it, as a bag of it is; and to which heavy afflictions are sometimes compared, Job 6:2;
but a fool's wrath is heavier than them both; it cannot be removed, it rests in his bosom; it is sometimes intolerable to himself; he sinks and dies under the weight of it, as Nabal did: "wrath killeth the foolish man", Job 5:2; and it is still more intolerable to others, as Nebuchadnezzar's wrath and his fiery furnace were.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Heavier - More grievous, being without cause, without measure,…
Heavier - More grievous, being without cause, without measure, and without end.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Pro 27:3. A stone is heavy, &c., but a…
Pro 27:3. A stone is heavy, &c., but a fool’s wrath is heavier — More grievous and intolerable, as being without cause, without measure, and without end. “Fools and unskilful people,” says Melancthon, “are more apt to be angry than others, because they consider not the infirmity of mankind, and that there are many errors of others which ought to be borne withal, and cured after a gentle manner. For, as goodness is most eminent in God, who himself bears with many evils in us, and commands us to forgive and it shall be forgiven us, so wise men bend their minds to goodness and lenity; remembering the common infirmities of all men, their own as well as others. Nor can there be a more lively picture of the implacable spirit of a fool, than that which our Saviour himself hath drawn in the gospel: of a cruel servant, who, when he had been forgiven sixty tons of gold by his master, would not forgive his fellow-servant a hundred pence, Matthew 18.”
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Compare Ecclus. 22:15; a like comparison between the heaviest…
Compare Ecclus. 22:15; a like comparison between the heaviest material burdens and the more intolerable load of unreasoning passion.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Charles Bridges 1846 · Public Domain The wrath even of a wise man in the…
The wrath even of a wise man in the moment of folly is cruel.†1 What then must be a fool’s wrath, ’where there is not a drop of heavenly water to quench the fire?’†2 It is indeed the weight of a stone or sand†3 — intolerable, ’being without cause, measure, or end.’†4 Its abiding sullenness distinguishes it from the temporary impulse, to which the child of God may too hastily yield. Absalom kept it in for two years.†5 David’s anger melted away under the first conviction of reproof, and "the sun went not down upon his wrath."†6
And yet cruel as wrath may be,†7 overflowing as the spring-tide, it may be appeased. Esau’s wrath was soothed into brotherly love.†8 The outrageous despot was subdued in witnessing the presence and power of God.†9 But envy is an implacable passion, the native principle,†10 with a fearful train of evils.†11 Anger is stirred up by offense; envy by godliness,†12 prosperity,†13 or favor.†14 Reason operates rather as the oil to fan the flame, than the water to quench it. ’Proud men would be admired by all, and preferred above all; and if it be not so, a secret enmity invadeth their spirits, and settleth itself. Men cannot endure the real or reputed excellency of others. The proud creature would shine alone.’†15
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The wise man had before described the curse of this deadly passion to the man who indulges it. (Pro 14:30 .) Here he shews its subtle, and almost irresistible power upon its victims. For indeed, in contrast to the fine description of ’mercy, it is twice’ cursed. It curses both its subjects and its object. ’Like the star called wormwood, that embittereth all the rivers and fountains of waters on which it fell (Rev 8:11 ), it poisons and bereaves of their sweetness all the sources and streams of human enjoyment.’†16
Well then might it be asked — Who is able to stand before envy? Even the perfect innocence of paradise fell before it. Satan lost his own happiness. Then he envied man, and ceased not to work his destruction. (see Wis 2:23-24 .) It shed the first human blood, that ever stained the ground. (1Jn 3:12 .) It quenched the yearnings of natural affection, and brought bitter sorrow to the patriarch’s bosom.†17 Even the premier of the greatest empire in the world was its temporary victim.†18 Nay more — the Savior in his most benevolent acts was sorely harassed,†19 and ultimately sunk under its power.†20 "His servants therefore must not expect to be above their Master."†21
But — Christian — remember — though the promise is sure, "that sin shall not have dominion;"†22 yet the struggle is sharp to the end. Let us probe this corruption deeply. Men will look at grace, as we have seen, with an envious eye. They will darken the lives, that outshine their own and defame the holiness, which they have no heart to follow. But ’those who have true worth in themselves, can never envy it in others.’†23 Do we then love to see a brother’s superior eminence, his larger gifts or graces? (Num 11:28-29 .) Do we take pleasure in his prosperity, in honor paid to him, though to our own disparagement? (Joh 3:30 .) Is our tone of praise as decided towards him, as we should wish that of others to be of us? Can we bear to be past by in favor of those, who may seem to be doing our work in opposition to ourselves? (Php 1:15-18 .) Oh! how hateful would be the exhibition of the hidden depths of our deceitful hearts! "Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults." (Psa 19:12 .)
Footnotes:
†1 1Sa 25:13, 1Sa 25:21 .
†2 Cartwright.
’Ira furor brevis est; animum rege; qui, nisi paret,
Imperat; hunc frænis, hunc tu compesce catena.’
Hor. Ep. i. 2, 62, 63.
†3 Exo 15:5. Compare Sir 22:14-15 .
†4 Poole. Compare Pro 17:12 .
†5 2Sa 13:22-23 .
†6 1Sa 25:32-33 . Eph 4:26 .
†7 Gen 49:7. Mat 2:16 .
†8 Gen 27:41; Gen 33:4 .
†9 Dan 3:13-30.
†10 Mar 7:22. Gal 5:20-21 . Tit 3:3 . Jas 4:5 .
†11 Rom 1:29-30. 2Co 12:20 . Jas 3:14, Jas 3:16 .
†12 Ecc 4:4 . Dan 6:3-5 .
†13 Gen 26:14. Psa 73:3 .
†14 Gen 4:5-8. 1Sa 18:6-9, 1Sa 18:16-17 .
†15 Manton on Psa 119:77 .
†16 Wardlaw on Ecc 4:4.
†17 Gen 37:3-4, Gen 37:23-35 . Act 7:9 .
†18 Dan 6:6-17.
†19 Joh 12:10-11.
†20 Mat 27:18-20.
†21 Act 5:17, Marg; Act 13:44-45 ; Act 17:4-5, with Mat 10:24 .
†22 Rom 6:14.
†23 Sir Philip Sidney’s Aphorisms.
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 Both. He is insupportable to himself and to others,…
Both. He is insupportable to himself and to others, Ecclesiasticus xxii. 17.
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 heavy--The literal sense of "heavy," applied to material subjects,…
heavy--The literal sense of "heavy," applied to material subjects, illustrates its figurative, "grievous," applied to moral.
a fool's wrath--is unreasonable and excessive.
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 3. A stone is heavy — The words “heavy”…
3. A stone is heavy — The words “heavy” and “heavier” are employed, in this verse, in both a literal and a tropical sense. See an example of the same use in Mat_8:22 : “Let the dead bury their dead.”
A fool’s wrath — The vexation of a fool; that is, the vexation of which he is the cause —vexation or trouble by a fool. Zockler understands it of the arrogance and ill temper experienced by the “fool” himself. Such ill temper is a burden heavier than stone or sand.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 3. Comp. Sir_22:15.
3. Comp. Sir_22:15.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (3) But a fool’s wrath is heavier than them…
(3) But a fool’s wrath is heavier than them both—i.e., harder to bear. (Comp. Sir_12:15.) The “fool” here (evil) is the headstrong, self-willed person. who has never learned to control himself, but bursts out into the maddest rage when crossed.
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 A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty; literally,…
A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty; literally, heaviness of a stone, weight of the sand. The substantives are more forcible than the corresponding adjectives would be: the versions rather weaken the form of the expression by rendering, Grave est saxum, etc. The quality in the things mentioned is weight, heaviness, ponderosity; that is what we are bidden regard. A fool"s wrath is heavier than them both. The ill temper and anger of a headstrong fool, which he vents on those about him, are harder to endure than any material weight is to carry. Ecc 22:15, "Sand and salt and a mass of iron are easier to bear than a man without understanding." The previous verse asks, "What is heavier than lead? and what is the name thereof i.e. of the heavier thing, but a fool?" Job speaks of his grief being heavier than the sand of the sea. (Job_6:3)
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 Sand weighty.
Pro_27:3
Sand weighty.
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The weight of sand
By a fool this book means, not so much intellectual feebleness as moral and religious obliquity, which are the stupidest things that a man can be guilty of. The proverb-maker compares two heavy things, stones and sand, and says that they are feathers in comparison with the lead-like weight of such a mans wrath. I want to make a parable out of the text. What is lighter than a grain of sand? What is heavier than a bagful of it? The accumulation of light things is overwhelmingly ponderous. Is there anything in our lives like that?
I. This reminds us of the supreme importance of trifles. The small things make life, and if they are small, then it is. We are poor judges of what is great or small. We have a very vulgar estimate of noise, notoriety, and bigness. We think the quiet things are the small ones. The most trivial actions have a knack of leading on to large results, beyond what could have been expected. These trivial actions make character. Men are not made by crises. The crises reveal what we have made ourselves by the trifles. We shape ourselves by the way we do small things.
II. The overwhelming weight of small sins. The accumulated pressure upon a man of a multitude of perfectly trivial faults and transgressions makes up a tremendous aggregate that weighs upon him. The words great and small should not be applied in reference to things about which right and wrong are the proper words to employ. Acts make crimes, but motives make sins. To talk about magnitude, in regard to sins, is rather to introduce an irrelevant consideration. Small sins, by reason of their numerousness, have a terribly accumulative power; a tremendous capacity for reproduction. All our evil doings have a strange affinity with one another. To go wrong in one direction leads to a whole series of consequential transgressions of one sort or another. Every sin makes us more accessible to the assaults of every other. If we indulge in slight acts of transgression, be sure of this, that we shall pass from them to far greater ones. An overwhelming weight of guilt results from the accumulation of little sins.
III. Plain, practical issues of these thoughts.
1. The absolute necessity for all-round and ever-wakeful watchfulness of ourselves.
2. This thought may take down our easy and self-complacent estimate of ourselves.
3. Should we not turn ourselves with lowly hearts to Him who alone can deliver us from the habit and power of these accumulated faults, and who alone can lift the burden of guilt and responsibility from off our shoulders? (A. Maclaren, D.D.)
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 Pro_27:4. Delitzsch reads this verse “The madness of anger…
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Pro_27:4. Delitzsch reads this verse “The madness of anger and the overflowing of wrath, and before jealousy who keeps his place?”
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MAIN HOMILETICS OF Pro_27:3-4
WRATH AND ENVY
I. A most unhappy combination. A fool and wrath. Wrath or displeasure is possible to every being capable of emotion. The power to love implies the power to hate, and he who can be pleased can also be displeased. The most tender mother can be angry, and righteously angry, with her child, and we read in Scripture of the “wrath of the Lamb” (Rev_6:16.) But there is an infinite distance between the wrath of the Holy God, and even between that of a good man or woman, and that of a moral fool. Divine displeasure is an emotion, and never a passion. God is never passive in the hands of His anger. And in proportion as men are like God they always have their displeasure under the control of their will. It is as amenable to their conscience and their reason as an obedient horse to his rider. But a fool is a man who is without power of self-government—who is himself governed first by one passion or desire and then by another—like a ship without a rudder, at the mercy of the winds and waves. When such an one is in the hands of his wrath, a most mischievous and destructive force is at work. For whether we consider its effects on the man himself, or upon the objects of his anger, we may truthfully brand it as burdensome, and cruel and outrageous.
1. It is a cruel burden to the subject of it. A more wretched creature can hardly be found in the universe than a man passive in the hands of his own anger; it is like a heavy weight crushing out of him all power to stand morally erect and self-possessed, and like a knotted scourge inflicting wounds not on the body but on the spirit.
2. The objects of it also find it a painful yoke. In proportion as the fool is in a position to exert his influence over others, in the same proportion is the amount of misery which he can create by his unbridled wrath. Perhaps its effects are nowhere so painfully felt as in the domestic circle. As a master the wrathful fool may make his servants miserable, but they may be able to quit his service and so get beyond his influence. But there is no escape for wife and children from the wrath of a morally foolish husband and father; for such there is a millstone ever about the neck, and tormenting goads always pricking the feet.
II. The most pitiless foe. Terrible as is the unbridled wrath of a fool, there is a passion more to be dreaded. The open battle-field in broad daylight is a place to be shunned, but an ambush at midnight is more certain death. Men fear to meet the lion upon the highroad, but the scorpion concealed among the grass is more dangerous. For some resistance can be offered to an open and avowed enemy, but no defence can be prepared against an unseen foe. And if wrath is like the angry lion, envy is like the deadly scorpion. The first gives some warning of his design, but the latter none. The man of unbridled passion often misses his aim by reason of his unsteady hand—the very excess of his wrath sometimes takes away his power to execute his intention. And he generally deals his blows at his enemy’s face—speaks out his hatred in his hearing, and publicly and openly tries to do him a mischief. But the envious man acts in a different manner. The natures that are most prone to envy have generally some power of self-control—they are more cold-blooded than passionate men. Though they are moral fools, they have generally enough intellectual wisdom to see the best method of bringing to pass their malicious purposes; and they consequently prefer an ambush to an open fight, and choose rather to stab a man in the back than to meet him face to face. In other words, they do not upbraid him openly and give him an opportunity to defend himself, but blacken his character by insinuations when he is absent. And as it is the nature of envy to brood over its grievances in secret, and that of unbridled wrath to manifest its displeasure immediately and openly, the first gathers strength by repression and the other loses it by the very force of its expression.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
As an earthquake ariseth from a tumultuous vapour shut up in the caverns and bowels of the earth, where it tosseth and tumbleth until it break out and overturn all that standeth in the way of it, so envy is a pestilent vapour which lieth in the heart of a man, where it boileth and fretteth until it find occasion to vent itself, and then it tumbleth and throweth down all that standeth in the malicious eye of it. Houses and trees stand firm against a tempest of lightning or a flood of rain, and men stand out against the cruelty of sudden wrath and rage of a man’s lasting anger, but what house or tree standeth against the force of an earthquake, and who is able to stand against the force of envy?—Jermin.
I do not ask for men passionless; this is hominem de homine tollere. Give them leave to be men, not madmen. Anger in the best sense is the gift of God, and it is no small art to express anger with premeditated terms, and on seasonable occasions. God placed anger among the affections engrafted in nature, gave it a seat, fitted it with instruments, ministered it matter whence it might proceed, provided humours whereby it is nourished. It is to the soul as a nerve to the body. The philosopher calls it the whetstone to fortitude, a spur intended to set forward virtue. But there is a vicious, impetuous, frantic anger, earnest for private and personal grudges; not like a medicine to clear the eye, but to put it out.… To cure this bedlam passion … let him take some herb of grace, an ounce of patience, as much of consideration how often he gives God cause to be angry with him, and no less of consideration how God hath a hand in Shimei’s railing—mix all these together with a faithful confidence that God will dispose all wrongs to thy good; hereof be made a pill to purge choler.… Anger is a frantic fit, but envy is a consumption.… Among all mischiefs it is furnished with one profitable quality—the owner of it takes most hurt.… It were well for him that he should dwell alone. It is a pity that he should come into heaven, for to see “one star excel another in glory” would put him again out of his wits.… His cure is hard.… Two simples may do him good if he could be won to take them—a scruple of content and a dram of charity.—T. Adams.
Well then might it be asked: Who is able to stand before envy? Even the perfect innocence of paradise fell before it. Satan lost his own happiness. Then he envied man, and ceased not to work his destruction. (See Wis_2:23-24). It shed the first human blood that ever stained the ground. (1Jn_3:12). It quenched the yearnings of natural affection, and brought bitter sorrow to the patriarch’s bosom. Even the premier of the greatest empire in the world was its temporary victim. Nay more—the Saviour in His most benevolent acts was sorely harassed, and ultimately sunk under its power. “His servants therefore must not expect to be above their Master.”—Bridges.
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.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain
Proverbs
THE WEIGHT OF SAND
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Pro 27:3.
This Book of Proverbs has a very wholesome horror of the character which it calls ‘a fool’; meaning thereby, not so much intellectual feebleness as moral and religious obliquity, which are the stupidest things that a man can be guilty of. My text comes from a very picturesque and vivid description, by way of comparison, of the fatal effects of such a man’s passion. The proverb-maker compares two heavy things, stones and sand, and says that they are feathers in comparison with the immense lead-like weight of such a man’s wrath.
Now I have nothing more to do with the immediate application of my text. I want to make a parable out of it. What is lighter than a grain of sand? What is heavier than a bagful of it? As the grains fall one by one, how easily they can be blown away! Let them gather, and they bury temples, and crush the solid masonry of pyramids. ‘Sand is weighty.’ The accumulation of light things is overwhelmingly ponderous. Are there any such things in our lives? If there are, what ought we to do? So you get the point of view from which I want to look at the words of our text.
I. The first suggestion that I make is that they remind us of the supreme importance of trifles.
If trivial acts are unimportant, what signifies the life of man? For ninety-nine and a half per cent. of every man’s life is made up of these light nothings; and unless there is potential greatness in them, and they are of importance, then life is all ‘a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ Small things make life; and if are small, then it is so too.
But remember, too, that the supreme importance of so-called trivial actions is seen in this, that there may be every bit as much of the noblest things that belong to humanity condensed in, and brought to bear upon, the veriest trifle that a man can do, as on the greatest things that he can perform. We are very poor judges of what is great and what is little. We have a very vulgar estimate that noise and notoriety and the securing of, not great but ‘big,’ results of a material kind make the deeds by which they are secured, great ones. And we think that it is the quiet things, those that do not tell outside at all, that are the small ones.
Well! here is a picture for you. Half-a-dozen shabby, travel-stained Jews, sitting by a river-side upon the grass, talking to a handful of women outside the gates of a great city. Years before that, there had been what the world calls a great event, almost on the same ground-a sanguinary fight, that had settled the emperorship of the then civilised world, for a time. I want to know whether the first preaching of the Gospel in Europe by the Apostle Paul, or the battle of Philippi, was the great event, and which of the two was the little one. I vote for the Jews on the grass, and let all the noise of the fight, though it reverberated through the world for a bit, die away, as ‘a little dust that rises up, and is lightly laid again.’ Not the noisy events are the great ones; and as much true greatness may be manifested in a poor woman stitching in her garret as in some of the things that have rung through the world and excited all manner of vulgar applause. Trifles may be, and often are, the great things in life.
And then remember, too, how the most trivial actions have a strange knack of all at once leading on to large results, beyond what could have been expected. A man shifts his seat in a railway carriage, from some passing whim, and five minutes afterwards there comes a collision, and the bench where he had been sitting is splintered up, and the place where he is sitting is untouched, and the accidental move has saved his life. According to the old story a boy, failing in applying for a situation, stoops down in the courtyard and picks up a pin, and the millionaire sees him through the window, and it makes his fortune. We cannot tell what may come of anything; and since we do not know the far end of our deeds, let us be quite sure that we have got the near end of them right. Whatever may be the issue, let us look after the motive, and then all will be right. Small seeds grow to be great trees, and in this strange and inexplicable network of things which men call circumstances, and Christians call Providence, the only thing certain is that ‘great’ and ‘small’ all but cease to be a tenable, and certainly altogether cease to be an important distinction.
Then another thing which I would have you remember is, that it is these trivial actions which, in their accumulated force, make character. Men are not made by crises. The crises reveal what we have made ourselves by the trifles. The way in which we do the little things forms the character according to which we shall act when the great things come. If the crew of a man-of-war were not exercised at boat and fire drill during many a calm day, when all was safe, what would become of them when tempests were raging, or flames breaking through the bulk-heads? It is no time to learn drill then. And we must make our characters by the way in which, day out and day in, we do little things, and find in them fields for the great virtues which will enable us to front the crises of our fate unblenching, and to master whatsoever difficulties come in our path. Geologists nowadays distrust, for the most part, theories which have to invoke great forces in order to mould the face of a country. They tell us that the valley, with its deep sides and wide opening to the sky, may have been made by the slow operation of a tiny brooklet that trickles now down at its base, and by erosion of the atmosphere. So we shape ourselves-and that is a great thing-by the way we do small things.
Therefore, I say to you, dear friends! think solemnly and reverently of this awful life of ours. Clear your minds of the notion that anything is small which offers to you the alternative of being done in a right way or in a wrong; and recognise this as a fact-’sand is weighty,’ trifles are of supreme importance.
II. Now, secondly, let me ask you to take this saying as suggesting the overwhelming weight of small sins.
That is only an application in one direction of the general principle that I have been trying to lay down; but it is one of such great importance that I wish to deal with it separately. And my point is this, that the accumulated pressure upon a man of a multitude of perfectly trivial faults and transgressions makes up a tremendous aggregate that weighs upon him with awful ponderousness.
Let me remind you, to begin with, that, properly speaking, the words ‘great’ and ‘small’ should not be applied in reference to things about which ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ are the proper words to employ. Or, to put it into plainer language, it is as absurd to talk about the ‘size’ of a sin, as it is to take the superficial area of a picture as a test of its greatness. The magnitude of a transgression does not depend on the greatness of the act which transgresses-according to human standards-but on the intensity with which the sinful element is working in it. For acts make crimes, but motives make sins. If you take a bit of prussic acid, and bruise it down, every little microscopic fragment will have the poisonous principle in it; and it is very irrelevant to ask whether it is as big as a mountain or small as a grain of dust, it is poison all the same. So to talk about magnitude in regard to sins, is rather to introduce a foreign consideration. But still, recognising that there is a reality in the distinction that people make between great sins and small ones, though it is a superficial distinction, and does not go down to the bottom of things, let us deal with it now.
I say, then, that small sins, by reason of their numerousness, have a terrible accumulative power. They are like the green flies on our rose-bushes, or the microbes that our medical friends talk so much about nowadays. Like them, their power of mischief does not in the least degree depend on their magnitude, and like them, they have a tremendous capacity of reproduction. It would be easier to find a man that had not done any one sin than to find out a man that had only done it once. And it would be easier to find a man that had done no evil than a man who had not been obliged to make the second edition of his sin an enlarged one. For this is the present Nemesis of all evil, that it requires repetition, partly to still conscience, partly to satisfy excited tastes and desires; so that animal indulgence in drink and the like is a type of what goes on in the inner life of every man, in so far as the second dose has to be stronger than the first in order to produce an equivalent effect; and so on ad infinitum.
And then remember that all our evil doings, however insignificant they may be, have a strange affinity with one another, so that you will find that to go wrong in one direction almost inevitably leads to a whole series of consequential transgressions of one sort or another. You remember the old story about the soldier that was smuggled into a fortress concealed in a hay cart, and opened the gates of a virgin citadel to his allies outside. Every evil thing, great or small, that we admit into our lives, still more into our hearts, is charged with the same errand as he had:-’ Set wide the door when you are inside, and let us all come in after you.’ ‘He taketh with him seven other spirits worse than himself, and they dwell there.’ ‘None of them,’ says one of the prophets, describing the doleful creatures that haunt the ruins of a deserted city, ‘shall by any means want its mate,’ and the satyrs of the islands and of the woods join together! and hold high carnival in the city. And so, brethren! our little transgressions open the door for great ones, and every sin makes us more accessible to the assaults of every other.
So let me remind you how here, in these little unnumbered acts of trivial transgression which scarcely produce any effect on conscience or on memory, but make up so large a portion of so many of our lives, lies one of the most powerful instruments for making us what we are. If we indulge in slight acts of transgression be sure of this, that we shall pass from them to far greater ones. For one man that leaps or falls all at once into sin which the world calls gross, there are a thousand that slide into it. The storm only blows down the trees whose hearts have been eaten out and their roots loosened. And when you see a man having a reputation for wisdom and honour all at once coming crash down and disclosing his baseness, be sure that he began with small deflections from the path of right. The evil works underground; and if we yield to little temptations, when great ones come we shall fall their victims.
Let me remind you, too, that there is another sense in which ‘sand is weighty.’ You may as well be crushed under a sandhill as under a mountain of marble. It matters not which. The accumulated weight of the one is as great as that of the other. And I wish to lay upon the consciences of all that are listening to me now this thought, that an overwhelming weight of guilt results from the accumulation of little sins. Dear friends! I do not desire to preach a gospel of fear, but I cannot help feeling that, very largely, in this day, the ministration of the Christian Church is defective in that it does not give sufficient, though sad and sympathetic, prominence to the plain teaching of Christ and of the New Testament as to future retribution for present sin. We shall ‘every one of us give account of himself to God’; and if the account is long enough it will foot up to an enormous sum, though each item may be only halfpence. The weight of a lifetime of little sins will be enough to crush a man down with guilt and responsibility when he stands before that Judge. That is all true, and you know it, and I beseech you, take it to your hearts, ‘Sand is weighty.’ Little sins have to be accounted for, and may crush.
III. And now, lastly, let me ask you to consider one or two of the plain, practical issues of such thoughts as these.
And, first, I would say that these considerations set in a very clear light the absolute necessity for all-round and ever-wakeful watchfulness over ourselves. A man in the tropics does not say, ‘Mosquitoes are so small that it does not matter if two or three of them get inside my bed-curtains.’ He takes care that not one is there before he lays himself down to sleep. There seems to be nothing more sad than the complacent, easy-going way in which men allow themselves to keep their higher moral principles and their more rigid self-examination for the ‘great’ things, as they suppose, and let the little things often take care of themselves. What would you think of the captain of a steamer who in calm weather sailed by rule of thumb, only getting out his sextant when storms began to blow? And what about a man that lets the myriad trivialities that make up a day pass in and out of his heart as they will, and never arrests any of them at the gate with a ‘How camest thou in hither?’ ‘Look after the pence, and the pounds will look after themselves.’ Look after your trivial acts, and, take my word for it, the great ones will be as they ought to be.
Again, may not this thought somehow take down our easy-going and self-complacent estimate of ourselves? I have no doubt that there are a number of people in my audience just now who have been more or less consciously saying to themselves whilst I have been going on, ‘What have I to do with all this talk about sin, sin, sin? I am a decent kind of a man. I do all the duties of my daily life, and nobody can say that the white of my eyes is black. I have done no great transgressions. What is it all about? It has nothing to do with me.’
Well, my friend! it has this to do with you-that in your life there are a whole host of things which only a very superficial estimate hinders you from recognising to be what they are-small deeds, but great sins. Is it a small thing to go, as some of you do go on from year to year, with your conduct and your thoughts and your loves and your desires utterly unaffected by the fact that there is a God in heaven, and that Jesus Christ died for you? Is that a small thing? It manifests itself in a great many insignificant actions. That I grant you; and you are a most respectable man, and you keep the commandments as well as you can. But ‘the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified.’ I say that that is not a small sin.
So, dear brethren! I beseech you judge yourselves by this standard. I charge none of you with gross iniquities. I know nothing about that. But I do appeal to you all, as I do to myself, whether we must not recognise the fact that an accumulated multitude of transgressions which are only superficially small, in their aggregate weigh upon us with ‘a weight heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.’
Last of all, this being the case, should we not all turn ourselves with lowly hearts, with recognition of our transgressions, acknowledging that whether it be five hundred or fifty pence that we owe, we have nothing to pay, and betake ourselves to Him who alone can deliver us from the habit and power of these small accumulated faults, and who alone can lift the burden of guilt and responsibility from off our shoulders? If you irrigate the sand it becomes fruitful soil. Christ brings to us the river of the water of life; the inspiring, the quickening, the fructifying power of the new life that He bestows, and the sand may become soil, and the wilderness blossom as the rose. A heavy burden lies on our shoulders. Ah! yes! but ‘Behold the Lamb of God that beareth away the sins of the world!’ What was it that crushed Him down beneath the olives of Gethsemane? What was it that made Him cry, ‘My God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?’ I know no answer but one, for which the world’s gratitude is all too small. ‘The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.’
‘Sand is weighty,’ but Christ has borne the burden, ‘Cast thy burden upon the Lord,’ and it will drop from your emancipated shoulders, and they will henceforth bear only the light burden of His love.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 the provocation of a fool is heavier than both
the provocation of a fool is heavier than both
The difficulty of being patient with a fool who provokes you is spoken of as if that difficulty were heavy. AT: "the provocation of a fool is harder to tolerate than either of them" or "It is harder to be patient when a fool provokes you than it is to be patient while carrying them" (See: Metaphor)
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the provocation of a fool
"the trouble caused by a fool." "Provocation" means actions or words that cause anger or irritation.
There is the cruelty of rage and the flood of anger, but who is able to stand before jealousy?
The abstract nouns "rage", "anger" and "jealousy" can be translated as adjectives. AT: "A raging person is cruel and an angry person is overwhelming, but who can stand before a jealous person?" (See: Abstract Nouns)
cruelty
"harshness"
the flood of anger
"the destructiveness of anger." Anger is spoken of here as if it were a powerful flood. (See: Metaphor)
but who is able to stand before jealousy?
This question implies that no one can stand before jealousy. It can be reworded as a statement. AT: "but no one is able to stand before jealousy" (See: Rhetorical Question)
to stand before jealousy
Here standing represents being strong and resisting being harmed by a jealous person who attacks. AT: "to resist a jealous person" or "to remain strong when a jealous person attacks him" (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
fool
rage
anger
jealous
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 27:3 Fools cause heavy . . . resentment by…
27:3 Fools cause heavy . . . resentment by their foolish words and actions.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.