It is right to seek for happiness. It is sin to go away from God. You
are thereby not merely flinging away your chances, but are
transgressing against your sacredest obligations. Our text is not only
a remonstrance on the grounds of prudence, showing God-neglecting men
that they are foolish, but it is an appeal to conscience, convincing
them that they are sinful. God loves us and cares for us. We are bound
to Him by ties which do not depend on our own volition. And so there is
punishment for the sin, and the evils experienced in a godless life are
penal as well as natural.
We recall the New Testament modification of this metaphor, 'The water
that I shall give him shall be _in_ him a fountain of water.' Arabs in
desert round dried--up springs. Hagar. Shipwrecked sailors on a reef.
Christ opens 'rivers in the wilderness and streams in the desert.'