Judgments are prepared for scorners (see on Proverbs 19:25). The judgments here are those inflicted by the providence of God, as in Proverbs 3:34. Scorners may deride and affect to scorn the judgments of God and man, but they are warned that retribution awaits them. And stripes for the back of fools; Vulgate, Et mallei percutientes stultorum corporibus (comp. Proverbs 10:13 : Proverbs 26:3). We had the word here rendered "stripes" ( מַהַלוּמוֹת, mahalumoth) in Proverbs 18:6. The certainty of punishment in the case of transgressors is a truth often insisted on even by heathens. Examples will occur to all readers, from the old Greek oracle, οὐδεὶς ἀνθρώπων ἀδικῶν τίσιν οὐκ ἀποτίσει, to Horace's "Raro antecedentem scelestum," etc. (See on Proverbs 20:30, where, however, the punishment is of human infliction.)
HOMILETICS