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Pro_29:8 Scornful men bring a city into a snare: but wise [men] turn away wrath.
Ver. 8. Scornful men bring a city into a snare.] The Vulgate render it, Pestilent persons undo a city or a state; as Nahash did the Ammonites, {1Sa_11:2; 1Sa_11:11} and as his son Hanan did much more. {2Sa_10:4; 2Sa_12:31} Mocking is catching, as the pestilence, and no less pernicious to the whole country. Geraldus Cambrensis tells of three Irish kings that, being derided for their rude habits and fashions, rebelled, and set the country in a combustion. And the young King of France, jesting at William the Conqueror’s great belly, whereof he said he lay in at Rouen, so irritated him, as he being recovered of a sickness, entered France in the chiefest time of their fruits, making spoil of all in his way, till he came even to Paris, where this scornful king then was, to show him of his visiting, and from thence marched to the city of Mants, which he utterly sacked and ransacked, razed and harassed. {a}
But wise men turn away wrath.] They stand in the gap, and divert the divine displeasure. {Psa_106:23 Eze_13:5} Their persons are in acceptation; God will look upon them, and do much for them, when he is most of all angry with the wicked. {Exo_32:10; Exo_32:14 Job_22:30 Gen_18:32} Their prayers also are prevalent. Something the Lord will yield thereunto, when most bitterly bent against a people, {Mat_24:20} and when unchangeably resolved upon their ruin, he takes course to silence such; "Pray not for this people." " Sanctum semen statumen terrae" {Isa_6:13} "The innocent shall deliver the island." {Job_22:30}
{a} Dan. Chron., 42.