Filial Love an Ornament of Beauty
William Arnot, D.D. Proverbs 1:9 For they shall be an ornament of grace to your head, and chains about your neck. It seems an instinct of humanity to put ornaments upon the person. It does not rank high among the exercises of the human faculties, yet it is quite above the reach of all inferior creatures. Ornaments on the fallen, like many other innocent things, become the occasions of sin, but they are not in their own nature evil. To deck with external beauty that which is morally corrupt within is a cheat which men practise on themselves and others, but adornment of the person, modest in measure and adopted instinctively by an innate sense of propriety, is conducive to virtue and consistent with Scripture. Moral qualities are the true adornments of a human being. All the graces of the Spirit are lovely: but here the foremost of relative duties, a child's reverential regard for a parent, is recommended as an ornament of surpassing beauty. Love, obey, cherish, reverence your parents. This is in God's sight of great price. These ornaments will not be out of date when time has run its course. The moral laws of God have avenging sanctions even in the powers of nature. Godliness is profitable unto all things. The first commandment is fruitful even in this life, and the second is like it — like it in its holy character, like it in its glad results. "Honour thy father and thy mother," this is an ornament of solid gold. Unlike the watering of superficial accomplishments, the more rudely it is rubbed the more brightly it glows. (William Arnot, D.D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck. WEB: for they will be a garland to grace your head, and chains around your neck.