Stripes for the back of fools - Profane and wicked men expose themselves to the punishments denounced against such by just laws. Avoid, therefore, both their company and their end.

Judgments are prepared for scorners,.... Either by the civil magistrate, or by the Lord, and indeed by both; and if they miss the one, they will certainly meet the other; though they mock at present punishment and a future judgment, yet everlasting fire is prepared for them, Matthew 25:41;
and stripes for the back of fools; as scorners are; which shall be inflicted on them sooner or later; if they are not stricken with the stripes of men, they shall endure the strokes of divine justice and vengeance hereafter.

The unbelief of man shall not make God's threatenings of no effect. Christ himself, when bearing sins not his own, was not spared. Justice and judgment took hold of our blessed Surety; and will God spare obstinate sinners?

Their punishment is sure, fixed, and ready (compare Proverbs 3:34; Proverbs 10:13).

29 Judgments are prepared for scorners,
And stripes for the backs of fools.
שׁפמים never means punishment which a court of justice inflicts, but is always used of the judgments of God, even although they are inflicted by human instrumentality (vid., 2-Chronicles 24:24); the singular, which nowhere occurs, is the segolate n. act. שׁפט = שׁפוט, 2-Chronicles 20:9, plur. שׁפוּטים. Hitzig's remark: "the judgment may, after Proverbs 19:25, consist in stripes," is misleading; the stroke, הכּות, there is such as when, e.g., a stroke on the ear is applied to one who despises that which is holy, which, under the circumstances, may be salutary; but it does not fall under the category of shephuthim, nor properly under that of מהלמות. The former are providential chastisements with which history itself, or God in history, visits the despiser of religion; the latter are strokes which are laid on the backs of fools by one who is instructing them, in order, if possible, to bring them to thought and understanding. נכון, here inflected as Niph., is used, as Job 15:23, as meaning to be placed in readiness, and thus to be surely imminent. Regarding mahalǔmoth, vid., at Proverbs 18:6.

Prepared - Although they be deferred for a time, yet they are treasured up for them.