Matthew Henry on Proverbs 28:3
See here, 1. How hard-hearted poor people frequently are to one another, not only not doing such good offices as they might do one to another, but imposing upon and over-reaching one another. Those who know by experience the miseries of poverty should be compassionate to those who suffer the like, but they are inexcusably barbarous if they be injurious to them. 2. How imperious and griping those commonly are who, being indigent and necessitous, get into power. If a prince prefer a poor man, he forgets that ever he was poor, and none shall be so oppressive to the poor as he, nor squeeze them so cruelly. The hungry leech and the dry sponge suck most. Set a beggar on horseback, and he will ride…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on Proverbs 28:3
A poor man, &c.--Such, in power, exact more severely, and so leave subjects bare.
John Gill on Proverbs 28:3
A poor man that oppresseth the poor,.... Either one that is poor at the time he oppresses another like himself, either by secret fraud or open injury; from whom the oppressed can get no redress, as sometimes he may and does from a rich man: or rather one that has been poor, but now become rich, and got into some place of authority and profit, who should remember what he had been; and it might be expected that such an one would put on bowels of compassion towards the poor, as knowing what it was to be in indigent circumstances; but if, instead of this, he exercises his authority over the poor in a severe and rigid manner, and oppresses them, and squeezes that little out of them they have: he…
Read the whole note in the consoleKeil & Delitzsch on Proverbs 28:3
A proverb of a tyrant here connects itself with that of usurpers:
A poor man and an oppressor of the lowly -
A sweeping rain without bringing bread.
Thus it is to be translated according to the accents. Fleischer otherwise, but also in conformity with the accents: Quales sunt vir pauper et oppressor miserorum, tales sunt pluvia omnia secum abripiens et qui panem non habent, i.e., the relation between a poor man and an oppressor of the needy is the same as that between a rain carrying all away with it and a people robbed thereby of their sustenance; in other words: a prince or potentate who robs the poor of their possessions is like a pouring rain which floods the fruitful fields - the separ…
