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I. GOD'S BLESSING GIVES MATERIAL WEALTH. The silver and the gold are His, and He gives them to whomsoever He will. He who rules in the highest, reaches down to the minutest concerns of this world, and controls them all.

II. GOD'S BLESSING MAKES RICH His blessing is riches, although the wealth of the world should all flee away. There are two ways of acquiring wealth. Some people grow rich without God's blessing, and some grow rich by it. The god of this world gives riches to his subjects sometimes, when neither giver nor getter own the supremacy of the Almighty; and God Himself gives riches to some who are His children. Wherein lies the difference, since both the godly and the godless have gotten wealth? It lies here: God addeth no sorrow with it, but that other lord does. Sorrow is sure to come with ill-gotten wealth. It lies like a burning spark on the conscience, which will not out all the rich man's days. Sometimes the wealth is scattered by public judgments. Sometimes it becomes the source of family strife. There are many arrows of judgment in the Almighty's quiver. If you take God into your counsels, and so grow rich, there will be no bitterness infused into your gains. A human soul is so made that it cannot safely have riches next it. If they come into direct contact, they will clasp it too closely; if they remain, they wither the soul's life away; and if they are violently wrenched off, they tear the soul's life asunder. Whether, therefore, you keep them or lose them, if you clasp them to your soul with nothing more spiritual between, they will become its destroyer. Certain tortures that savages have invented and applied to the human bodies bear an analogy to the process by which his money makes the miser miserable, alike when it abides with him and when it departs. They wrap the body of the living victim all round in a thick impermeable plaster, and then set him free. If the covering remains all the pores of the body are clogged, the processes of nature are impeded, and the life pines away; if it is torn off, it tears the skin with it, — the pain is sooner over, but it is more severe. Thus the soul of a thorough worldling is either choked by wealth possessed, or torn by wealth taken away. Out of that dread dilemma he cannot wriggle. The laws of God have shut him in. The Maker of the soul is its portion. He made it for Himself. When riches are clasped closest to the heart, He is slighted and dishonoured. If you be Christians, if you have put on Christ, great riches may come and go; you will not be clogged while you have them; you will not be naked when they leave. But if the wealth be the first and inner wrapping of the soul, how shall that soul ever get into contact with the Saviour, that life from its fountain may flow into the dead? It is easy for a Christian to be rich, but hard for a rich man to become a Christian.

(W. Arnot, D.D.)

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KJV: The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it.

WEB: Yahweh's blessing brings wealth, and he adds no trouble to it.