CRITICAL NOTES.--+1. Wisdom,+ in the plural, as in chap. i. 20, to express excellence and dignity. +2. She hath mingled her wine.+ Some commentators understand the mingling to be with water, others with spices; both were customary among ancient Orientals. +7.+ Latter clause. Most commentators translate, "he that rebuketh the wicked, it is his dishonour," or, "it is a dishonor to him," _i.e._, to the wicked man. +10. The Holy,+ generally understood to stand in apposition to Jehovah. +13. A foolish woman,+ rather, "the woman of folly," an exact opposition of the personified wisdom of the former part of the chapter. +Clamorous,+ "violently excited" (_Zöckler_). +15.+ Who go right on their ways. "Who are going straightforward in their paths" (_Stuart_). _MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 1-12. WISDOM'S FEAST. +I. The home to which Divine Wisdom invites her guests is one which has cost time and labour in the preparation.+ "Wisdom hath _builded_ her house." The building of anything implies the expenditure of time and labour. When the eagle builds her nest and prepares a house for her yet unborn young she spends much time in her work and bestows much labour upon it. In the building of a house for human habitation, whether it be a palace or a cottage, time and care, and thought and labour must be given to the building. And so it is in mental building; when thoughts are to be gathered together and fashioned into a book, the gathering and the building involves the expenditure of mental labour, and of many hours and days, and sometimes years, before the work is completed. And God has not departed from this rule in the works which He has wrought for the benefit of His creatures. The house which He has built for the habitation of man was not brought into its present form all at once. God did not create the heavens and the earth in one day or in a short period of time. We read that "in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is" (Exod. xx. 2), and the record of the rocks confirms the testimony of revelation that the preparation of the earth for man was a work of time. In creation Divine Wisdom "builded her house." And what is true of creation is true also of redemption. The incarnation of the Son of God took place in the days of Tiberius Cæsar, but the process of building the plan of redemption had been going on for ages. In the Mosaic dispensation it was seen in outline. Its sacrifices were shadows of the house which God intended hereafter to build in the human nature of the man Christ Jesus. The temple of Herod was forty-six years in building (John ii. 20), but the temple of God was in course of preparation for more than forty-six generations before it was brought to completion in "the Word made flesh" (See Hebrews, chap. ix).