Warning against Self-Praise and Presumption.
WISDOM AND HUMILITY GO HAND IN HAND. — V. 20. Hell and destruction are never full, the grave and the realm of the dead are insatiable, they never have enough; so the eyes of man, of him who has given way to covetousness, are never satisfied, the avaricious man never has enough.
V. 21. As the fining-pot for silver and the furnace for gold, both of them serving to bring out the purity of the metals tried in them, so is a man to his praise, he is tested, his real character is disclosed, by his glorying or boasting, whether this is concerned with praiseworthy or with blameworthy and trivial things, or, according to the opinion in which he is held by honorable people. Cp. chap. 12, 8.
V. 22. Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, stamping him into little bits in a crucible in an effort to find at least a grain of sense, yet will not his foolishness depart from him, since it pervades every atom of his being.