Genesis 49:4 Unstable as water, you shall not excel; because you went up to your father's bed; then defiled you it: he went up to my couch. An inconstant and wavering mind, as it makes a man unfit for society (for that there can be no assurance of his words or purposes, neither can we build on them without deceit), so, besides that, it makes a man ridiculous, it hinders him from ever attaining any perfection in himself (for a rolling stone gathers no moss, and the mind, while it would be everything, proves nothing. Oft changes cannot be without loss); yea, it keeps him from enjoying that which he hath attained. For it keeps him ever in work, building, pulling down, selling, changing, buying, commanding, forbidding. So, while he can be no other man's friend, he is the least his own. It is the safest course for a man's profit, credit and ease, to deliberate long, to resolve surely, hardly to alter, not to enter upon that whose end he sees not unanswerable, and when he is once entered not to surcease till he have attained the end he foresaw. So may he, to good purpose, begin a new work when he hath well finished the old. (Bp. Hall.) Parallel Verses KJV: Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel; because thou wentest up to thy father's bed; then defiledst thou it: he went up to my couch. |
    |