'Be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long. 18. For surely
there is an end and thine expectation shall not be cut off.'--PROVERBS
xxiii. 17, 18.
The Book of Proverbs seldom looks beyond the limits of the temporal,
but now and then the mists lift and a wider horizon is disclosed. Our
text is one of these exceptional instances, and is remarkable, not
only as expressing confidence in the future, but as expressing it in a
very striking way. 'Surely there is an end,' says our Authorised
Version, substituting in the margin, for end, 'reward.' The latter
word is placed in the text of the Revised Version. But neither 'end'
nor 'reward' conveys the precise idea. The word so translated
literally means 'something that comes after.' So it is the very
opposite of 'end', it is really that which lies beyond the end--the
'sequel,' or the 'future'--as the margin of the Revised Version gives
alternatively, or, more simply still, the afterwards. Surely there is
an afterwards behind the end. And then the proverb goes on to specify
one aspect of that afterwards: 'Thine expectation'--or, better,
because more simply, thy hope--shall not be cut off. And then, upon
these two convictions that there is, if I might so say, an afterclap,
and that it is the time and the sphere in which the fairest hopes that
a man can paint to himself shall be surpassed by the reality, it
builds the plain partial exhortation: 'Be thou in the fear of the Lord
all the day long.'
So then, we have three things here, the certainty of the afterwards,
the immortality of hope consequent thereon, and the bearing of these
facts on the present.