Verse 7. The reproof given is duty discharged, and the retort in return is a fresh call to repentance for sin past, and a caution against sin to come.--_Flavel._
Here caution is given how we tender reprehension to arrogant and scornful natures, whose manner it is to esteem it for contumely, and accordingly to return it.--_Lord Bacon._
The three verses, 7-9, in their general preceptive form, seem somewhat to interrupt the continuity of the invitation which Wisdom utters. The order of thought is, however, this: "I speak to you, the simple, the open ones, for you have yet ears to hear; but from the scorner or evil-doer of such, I turn away." The rules which govern human teachers, leading them to choose willing or fit disciples, are the laws also of the Divine Educator. So taken, the words are parallel to Matt. vii. 2, and find an illustration in the difference between our Lord's teaching to His disciples and to them that were without.--_Plumptre._
The passage is telling the consequences to the poor hardened man (see Critical Notes). Man is not like a thermometer, raised or sunken by every breath, but he is the subject of a change which makes a difference in moral influences. Without that change, instruction hardens him. With that change, it moves him and makes him better. Without the change the thermometer is always sinking; with the change it is rising all the time. This teaching is had in all forms in the New Testament. John says, "I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you" (1 John ii. 12); his plain implication being, that it would be useless to write except for the grace of forgiveness. We hear of a "savour of death unto death" (2 Cor. ii. 16); and Christ tells (John xv. 24) that "if He had not come among them, and done the works that none other man did, they had not had sin."--_Miller._
Verse 8. By which I do not understand that we are forbidden to preach to the impenitent, but that we are to contemplate two facts: first, that unless they are changed our preaching will make them worse, and, therefore, second, that though our preaching is a chosen instrument of the change itself, yet, if they are _scorners--i.e._ if they are what our Saviour calls "swine" (Matt. vii. 6), and He means by that, specially incorrigible--we are not to scatter our pearls to them. We are not to intrude religion upon scoffers. We are to withhold the good seed to some extent (yet with infinite compassion for all,) for what may more reasonably be hoped to be the good and honest ground (Mark iv. 8).--_Miller._