Do not boast about tomorrow,
for you do not know what a day may bring.
Let another praise you, and not your own mouth;
a stranger, and not your own lips.
A stone is heavy, and sand is weighty,
but a fool's provocation is heavier than both.
Wrath is cruel, anger is overwhelming,
but who can stand before jealousy?Proverbs 27:1-4
The Apostle James takes up the proverb in 1 in his epistle (4:13-16) and makes pointed application and expansion of it. The meaning is: Tomorrow is not ours, God gives us today, and we must work today with all our might. The real commentary here is the parable of the rich fool (Luke 12). In all this man did, God was left out of the reckoning. He kept on saying 'Tomorrow', but God finally said, 'No, tonight': Life must be lived in all things with reference to God and to His will. From boasting of tomorrow, the writer turns to the danger of boasting of oneself. Self praise, as we say, is no honour. But it is often when the other man's (legitimate) praise is withheld that self-praise becomes a temptation (cf 1 Peter 2:17, Romans 13:7, where the apostles insist that honour should be given where honour is due). If this be so how do we apportion blame for the sin of self-praise; and is more blameworthy, the man who commits it or the man who causes it? This is worth thinking about. Of 3 one commentator writes, 'It is because of its unreasonableness that a fool's wrath is so heavy. He will listen to no explanations, and will view with malice and suspicion all attempts to appease him. Better far to leave such a man to himself than to strive with him, for he is incapable of sound judgment' (Ironside). Envy in 4 can be taken in two ways: if it is the bad and unhealthy emotion the message of the verse is: wrath subsides, but jealousy goes on and on (think of Joseph's brethren in Genesis 37!). If, however, it is, as Kidner suggests, a proper intolerance of disruptive intrusion (cf 6:32-35), it is a mark of love as opposed to indifference, and therefore a very dangerous emotion for an evildoer to encounter.