The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger doth not intermeddle with its joy.
This proverb looks at the one place no observer can enter: the inside of another person. Why must a person carry sorrow alone? And can anyone else share what the heart holds?
One writer reads the proverb as a rule for how God works with people — one at a time.
"The heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy" (v. 10). If someone passes through bitter experiences, another person is not likely to share that bitterness. The Lord deals with each person Himself. We must learn to accept such difficulties personally. Also, if we have times of deep joy, we cannot expect a stranger to share such joy. A friend may do so, but not a stranger.
The proverb assumes a world that wounds. And it draws a line: grief closes the door, but joy does not always stay shut.
It is an evil age, the world far from God and not knowing Him... How exposed then is the heart, whatever the position, to bitterness, unknown to others! So too it refuses a share in its joys to a stranger. Yet if grief before God shuts us up alone with God... joy overflows gladly to those who can share it. In the parables of Luke 15, the man and the woman call their friends and neighbours to rejoice when they get back what was lost.
We know almost nothing about the people we pass every day. And the hiding has a time limit.
It is very little we know about one another. We barely notice the poor man's cottage. We admire the prince's palace from a respectful distance. But the horrors or the happiness shut up inside them rarely show themselves to us. It is the same with each person. No other human being knows all that a man knows about himself... We are all very careful to put the best side out, keeping the rottenness within jealously guarded from public view. But in that day "nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known" (Luke 12:2).
The verse shuts out strangers. It does not shut out God, who knows this bitterness from the inside.
How true it is that "the heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy" (14:10). We can tell our troubles and sorrows to others, but we cannot reveal the bitterness of the heart. Yet One knows it. He is touched with our sorrows and with the bitterness of life we pass through, for He Himself passed through it too.
The second half of the verse explains why a believer's joy can be invisible. A quiet face proves nothing.
The Spirit of Christ entertains the Christian in an inner room. It does not face the street, where everyone passing by could smell the feast. "No stranger shares its joy" (Prov. 14:10). Christ and the soul may be at supper inside. You do not even see one dish go in. You do not hear the music that sounds so sweet in the Christian's ears. Perhaps you think he lacks peace, because his face shows no sign of the joy and peace he has within.
One writer finds both halves of the verse met in one person — first the bitterness, then the joy. (Older translations read "a stranger does not intermeddle with his joy.")
The Father knows and understands what it meant to His Son to bear sin's judgment. The Holy Spirit can measure the infinite depths of suffering He entered when He suffered, the Just One for us the unjust. But no one else in the wide universe can share with Him the knowledge of the mystery of those awful hours. No one else knows the bitterness of the cup He drank then, or what redemption cost Him.
The same writer then turns the closed door into an invitation. The stranger of the proverb is what the believer has stopped being.
No stranger shares this joy, nor can understand it. It moves in a sacred enclosure that outsiders can never defile. But here is the blessed fact: you who love Him are no longer "strangers and aliens" (Eph. 2:19). He has called you His friends (John 15:15). You are His companions, through His exceeding grace, to know the secret of His gladness and share His joy.
- Sealed. Each heart holds what no onlooker can reach. God deals with people one at a time.
- Hidden. We see cottages and palaces from the outside only. A quiet face may hide a feast inside, or rot.
- Known. What the heart cannot tell out is still known to One who passed through the same bitterness Himself.
- Deepest. The verse goes deepest in Christ. Only the Father and the Spirit can measure what the cross cost Him.
- Shared. The door that shuts out a stranger opens to a friend — He calls those who love Him friends, and lets them in on His joy.
The house of the wicked shall be overthrown; but the tent of the upright shall flourish.
Proverbs promises ruin to one home and flourishing to another — and the strong-looking one is the one that falls. The question the verse forces is whether you measure a life by what it has built or by who is holding it up.
One writer explains what the book of Proverbs is for:
God is willing to apply His wisdom to the details of our daily life, and to show us, by His own understanding, the consequences of every path a man may walk… It is well to remember that the Book of Proverbs deals with this world, and with God's government, under which a man reaps what he has sown. This is always true, whatever sovereign grace may give us beyond and far above this world.
A house is solid, costly and impressive. A tent is cloth and rope. The verse promises ruin to the strong one and flourishing to the flimsy one:
The house of the wicked may be great and wide, backed by great riches. It will still be overthrown. The upright may have only a tent, yet he will find himself flourishing, for God is faithful.
Neither dwelling stands or falls by its own construction. The house has depth and height and still no safety; the tent has neither and still has protection:
In verse 11 it is not "the heart" but "the house" which may rise high from deep foundations. But the wicked live there, and there can be no security for them or theirs in the moral government of God. It shall be overthrown, though the fear of God would not hurry that moment. On the other hand, how exposed to wind and rain is "the tent of the upright"! Yet the unseen hand protects, and it shall flourish.
Anyone can name a wicked household still standing and an honest one still struggling. One writer meets that objection without denying the facts:
It is far otherwise with the ungodly. They may appear to be established in the place of authority, sitting at their ease. Yet in the government of God they will be driven away like chaff before the wind. For the present the wicked may prosper, and the godly suffer, and so the government of God may appear to have failed. This shows an important principle. We must wait for God's intervention in judgment in the day to come. Only then will His holy government be fully displayed, both in blessing the godly and in dealing with the wicked.
The tent is not just a smaller building. Two men began with the same tent. Only one of them kept it:
Living in tents was the mark of a stranger and a pilgrim… Abraham lived in a tent. Lot did too at first, but he did not keep up the pilgrim character. First he pitched his tent towards Sodom, then sat in the gate, and had a house in Sodom. Abraham kept his tent, for he looked for a city — he knew there was such a city — and the Holy Spirit adds, "whose designer and builder is God."
One writer traces the same pattern in the family of Jeroboam, whose son Nadab took the throne after him:
Nadab followed in his father's ways, but God did not let him continue long in his wickedness. He was killed by treachery, in fulfilment of the prophet Ahijah's word that the Lord would raise up a king over Israel to cut off the house of Jeroboam.
Commentators differ on timing. Some point to God's hand already at work in this life. Others stress that the full display waits for the day of judgment.
- Ground. Proverbs deals with God's government of this world. Here a man reaps what he has sown. That rule never cancels the grace that gives far higher things.
- Contrast. The house may be great and wide and backed by riches; the upright may own nothing but a tent. The verse still gives the future to the tent.
- Reason. The house does not fall for lack of good building; it falls because the wicked live in it. The tent does not stand by good building; it stands because an unseen hand protects it.
- Delay. The wicked can look established and at ease, and God's government can look as if it has failed. The overthrow is certain; the timing waits on God.
- Choice. Abraham kept his tent because he looked for a city God builds. Lot pitched towards Sodom, then sat in its gate, then owned a house there. Every reader is choosing one of those two addresses.
There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof is the ways of death.
This proverb warns against the judge a person trusts most: his own sense that he is on the right road. The verse does not describe a way that looks wrong, but one that looks right, and it says where such a road finishes.
The words "seems right to a man" put the whole weight on human judgment. If a person's honest opinion settles the matter, nothing outside him can correct him. One writer asks whether God has left us without a standard.
Next we come to man's "ways," and the danger of trusting his own opinion of them. If a way seems right to him, people say, Why blame him? He is sincere, and no one has the right to judge him wrong. Is there then no divine standard by which we can test our thoughts, no way to form a sound and certain judgment? Why then did God reveal His Word, and early on in a form drawn from real experience? … No; a man is accountable for his thoughts and his feelings just as much as for his words and his ways; "and its end is the way to death."
A way that seems right can carry a completely honest traveller to death. So the broad road is not simply the road of open vice.
There are plenty of open ways of death, and everyone knows that men do not get to heaven by drunkenness or violence. But a way may seem right to a man, so that he follows it in complete sincerity, and it may still turn out in the end to be the way of death. That is a startling thing to face. So let everyone consider this. The "broad way that leads to destruction, and many go in by it" is not necessarily a way of open wickedness. Sinful self is of course against God; but righteous self is a more widespread and a worse enemy. The tax collectors and sinners followed Christ. The Pharisees and religious people could not believe in Him.
Two examples show where sincerity can lead.
Human sincerity means nothing. Often it is the strongest proof of the desperate darkness a man is in. The people Christ spoke of were sincere when He said, "Anyone who kills you will think he is serving God." Saul of Tarsus was completely sincere when he "thought" he "ought to do many things against the name of Jesus of Nazareth." He also consulted the chief priests and elders, the religious authorities of the day.
This warning does not fall on people who want ruin. It falls on people searching for life.
No one expects the way of sin to lead heavenward, however careless he may be about it. The question is about finding the way of life. So the solemn warning to beware of false prophets comes right after it — men who would lead their listeners onto the broad way of death.
One family's story shows the proverb happening.
Following his own judgment, Elimelech took the road to Moab to find food that perishes, but there he also found his grave. "And Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died, and she was left with her two sons." In Moab the home of that family from Bethlehem became a house of mourning.
Our own sense of what is right can fail. So where does certainty come from?
The soul is the driving part of man's nature. It is the part that needs to be turned back, or held back, from following its own desires… We try to please God, and for all we know we may be offending Him. The road we take to heaven may, after all, be the road to hell, for "there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death." When God has spoken, and we have heard His voice, our path becomes simple obedience. We are not left to test it by results, which come far too late to help us with what lies ahead.
The verse names a road that ends in death. Is there a road that does not?
Is there then a way that has no end, no death in it? Yes, there is: "In the way of righteousness is life, and in its pathway there is no death." And what is that pathway? It is the pathway of God's will, and nothing can bring it to an end.
- Seems — the road is chosen because it looks right, not because it looks wrong; the danger sits inside a person's own judgment.
- Sincere — honesty about the route changes nothing about the destination; sincerity can itself be the proof of blindness.
- Religious — the broad way need not be open wickedness; self that thinks itself righteous is the worse enemy.
- Death — Elimelech went to Moab for bread and found a grave there; the end, not the appearance, tells the truth about a path.
- Spoken — safety lies in a voice outside ourselves, because results come too late to warn us. God's will is the path with no death in it.