Matthew Henry on Proverbs 19:10
Note, 1. Pleasure and liberty ill become a fool: Delight is not seemly for such a one. A man that has not wisdom and grace has no right nor title to true joy, and therefore it is unseemly. It ill becomes those that do not delight in God to delight in any thing, nor how to manage themselves, and therefore they do but expose themselves. It becomes ungracious fools to be afflicted, and mourn, and weep, not to laugh and be merry; rebukes are more proper for them than delights. Delight is seemly for a man of business, to refresh him when he is fatigued, but not for a fool, that lives an idle life and abuses his recreations. The prosperity of fools discovers their folly and destroys them. 2. Power…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on Proverbs 19:10
(Compare Pro 17:7). The fool is incapable of properly using pleasure as knowledge, yet for him to have it is less incongruous than the undue elevation of servants. Let each abide in his calling (Co1 7:20).
John Gill on Proverbs 19:10
Delight is not seemly for a fool,.... Such an one as Nabal, whose name and nature were alike; and whose prosperity ill became him, and the mirth and delight he had in it, 1 Samuel 25:25; for, as the wise man elsewhere says, "the prosperity of fools shall destroy them", Proverbs 1:26; they do not know how to make a right use of their prosperity; nor to moderate their enjoyments, pleasures, and delights. Some understand this of spiritual delight in the Lord; in his ways and ordinances, which wicked men are strangers to: and a very uncomely thing it is for such persons to talk of spiritual joy and delight, and of their communion with God, when they live in sin;
much less for a servant to have…
Read the whole note in the consoleKeil & Delitzsch on Proverbs 19:10
10 Luxury becometh not a fool;
How much less a servant to rule over princes.
Thus also with לא נאוה (3 p. Pil. non decet, cf. the adj. Pro 26:1) Pro 17:7 begins. אף כּי rises here, as at Pro 19:7, a minori ad majus: how much more is it unbecoming = how much less is it seemly. The contrast in the last case is, however, more rugged, and the expression harsher. "A fool cannot bear luxury: he becomes by it yet more foolish; one who was previously a humble slave, but who has attained by good fortune a place of prominence and power, from being something good, becomes at once something bad: an insolent sceleratus" (Fl.). Agur, xxx. 22f., describes such a homo novus as an unbearable calamity; and th…
