Proverbs 15:24

The way of life [is] above to the wise,.... Of "the way of life"; [See comments on Proverbs 10:17]; this is said to be "above", or it tends "to [what is] above"; it leads to heaven and happiness

The way of life is above to the wise, that he may depart from hell beneath. The way of life (is) above to the wise, that he may depart from hell beneath.

The way of life is above to the wise; the way or course which a wise man taketh to preserve and obtain life, is to place his heart, and treasure, and conversation in things above, and to manage all his affairs in this world with due respect and subserviency to the happiness of a better life. From hell beneath; or, from the lowermost hell; not from the grave, as this word is elsewhere used, for no wisdom can prevent that; but from hell properly so called, as this word is elsewhere used, as hath been formerly observed.

Proverbs 15:24 The way of life [is] above to the wise, that he may depart from hell beneath.Ver. 24. The way of life is above to the wise.] He goes a higher way than his neighbour, even in his common businesses, because they are done in faith and obedience. He hath his feet where other men’ s heads are, and, like a heavenly eagle, delights himself in high flying. Busied he may be in mean, low things, but not satisfied in them as adequate objects. A wise man may sport with children, but that is not his business. Domitian spent his time in catching flies, and Artaxerxes in making hafts for knives; but that was the baseness of their spirits. Wretched worldlings make it their work to gather wealth, as children do to tumble a snowball; they are scattered abroad throughout all the land - as those poor Israelites were to gather stubble - not without an utter neglect of their poor souls. But what, I wonder, will these men do when death shall come with a writ of habeas corpus, You may have the body, and the devil with a writ of habeas animam, you may have the soul - when the cold grave shall have their bodies, and hot hell hold their souls? Oh that they that have their hands elbow deep in the earth, that are rooting and digging in it, as if they would that way dig themselves a new and a nearer way to hell! oh that these greedy moles, these insatiate muckworms, would be warned to flee from the wrath to come, to take heed of hell beneath, and not sell their souls to the devil for a little pelf, as they say Pope Sylvester did for seven years’ enjoyment of the popedom! Oh that they would meditate every day a quarter of an hour, as Francis Xaverius counselled John king of Portugal, on that divine sentence, "What shall it profit a man to win the whole world, and lose his own soul?" He should be a loser by the sale of his soul; he should be - that which he so much feared to be - a beggar, begging in vain, though but for a drop of cold water to cool his tongue.

(24) The way of life is above to the wise.—These words sound like a faint echo of such passages as Philippians 3:20; Colossians 3:1-2, though the writer’s meaning may only have been that the wise man who fears the Lord (Proverbs 1:7) is rewarded with long life on earth (Proverbs 3:16), and escapes death and hell (Proverbs 2:18-19). Comp. Isaiah 38:18-19.

Verse 24. The way of life is above to the wise] There is a treble antithesis here: 1. The way of the wise, and that of the fool. 2. The one is above, the other below. 3. The one is of life, the other is of death.

24. above] Rather, upward. Upward or downward the path of man must tend.

Above ... beneath - The one path is all along upward, leading to the highest life. It rescues the “wise” from the other, which is all along downward, ending in the gloom of Sheol.

24. The way of life is above (or upward) to the wise — Or, prudent.That he may depart — Or, because of his departing. From hell beneath — Sheol, from the infernal world.