Psalms 125:5(v15)But as for those who turn away to their crooked ways, Yahweh will lead them away with the workers of iniquity. Peace be on Israel.
Proverbs 10:23(v14)It is a fool’s pleasure to do wickedness, but wisdom is a man of understanding’s pleasure.
Romans 1:32(v14)who, knowing the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also approve of those…
1 Corinthians 15:33(v12)Don’t be deceived! “Evil companionships corrupt good morals.”
Proverbs 8:13(v12)The fear of Yahweh is to hate evil. I hate pride, arrogance, the evil way, and the perverse mouth.
Show all 49 cross-references
Proverbs 13:20(v12)One who walks with wise men grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm.
John 3:19-20(v13)This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil.…
Proverbs 4:19(v13)The way of the wicked is like darkness. They don’t know what they stumble over.
Proverbs 21:8(v15)The way of the guilty is devious, but the conduct of the innocent is upright.
Deuteronomy 32:5(v15)They have dealt corruptly with him. They are not his children, because of their defect. They are a perverse and crooked generation.
Jeremiah 11:15(v14)What has my beloved to do in my house, since she has behaved lewdly with many, and the holy flesh has passed from you? When you do evil,…
2 Corinthians 6:17(v12)Therefore “ ‘Come out from among them, and be separate,’ says the Lord. ‘Touch no unclean thing. I will receive you.
Philippians 2:15(v15)that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without defect in the middle of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom…
Proverbs 21:16(v13)The man who wanders out of the way of understanding shall rest in the assembly of the departed spirits.
Isaiah 59:3-5(v12)For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity. Your lips have spoken lies. Your tongue mutters wickedness. No one…
Isaiah 59:8(v15)They don’t know the way of peace; and there is no justice in their ways. They have made crooked paths for themselves; whoever goes in them…
Luke 22:4-5(v14)He went away, and talked with the chief priests and captains about how he might deliver him to them. They were glad, and agreed to give him…
1 Corinthians 13:6(v14)doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
2 Peter 2:20-22(v13)For if, after they have escaped the defilement of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again…
1 John 2:19(v13)They went out from us, but they didn’t belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have continued with us. But they left, that…
Psalms 14:3(v13)They have all gone aside. They have together become corrupt. There is no one who does good, no, not one.
Psalms 17:4-5(v12)As for the deeds of men, by the word of your lips, I have kept myself from the ways of the violent. My steps have held fast to your paths.…
Psalms 26:4-5(v12)I have not sat with deceitful men, neither will I go in with hypocrites. I hate the assembly of evildoers, and will not sit with the wicked.
Psalms 36:3(v13)The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit. He has ceased to be wise and to do good.
Psalms 82:5(v13)They don’t know, neither do they understand. They walk back and forth in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken.
Psalms 141:4(v12)Don’t incline my heart to any evil thing, to practice deeds of wickedness with men who work iniquity. Don’t let me eat of their delicacies.
Proverbs 1:10-19(v12)My son, if sinners entice you, don’t consent. If they say, “Come with us. Let’s lay in wait for blood. Let’s lurk secretly for the innocent…
Proverbs 3:32(v12)For the perverse is an abomination to Yahweh, but his friendship is with the upright.
Proverbs 4:14-17(v12)Don’t enter into the path of the wicked. Don’t walk in the way of evil men. Avoid it, and don’t pass by it. Turn from it, and pass on. For…
Proverbs 9:6(v12)Leave your simple ways, and live. Walk in the way of understanding.”
Proverbs 16:28-30(v12)A perverse man stirs up strife. A whisperer separates close friends. A man of violence entices his neighbor, and leads him in a way that is…
Isaiah 30:8-13(v15)Now go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come forever and ever. For it is a…
Ezekiel 18:26(v13)When the righteous man turns away from his righteousness, and commits iniquity, and dies therein; in his iniquity that he has done he shall…
Ezekiel 33:12-13(v13)“You, son of man, tell the children of your people, ‘The righteousness of the righteous will not deliver him in the day of his…
Hosea 7:3(v14)They make the king glad with their wickedness, and the princes with their lies.
Zephaniah 1:6(v13)those who have turned back from following Yahweh, and those who haven’t sought Yahweh nor inquired after him.
Zephaniah 3:11(v14)In that day you will not be disappointed for all your doings, in which you have transgressed against me; for then I will take away out from…
Matthew 12:43-45(v13)When an unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through waterless places, seeking rest, and doesn’t find it. Then he says, ‘I will…
John 1:6(v13)There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John.
John 2:9-11(v13)When the ruler of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and didn’t know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water…
John 12:35(v13)Jesus therefore said to them, “Yet a little while the light is with you. Walk while you have the light, that darkness doesn’t overtake you.…
Acts 20:30(v12)Men will arise from among your own selves, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.
1 Thessalonians 5:5-7(v13)You are all children of light and children of the day. We don’t belong to the night, nor to darkness, so then let’s not sleep, as the rest…
2 Timothy 4:10(v13)for Demas left me, having loved this present world, and went to Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia; and Titus to Dalmatia.
Hebrews 6:4-6(v13)For concerning those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and tasted the…
Job 24:13-16(v13)“These are of those who rebel against the light. They don’t know its ways, nor stay in its paths. The murderer rises with the light. He…
Psalms 101:4(v12)A perverse heart will be far from me. I will have nothing to do with evil.
Habakkuk 1:15(v14)He takes up all of them with the hook. He catches them in his net, and gathers them in his dragnet. Therefore he rejoices and is glad.
Romans 1:21(v13)Because knowing God, they didn’t glorify him as God, and didn’t give thanks, but became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless heart…
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (19 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
Geneva Bible translators1599 · Public DomainOn vv13–14That is, the word of God, which is the…
That is, the word of God, which is the only light, to follow their own fantasies which are darkness.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp1656 · Public DomainOn vv12–15Pro 2:12 To deliver thee from the way of…
Pro 2:12 To deliver thee from the way of the evil [man], from the man that speaketh froward things;
Ver. 12. That speaketh froward things.] As if his mouth were distorted, or the upper lip stood where the nether should. See Act 20:30. {a}
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{a} διεστραμμενα.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole1685 · Public DomainOn vv12–15From the way of the evil man; from following…
From the way of the evil man; from following his counsel or example, which others for want of wisdom commonly do.
That speaketh froward things; with design to corrupt thy mind, and entice thee to evil principles or practices.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill1763 · Public DomainOn vv12–15To deliver thee from the way of the evil…
To deliver thee from the way of the evil man,.... Who is so by nature and practice, who is hardened in sin and abandoned to it, whose course of life is evil, and who endeavours to draw others into the same evil practices; now the Gospel, and a spiritual knowledge of it, are a means of preserving men from following the examples of such persons, and from walking with them in the ways of sin: or from "the evil way" (t), from every evil way, from a vicious course of life; not from idolatry only, as some interpret it, though this may be included, and chiefly designed; but from all manner of sin, from everything that is contrary to the law of God and sound doctrine;
from the man that speaketh froward things; perverse things, things contrary to the light of nature, to divine revelation, to the word of God, both law and Gospel; if a single man is meant, he might be thought to be the man of sin, antichrist, who has a mouth speaking blasphemies against God, his name, his tabernacle, and them that dwell therein, Rev 13:5; and the Gospel delivers men from following him, and falling in with his perverse doctrines and practices; but the word seems to be a collective one, and to be understood of all wicked men, to whom the description agrees, as it is explained in the following verses in the plural number; who out of their evil hearts, and the abundance of wickedness there, speak evil things, tending to debauch the minds and manners of others; to be delivered from whom is a singular mercy. Jarchi restrains this to heretics, and such as caused Israel to apostatize to idolatry, and turned the law into evil. The Gospel is undoubtedly a means of preserving from error and heresy.
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(t) "a via mala", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Mercerus, Cocceius, Gejerus, Michaelis.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley1765 · Public DomainOn vv13, 15Darkness - Of sin.
Darkness - Of sin.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke1810 · Public DomainOn v12Verse 12. The man that speaketh froward things.] תהפכות…
Verse 12. The man that speaketh froward things.] תהפכות tahpuchoth, things of subversion; from תפך taphach, to turn or change the course of a thing. Men who wish to subvert the state of things, whether civil or religious; who are seditious themselves, and wish to make others so. These speak much of liberty and oppression, deal greatly in broad assertions, and endeavour especially to corrupt the minds of youth.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes1834 · Public DomainOn v12The evil-doers here include not robbers and murderers only…
The evil-doers here include not robbers and murderers only Pro 1:10-16, but all who leave the straight path and the open day for crooked ways, perverse counsels, deeds of darkness. “To delight etc.” Pro 2:14 is the lowest depth of all.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Charles Bridges1846 · Public DomainOn v12The various snares for the young, about to be…
The various snares for the young, about to be detailed, furnish a fearful picture of the temptations to which our children are exposed. Will it not awaken out earnest cries for their deep and solid conversion to God; that wisdom may indeed enter into their hearts, and its pleasures be really enjoyed; that they may have a religious taste, as well as a religious education; that they may know the Gospel, not only in the conviction of their conscience, or the excitement of their feelings, but in the entire renewal of their hearts before God? This, and nothing less, will preserve them from the snare of their cruel foe. Every town and village swarms with his emissaries; first, initiated themselves into the mysteries of his art; then, going forth, laborious and practiced teachers, well instructed for his murderous work. Against one of these enticements we have been before warned. (Pro 1:10-13 .) Another is here given: The tempter bears his character upon his lips; the evil man that speaketh proud things against God and his law; like a poisonous fountain sending up poisoned waters. Oh! how quickly does the contamination spread! He does not sin in ignorance. He and his companions†1 have probably been trained in the paths of uprightness. Having come in contact with the pestilential breath of the ungodly, they have caught the contagion, and eagerly spread it. Readily do they leave the paths, which they never heartily loved, to walk in the ways of darkness, which their hearts do love. (Pro 4:16-17 . Job 24:13-16 . Joh 3:19-20 .) Having left the hated paths, they become therefore foremost in iniquity. Poisoned themselves, they would poison all around them. They rejoice, like Satan himself, to do evil:†2 to draw their fellow-sinners into the net; and they delight in those, who are most froward in their wickedness.†3 Thus they plunge deeper and deeper into sin, till they lose all traces of the straight way, and all their ways become crooked, leading with sure steps to eternal ruin. Is not this the picture, drawn to the very life, of many a Sunday-scholar, or a child of godly parents, the subject of deep and tender care; "hardened through the deceitfulness of sin" (Heb 3:13 ), the neglect of faithful warning, the stifling of solemn conviction? How do they deserve to be left of God , who have first left him with such fearful aggravation! Young man! Especially shun companions, who are sinning against better knowledge and instruction. They are hardened in devotedness to their master’s work. Oh! if misguided sinners could but see sin in its horrid deformity and certain end, would not "their hearts meditate terror"? But the crookedness of their ways hides the end from view. Satan presents the bait, palliates the sin, covers the enormity, closes the eyes, and conceals the certain end of all — Hell. (Psa 125:5 . Rom 6:21 ; with 2Co 4:3-4 .) The froward in their paths cannot — will not — turn back.
Footnotes
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†1 The change to the plural number (the man — who leave) implies confederacy.
†2 Compare Isa 3:9 ; Jer 9:15 . God’s heavy judgment. 2Th 2:12 .
†3 The sin of the heathen, Rom 1:32 .
Charles Bridges, An Exposition of the Book of Proverbs (1846) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary1859 · Public DomainOn vv12, 14Things. The danger of such company for young people…
Things. The danger of such company for young people is very great, as the heart is misled by the understanding, (Calmet) if it do not itself shew the way to error. (Haydock) --- We all possess a fund of corruption. (Calmet)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown1871 · Public DomainOn vv12–15To deliver--as from great danger (Pro 6:5).
To deliver--as from great danger (Pro 6:5).
way . . . man-- (Psa 1:1).
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froward things--perversity (Pro 6:14; Pro 23:23), what is opposed to truth.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon1874 · Public DomainOn vv12–1312. They do this, to deliver thee (now their…
12. They do this, to deliver thee (now their ward) from the way of the evil man, (especially) from the man that speaketh froward things — תהפכות, (tahpukhoth,) another obscure word, found almost exclusively in this book. It is the opposite of m’sharim, (Pro_1:3,) equity, rectitude. It seems to be a comprehensive term, implying all manner of evil doing. Perhaps subversions or perversions comes as near the original as any English word; that is, the man uttering words calculated to subvert or pervert — to turn the hearer from the right to the wrong, or to change the condition of things, whether in the Church or State, from good to evil. It applies to all reckless innovators and revolutionists, particularly to such as seek to overthrow a good government in order to put another in its place. This conception is somewhat supported by the preceding word, רע, (ra’h,) evil, badness, worthlessness. The radical idea of this word is to break; and it denotes “the breaking of some established order of things, or some preconceived design, plan, or the like.” Gesenius says, “Intransitive — to be evil, bad; from the idea of breaking, being broken, and so made worthless.” But may not the idea of moral badness also appropriately come from the active conception of breaking, destroying? It is certainly a very vivid and truthful conception of a bad man, that he is a breaker, a destroyer of things, like his father Abaddon, the destroyer. He breaks law and order, peace, quietness, and harmony. He destroys virtue, character, reputation, property, government — in short, every thing he lays his hands on or influences; he destroys his associates, and, finally, himself.
The Septuagint adds to this verse the following, not found in the Hebrew: “He that stays himself upon falsehoods attempts to rule the winds, and the same will pursue birds in their flight: for he has forsaken the ways of his own vineyard, and he has caused the axles of his own husbandry to go astray; but he goes through a dry desert, and a land appointed to drought, and he gathers barrenness with his hands.”
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges1878 · Public DomainOn vv12, 14, 1512. the evil man] Or, evil, R.V. text (marg.…
12. the evil man] Or, evil, R.V. text (marg. as A.V.); ἀπὸ ὁδοῦ κακῆς, LXX.; a via mala, Vulg.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers1878 · Public DomainOn vv12, 14(12) Froward things.—(Heb., tahpûkhôth), i.e., misrepresentations, distortions of the…
(12) Froward things.—(Heb., tahpûkhôth), i.e., misrepresentations, distortions of the truth.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary1880 · Public DomainOn vv12–15To deliver thee from the way of the evil…
To deliver thee from the way of the evil man. The first special advantage resulting from the protecting guardianship of discretion and understanding. From the way of the evil man; properly, from an evil way; Hebrew, r (midarek ra), not necessarily, though by implication, connected with man, as in the Authorized Version. r (ra), "evil," "wicked," in an ethical sense, is an adjective, as in Jer_3:16 (r ble, lev ra), "an evil heart;" cf. the LXX, apo odou kakhv ; the Vulgate, Targum, and Arabic, a vid mala, and the Syriac, a viis pravis.
"Way," is here used in the sense of "conduct," and the evil way is a line of conduct or action which is essentially wicked or evil. The teacher has already Warned youth against the temptations and dangers of the way of evil men in Pro_1:10-15; he now shows that discretion, arising from wisdom being resident in the heart, will be a sufficient safeguard against its allurements. From the man that speaketh froward things. Perverse utterances are here brought in contradistinction to the evil way or froward conduct. Man (vai, ish) is here used generically, as the representative of the whole class of base and wicked men, since all the following verbs are in the plural, Froward things. The word tWokpuhT (tah"pucoth), here translated "froward things," is derived from the root XXX (haphak), "to turn," "to pervert," and should be translated "perverseness." Perverseness is the wilful misrepresentation of that which is good and true. The utterances are of a distorted and tortuous character. The word, only found in the plural, is abstract in form, and is of frequent, though not of exclusive, occurrence in the Proverbs. It is attributed to the Israelites in Deu_32:20. It is met with again in such expressions as "the mouth of perverseness," Authorized Version "froward mouth"; (Pro_8:13) "the tongue of perverseness," "froward tongue," Authorized Version; (Pro_10:31) "the man of perverseness," "froward man," Authorized Version. (Pro_16:28) What is here said of wicked men is attributed to drunkards in Pro_23:33, "Thine heart shall utter perverse things." The expression finds its explanation in Pro_6:13, Pro_6:14. The spirit which indulges in this perverseness is stubborn, scornful, self-willed, and rebellious, and it is from such a spirit that discretion is a preservative. In Job_5:13 it is said that "the counsel of the froward is carried headlong". (see also 2Sa_22:27 Psa_18:26 Psa_101:4) The LXX rendering of this word is mhden , "nothing trustworthy," which is amplified in the Arabic, quod nullam in se continet veritatem, "that which contains in itself no truth."
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator1887 · Public DomainOn v12To deliver thee from the way of the evil…
Pro_2:12
To deliver thee from the way of the evil man.
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Wickedness and wisdom, the bane and the antidote
I. A terrible description of wicked persons.
1. Their character. Their speech is corrupt. Their habit is corrupt. Their heart is corrupt. Their influence is corrupt.
2. Their peril. The spell of lust palsies the grasp of her victims. Everything dies under the influence of wickedness--self- respect, spiritual sensibility, mental freedom, the freshness, the vigour, and the beauty of life.
3. Their doom. They are rooted out from the esteem of the good, from the sphere of improvement, from the realm of mercy, and from the domain of hope.
II. The antidote. Wickedness is terribly powerful, but wisdom is mightier. Its mightiness in man, however, depends upon its right reception.
1. Wisdom guards the innocent. The way to keep out evil is to fill the soul with goodness.
2. It delivers the fallen. Heavenly wisdom in the soul is the only soul-redemptive force.
3. It guides the redeemed. Like the star to the mariner, it this wisdom shine within us it will guide us safely over the voyage of life. (David Thomas, D.D.)
The influence of associates
The tree frog acquires the colour of whatever it adheres to for a short time. If it be found on the oak, it is a brown colour; on the sycamore or cedar, he is of a whitish brown colour; but when found on the growing corn, he is sure to be green. Just so it is with young men. Their companions tell us what their characters are; if they associate with the vulgar, the licentious, and the profane, then their hearts are already stained with their guilt and shame, and they will themselves become alike vicious. Our moral and physical laws show how important it is to have proper associations of every kind, especially in youth. How dangerous it is to gaze on a picture or scene that pollutes the imagination or blunts the moral perceptions, or has a tendency to deaden a sense of our duty to God and man! (Christian Treasury.)
From the man that speaketh froward things.--
Froward
This is a word which occurs more than once in these verses, and which occurs frequently throughout this book, and whereof I have not met with an exactly defined signification. Some understand by it peevishness or perverseness. Were I to consult its etymology I should rather conceive that it was fromward; and so, impetuous, headstrong, acting on the impulse of whatever feeling is uppermost in the mind, unrestrained by calculation or conscience, and the opposite, therefore, of discretion. In Pro_2:12 I should render the word by unfaithful; in Pro_2:14, by perverse; in Pro_3:32, by unlawful, or transgressor of the law. But it is not easy to gather the precise meaning of the word froward, as the original words for it are various. (T. Chalmers, D. D.)
Verses 13. To walk in the ways of darkness.--
Perils in the deep
Here an arm of the sea of life is spread out before us, and we are led to an eminence whence we may behold its raging. We must, one by one, go down into these great waters. We see many of our comrades sinking beneath the surge. It is good to count the number, and measure the height of these ranks of raging waves, that we may be induced to hold faster by the anchor of the soul, which is sure and steadfast. The dangers are delineated in exact order.
I. the way of evil. Whether they be persons or principles the word does not expressly say. The way of the evil is the way which Satan trod, and by which all his servants follow.
II. the man that speaketh froward things. He is one of the foremost dangers to young men. In a workshop, or warehouse, or circle of private friendship, one with a foul tongue is a serious mischief-maker. It may be that the froward things are swearings; or impurities, or infidel insinuations; or mere silliness that fills with vanity, and tends to weaken the moral fibre. Even when a person does not sympathise with the evil, and imitate it, his conscience gets a wound. It is not good for us, in an experimental way, thus to know evil.
III. Who leave the paths of righteousness. When the imagination is polluted, and the tongue let loose, the feet cannot keep on the path of righteousness. Thinking, and hearing, and speaking evil, will soon be followed by doing it. In all of us are the seeds of crime, and in many the seedlings are growing apace. He who would be kept from the path of the destroyer must crucify the flesh, with its affections and lusts. In the matter of watching for ones soul the true wisdom is to take care of the beginnings.
IV. to walk in the ways of darkness. The doing of evil produces darkness, and darkness produces the evil-doing. Indulged lusts put out the eyesight of the conscience; and under the darkened conscience the lusts revel unchecked.
V. Who rejoice to do evil. A more advanced step in guilt. At first the backslider is ashamed of his fall. He palliates, alleges the strength of the temptation, and promises amendment. As the hardening progress goes on, he begins to feel more easy, and comes to rejoice in evil.
VI. Who delight in the frowardness of the wicked. These are more abandoned than the wicked themselves. To take pleasure in sin is a characteristic of fallen humanity; to delight in seeing others sinning is altogether devilish. To complete the picture of the dangers to which the young are exposed, one other peril of the worlds deep is marked on the chart which is mercifully placed in the voyagers hands--it is the strange woman. The deceiver is so-called. Marriage is honourable in all. Unlawful relations of the sexes mean wild, selfish passions, which will surely be followed by visible marks of Gods vengeance. Gods anger will track lust through all its secret doublings. He makes sin generate its own punishment. And the woe of a hardened sensualist is a hell indeed. (W. Arnot, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible1887 · Public DomainOn v12"To deliver thee from the way of the evil…
CHAPTER 3
WISDOM AS THE GUIDE OF CONDUCT
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"To deliver thee from the way of the evil man…To deliver thee from the strange woman."- Pro_2:12-16
WISDOM is concerned, as we have seen, with the whole universe of fact, with the whole range of thought; she surveys and orders all processes of nature. We might say of her,
"She doth preserve the stars from wrong, And the most ancient heavens by her are fresh and strong."
But while she is occupied in these high things, she is no less attentive to the affairs of human life, and her delight is to order human conduct, not despising even the smallest detail of that which is done by men under the sun. Side by side with physical laws, indeed often intertwined with them, appear the moral laws which issue from the lively oracles of Wisdom. There is not one authority for natural phenomena, and another for mental and moral phenomena. As we should say now, Truth is one: Science is one: Law is one. The laws of the physical order, the laws of the speculative reason, the laws of practical life, form a single system, come from the sole mind of God, and are the impartial interests of Wisdom.
As the great authority on Conduct, Wisdom is pictured standing in the places where men congregate, where the busy hum of human voices and the rush of hurried feet make it necessary for her to lift up her voice in order to gain attention. With words of winsome wooing-"for wisdom shall enter into thy heart, and knowledge shall be pleasant unto thy soul" {Pro_2:10}-or with loud threats and stern declarations of truth -"the backsliding of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them" {Pro_1:32} -she tries to win us, while we are yet young, to her paths of pleasantness and her ways of peace. Her object is to deliver youth,
(1) from the evil man, and
(2) from the evil woman, or in the most comprehensive way "to deliver us from evil."
First of all, we may spend a few moments in noting the particular temptations to which men were exposed in the days when these chapters were written. There was a temptation to join a troop of banditti, and to obtain a living by acts of highway robbery which would frequently result in murder; and there was the temptation to the sin which we call specifically Impurity, a temptation which arose not so much from the existence of a special class of fallen women, as from the shocking looseness and voluptuousness of married women in well-to-do circumstances.
Society under the kings never seems to have reached anything approaching to an ordered security. We cannot point to any period when the mountain roads, even in the neighborhood of the capital, were not haunted by thieves, who lurked in the rocks or the copses, and fell upon passing travelers, to strip and to rob, and if need be to kill them. When such things are done, when such things are even recounted in sensational literature, there are multitudes of young men who are stirred to a debased ambition; a spurious glory encircles the brow of the adventurer who sets the laws of society at defiance; and without any personal entreaty the foolish youth is disposed to leave the quiet ways of industry for the stimulating excitement and the false glamour of the bandit life. The reckless plottings of the robbers are described in Pro_1:11-14. The character of the men themselves is given in Pro_4:16-17 : "They sleep not, except they have done mischief; and their sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to fail. For they eat the bread of wickedness, and drink the wine of violence." The proverb in Pro_24:15 is addressed to such a one: "Lay not wait, O wicked man, against the habitation of the righteous; spoil not his resting-place."
The rebukes of the prophets-Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah-may have a wider application, but they seem at any rate to include this highwaymans life. "Your hands are full of blood" is the charge of Isaiah; and {Isa_1:15} again, "Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity." {Isa_59:7} "They build up Zion with blood," says Micah indignantly. {Mic_3:10} Jeremiah cries with still more vehemence to his generation, "Also in thy skirts is found the blood of the souls of the innocent poor": {Jer_2:34} and again, "But thine eyes and thine heart are not but for thy covetousness, and for to shed innocent blood, and for oppression, and for violence, to do it." {Jer_22:17}
We are to conceive, then, the young and active men of the day constantly tempted to take these unhallowed paths which seemed to promise wealth; the sinners were always ready to whisper in the ears of those whose life was tedious and unattractive, "Cast in thy lot among us; we will all have one purse." The moral sense of the community was not sufficiently developed to heartily condemn this life of iniquity; as in the eighteenth century among, ourselves, so in Israel when this book was written, there existed in the minds of the people at large a lurking admiration for the bold and dashing "gentlemen of the way."
The other special temptation of that day is described in our book with remarkable realism, and there is no false shame in exposing the paths of death into which it leads. In Pro_5:3-20 the subject is treated in the plainest way: "Her latter end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on Sheol." It is taken up again in Pro_6:24-35 : "Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? or can one walk upon hot coals and his feet not be scorched?" The guilty man who has been betrayed by the glitter and beauty, by the honeyed words and the soft entreaties, "shall get wounds and dishonor, and his reproach shall not be wiped away."
Pro_7:5-27 a most vivid picture is drawn of the foolish youth seduced into evil; there he is seen going as an ox to the slaughter, as one in fetters, "till an arrow strike through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life." And the Introduction closes with a delineation of Folly, which is obviously meant as a counterpart to the delineation of Wisdom in Pro_1:20, etc. {Pro_9:13-18} The miserable woman sits at the door of her house, on a seat in the high places of the city; with seductive words she wins the foolish passers-by to enter her doors: "The dead are there; her guests are in the depths of Sheol."
It is a temptation which in many varying forms has always beset human life. No small part of the danger is that this evil, above all others, grows in silence, and yet seems to be aggravated by publicity. The preacher cannot speak plainly about it, and even writers shrink from touching the subject. We can, however, be thankful that the book, which is Gods book rather than mans, knows nothing of our false modesty and conventional delicacy: it speaks out not only boldly, but minutely; it is so explicit that no man who with a prayerful heart will meditate upon its teachings need fall into the pitfall-that pitfall which seems to grow even more subtle and more seductive as civilization advances, and as the great cities absorb a larger proportion of the population; or if he fail he can only admit with shame and remorse, "I have hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof. Neither have I obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me. I was well-nigh in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly." {Pro_5:12-14}
In the second place, we must try to look at these temptations in the light of our own day, in order that we may listen to the voice of wisdom, not in the antiquarian, but rather in the practical spirit. The second temptation exists amongst us almost unchanged, except that the vast accumulation and concentration of vice in great cities has provided that mournful band of women whom a great moralist has designated the Vestal Virgins of Humanity, consecrated to shame and ruin in order to preserve unsullied the sacred flame of the domestic altar. The result of this terrible development in evil is that the deadly sin has become safer for the sinner, and in certain circles of society has become recognized as at any rate a venial fault, if not an innocent necessity. It is well to read these chapters again with our eye on the modern evil, and to let the voice of Wisdom instruct us that the life is not the less blighted because the body remains unpunished, and vice is not the less vicious because, instead of ruining others for its gratification, it feeds only on those who are already ruined. If the Wisdom of the Old Testament is obscure on this point, the Wisdom of the New Testament gives no uncertain sound. Interpreting the doctrine of our book, as Christians are bound to do, by the light of Christ, we can be left in no doubt, that to all forms of impurity applies the one principle which is here applied to a specific form: "He doeth it that would destroy his own soul." "His own iniquities shall take the wicked, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sin." {Pro_6:32 and Pro_5:22}
But with regard to the first of the two temptations, it may be urged that in our settled and ordered society it is no longer felt. "We are not tempted to become highwaymen, nor even to embark on the career of a professional thief." We are disposed to skim lightly over the warning, under the impression that it does not in any way apply to us. But stop a moment! Wisdom spoke in the first instance direct to the vice of her day, but she gave to her precepts a more general coloring, which makes it applicable to all time, when she said, "So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; it taketh away the life of the owners thereof." {Pro_1:19} The specific form of greediness described in this first chapter may have become obsolete among decent and respectable people; but that greed of gain which showed itself then in a particular form is alive today. Dressed in a different garb, it presents temptations of a slightly different order; but the spirit is the same, the issue, the fatal issue, is the same. It is a melancholy fact that in the most progressive and civilized communities the greed of gain, instead of dying out, becomes aggravated, acquires a dominant influence, and sways men as the master passion. The United States, a country so bountiful to her children that a settled peace might be supposed to pervade the life of men who can never be in fear of losing the necessaries, or even the comforts, of life, are inflamed with a fierce and fiery passion. Society is one perpetual turmoil; life is lived at the highest conceivable pressure, because each individual is seeking to gain more and ever more. In our own country, though society is less fluid, and ancient custom checks the action of disturbing forces, the passion for gain becomes every year a more exacting tyranny over the lives of the people. We are engaged in a pitiless warfare, which we dignify by the name of competition; the race is to the swift, and the battle to the strong. It becomes almost a recognized principle that man is at liberty to prey upon his fellow man. The Eternal Law of Wisdom declares that we should treat others as we treat ourselves, and count the interests of others dear as our own; it teaches us that we should show a tender consideration for the weak, and be always ready, at whatever cost, to succor the helpless. But competition says, "No; you must try rather to beat the weak out of the field; you must leave no device untried to reduce the strength of the strong, and to divert into your own hands the grist which was going to your neighbors mill." This conflict between man and man is untempered by pity, because it is supposed to be unavoidable as death itself. In a community so constituted, where business has fallen into such ways, while the strong may hold their own with a clean hand, the weaker are tempted to make up by cunning what they lack in strength, and the weakest are ground as the nether millstone. The pitilessness of the whole system is appalling, the more so because it is accepted as necessary.
The bandit life has here emerged in a new form. "Come, let us lay wait for blood," says the Sweater or the Fogger, "let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause; let us swallow them up alive as Sheol, and whole as those that go down into the pit." The Bandit is an outcast from society, and his hand is turned against the rich. The Sweater is an outcast from society, and his hand is turned against the poor. By "laying wait" he is able to demand, from weak men, women, and children, the long hours of the day for unceasing toil, and the bitter hours of the night for hunger and cold, until the gaunt creatures, worn with weariness and despair, find a solace in debauchery or an unhallowed rest in death.
Now, though the temptation to become a sweater may not affect many or any of us, I should like to ask, Are there not certain trades or occupations, into which some of us are tempted to enter, perfectly honeycombed with questionable practices? Under the pretext that it is all "business," are not things done which can only be described as preying upon the innocence or the stupidity of our neighbors? Sometimes the promise is, "We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil." {Pro_1:13} Sometimes the simple object is to escape starvation. But there is the miserable temptation to sacrifice probity and honor, to stifle compassion and thought, in order to bring into our own coffers the coveted wealth. And is there not, I ask, a similar temptation lurking in a thousand haunts more or less respectable-a temptation which may be described as the spirit of gambling? The essence of all gambling, whether it be called speculative business or gaming, in stock and share markets or in betting clubs and turf rings, is simply the attempt to trade on the supposed ignorance or misfortune of others, and to use superior knowledge or fortune for the purpose, not of helping, but of robbing them. It may be said that we do it in self-defense, and that others would do the same by us; yes, just as the bandit says to the young man, "We do not want to injure the traveler yonder; we want his purse. He will try to shoot you; you only shoot him in self-defense." It is the subtlety of all gambling that constitutes its great danger. It seems to turn on the principle that we may do what we like with our own; it forgets that its object is to get hold of what belongs to others, not by honest work or service rendered, but simply by cunning and deception.
It is, then, only too easy to recognize, in many varied shapes of so-called business and of so-called pleasure, "the ways of those who are greedy of gain." Wisdom has need to cry aloud in our streets, in the chief place of concourse, in the city, in exchanges and marts. Her warning to the young man must be explicit and solemn: "My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not." The bandit life still has its attractions, though its methods are changed; it plays upon the idle imagination: it promises freedom from laborious and distasteful toil; but it says nothing of the ways of death into which it leads.
Now, in the third place, we come to the protest of Divine Wisdom against these evil ways in which men are tempted to walk. They are, she says, folly of the most egregious kind. There may be an apparent success or a momentary gratification: "precious substance may be amassed, and houses may be filled with spoil"; but the people who are betrayed into these wicked courses "shall be cut off from the land." {Pro_2:22} They "lay wait for their own blood"; greed "taketh away the life of the owner thereof"; {Pro_1:19} and as for the strange woman, that flattereth with her words, "none that go unto her return again." {Pro_2:19}
It needs but a clear vision or a little wise reflection to see the destructive tendency of Evil. It is the commonest fact of experience that where "vice goes before, vengeance follows after." Why do men not perceive it? There is a kind of fatuity which blinds the eyes. The empty-headed bird sees the net spread out before its eyes; {Pro_1:17} many of its fellows have already been caught; the warning seems obvious enough, but it is all "in vain": eager to get the bait-the dainty morsel lying there, easy obtainable - the foolish creature approaches, looks, argues that it is swifter and stronger than its predecessors, who were but weaklings! it will wheel down, take the food, and be gone long before the flaps of the net can spring together. In the same way the empty-headed youth, warned by the experience of elders and the tender entreaties of father and mother, assured that these ways of unjust gain are ways of ruin, is yet rash enough to enter the snare in order to secure the coveted morsel. And what is the issue? Setting at naught all the counsel of Wisdom, he would none of her reproof. {Pro_1:25} A momentary success led to wilder infatuation, and convinced him that he was right, and Wisdom was wrong; but his prosperity destroyed him. Soon in the shame of exposure and the misery of remorse he discovers his mistake. Or, worse still, no exposure comes; success continues to his dying day, and he leaves his substance to his heirs; "he eats of the fruits of his own way, and is filled with his own devices," {Pro_1:31-32} but none the less he walks in the ways of darkness-in paths that are crooked and perverse-and he is consumed with inward misery. The soul within is hard, and dry, and dead; it is insensible to all feelings except feelings of torture. It is a life so dark and wretched, that when a sudden light is thrown upon its hidden secrets men are filled with astonishment and dismay, that such things could exist underneath that quiet surface.
Finally, note these two characteristics of the Divine Wisdom:
(1) she is found in her fullness only by diligent seekers; and
(2) rejected, she turns into the most scornful and implacable foe.
She is to be sought as silver or hidden treasure is sought. The search must be inspired by that eagerness of desire and passion of resolve with which avarice seeks for money. No faculty must be left unemployed: the ear is to be inclined to catch the first low sounds of wisdom; the heart is to be applied to understand what is heard; the very voice is to be lifted up in earnest inquiry. It is a well-known fact that the fear of the Lord and the knowledge of God are not fruits which grow on every wayside bush, to be plucked by every idle passer-by, to be dropped carelessly and trodden under foot. Without seriousness and devotion, without protracted and unflagging toil, the things of God are not to be attained. You must be up betimes; you must be on your knees early; you must lay open the book of Wisdom, pore over its pages, and diligently turn its leaves, meditating on its sayings day and night. The kingdom of God and His righteousness must be sought, yes, and sought first, sought exclusively, as the one important object of desire. That easy indifference, that lazy optimism-"it will all come right in the end"-that habit of delay in deciding, that inclination to postpone the eternal realities to vanishing shadows, will be your ruin. The time may come when you will call, and there will be no answer, when you will seek diligently, but shall not find. Then in the day of your calamity, when your fear cometh, what a smile of scorn will seem to be on Wisdoms placid brow, and around her eloquent lips! What derision will seem to ring in the well-remembered counsels which you rejected. {Pro_1:24-31} O tide in the affairs of men! O tide in the affairs of God! We are called to stand by death-beds, to look into anguished eyes which know that it is too late. The bandit of commercial life passes into that penal servitude which only death will end; what agony breaks out and hisses in his remorse! The wretched victim of lust passes from the house of his sin down the path which inclines unto death; how terrible is that visage which just retains smirched traces that purity once was there! The voice rings down the doleful road, "If I had only been wise, if I had given ear, wisdom might have entered even into my heart, knowledge might have been pleasant even to my soul!"
And wisdom still cries to us, "Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you."
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary1892 · Public DomainOn v12Pro_2:12. Deliver, “snatch,” as a brand out of the…
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Pro_2:12. Deliver, “snatch,” as a brand out of the fire. Evil man, rather “an evil way.”
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Pro_2:13. “Level” paths.
Pro_2:16. Strange, “unknown,” “wanton” (see 1Ki_11:1-8).
Pro_2:17. Guide, or “companion,” “confidant,” her lawful husband.
Pro_2:18. House, in the East means “interests;” a man’s whole blended well-being (Exo_1:21).—Miller. (On Pro_2:16-18 see Note at the beginning of Chap. 7)
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH—Pro_2:12-20
THE CHARACTER OF THOSE FROM WHOM WISDOM PRESERVES
I. The evil man.
1. His speech is corrupt, Pro_2:12. The closed grave contains death and holds within it the seeds of pestilence, but while it remains unopened the corrupt influence remains enclosed in its narrow walls. But should it be opened, and its foulness allowed to fill the air, it begins to set in motion what will strike men down to its own level. The mouth of the wicked man while kept shut is a closed grave, his iniquity is shut up within himself, but when he speaks out the thoughts of his heart his mouth is as an open sepulchre, and he spreads around him moral disease and death.
2. He is a man of progressive iniquity. “He walks in the ways of darkness.” When a stone is set in motion, the momentum given to it, if no other law comes into operation to prevent it, will carry it to the lowest level in the direction in which it travels. The progress of wickedness is downhill, and walking in the ways of darkness implies a destination which in Scripture is called “outer darkness.”
3. He delights in his downward progress. Sorrow and joy are revealers of human hearts. The saint rejoices in whatsoever things are pure, lovely, and of good report, and in his increase of power to do the same. That which rejoices him reveals his heart. The sinner that “rejoices to do evil and delights in the forwardness of the wicked,” brings to light the hidden things of darkness that are within him.
II. The wicked woman.
1. She is, pre-eminently, a covenant-breaker. The ribs of a vessel hold and keep together the whole structure, and enable it to keep its cargo safe. If the ribs give way, all goes to pieces, and the precious things which have been stored up within the ship are lost in the ocean. Human society is belted together—kept from going to pieces—by covenants. They are the ribs which keep together the State. The marriage covenant holds the first place. The woman whose character is here depicted has broken the bonds of this most sacred covenant—to which God was a witness (the covenant of an institution of His own ordination)—and has taken to the “strange” way of the devil. Well may she be called a strange woman. That a woman should be guilty of such a crime—should choose such a course of life, so opposed to all that is pure and womanly—is indeed a mystery.
2. She is a destroyer, not only of herself, but of others. When the river has broken through its proper boundaries there is a present and continual destruction, of which the bursting of its banks was only the beginning. This woman in the past broke the moral boundaries of her life, and is now not content to go to ruin herself, but tries to take others with her. To this end are her false and flattering words, of which we shall hear more in chapter Pro_5:3. She carries her victims beyond hope of recovery. There are no rules without exceptions. We know that there are those who have for a time been under the influence of such characters, and have returned to the paths of virtue and honour. But these are rare exceptions. In the main, it is, alas! true that “none that go unto her return again.” A vessel founders at sea, and we say that the crew is lost, although one survivor may have been rescued. We speak of an army being destroyed if one escapes to tell the tale. Where one who has taken hold on her paths struggles back to life and purity, thousands go down with her to death, bodily, social, and spiritual.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Pro_2:12. To snatch (see “Critical Notes.”) “The way of evil.” The terms begin gently. It is only the gentle aspects that are dangerous at first. These are so fascinating that it requires us to be snatched to keep us out of the ways of darkness.—Miller.
Pro_2:13. Among the pests of men, none are such virulent pests of everything that is good as those that once made a profession of religion, but have left the way of uprightness. The stings of conscience which such persons experience, instead of reclaiming them, tend only to irritate their spirits, and inflame them into fierce enmity against religion.—Lawson.
Darkness, as thus set in contrast with uprightness, may be interpreted as descriptive both of the nature of the ways, and of their tendency and end. The man who walks in uprightness walks in light. His eye is “single.” There is “none occasion of stumbling in him.” He has but one principle; his “eyes look right on, his eyelids look straight before him.” He is not always looking this way and that, for devious paths that may suit a present purpose, but presses on ever in the same course; and thus all is light, all plain, all safe. “The ways of darkness” are the ways of concealment, evasion, cunning, tortuous policy and deceit. He who walks in them is ever groping; hiding himself among the subtleties of “fleshly wisdom”: and being ways of false principle and sin, they are ways of danger, and shame, and ruin.—Wardlaw.
There is a strictly causal and reciprocal relation between unrighteous deeds and moral darkness. The doing of evil produces darkness, and darkness produces the evil doing. Indulged lusts put out the eye-sight of the conscience; and under the darkened conscience the lusts revel unchecked.—Arnot.
The light stands in the way of their wicked ways as the angel did in Balaam’s way to his sin.—Trapp.
Pro_2:14. Though it be wormwood which they drink (Lam_3:15), yet being drunk with it, they perceive not the bitterness thereof, but like drunken men rejoice in their shame and misery.—Jermin.
Better is the sorrow of him that suffereth evil than the jollity of him that doeth evil, saith St. Augustine.—Trapp.
Here is a note of trial to discern our spiritual estate. Wicked men rejoice in sin; good men sorrow more for sin than for troubles.… Many triumph in their evil deeds because they have no good to boast of. And men are naturally proud and would boast of something.—Francis Taylor.
Pro_2:16. There is no viler object in nature than an adulteress. Though born and baptised in a Christian land, she is to be looked upon as a heathen woman and a stranger, and as self-made brutes are greater monsters than natural brute beasts, so baptised heathens are by far the worst of pagans.—Lawson.
This strange woman is an emblem of impenitence. The passage 16–19, means the seductiveness and yet the betraying wretchedness of impenitence. The woman who has left her husband has also left her God; and the nulla vestigia retrorsum witnessed in her dupes is the warning for the saint by which he keeps clear of her undoing. No man would err who would treat of adultery as having its lessons here. But no man would understand the passage who did not understand it further as a great picture of impenitence. The warnings are two:
(1) the un-stopping-short character of sin; she who wrongs her husband will be seen universally wronging God; and
(2) the unrecuperative history of the lost.—Miller.
Twice Solomon uses a similar expression, “the strange woman (even) the stranger,” to impress more forcibly on the young man the fact that her person belongs to another. The literal and spiritual adulteress are both meant. The spiritual gives to the world her person and her heart, which belong by right to God. In this sense the foreign women who subsequently drew aside Solomon himself, were “strange women,” not so much in respect to their local distance from Israel, as in respect to their being utterly alien to the worship of God. Lust and idolatry were the spiritual adultery into which they entrapped the once wise king. How striking that he should utter beforehand a warning which he himself afterwards disregarded.—Fausset.
We are not to forget that the accomplished seducer has herself perhaps been seduced. The fair and flattering words, the endless arts of allurement, are on both sides.—Wardlaw.
One who is as it were, a stranger to her own house and husband by faithlessness (Hitzig), and hence a type of anything that is false and seductive in doctrine or practice.… By God’s goodness Solomon’s words in this divinely inspired book were an antidote to the poison of his own vicious example.—Wordsworth.
Pro_2:17. False doctrine and false worship are in Scripture compared to harlotry and adultery. (Num_14:33; Jdg_2:17; Jdg_8:33; Psa_106:39; Rev_17:1-2; Rev_18:3.—Wordsworth.
It is God that is the guide of her youth, whoever may be under Him; it is God’s covenant that is made, whosoever may be the contractor in it. It is God who is first forsaken, then forgotten; forsaken in the beginning of wickedness, forgotten in the hardened practice of it. God hath appointed guides for youth—to stay the weakness of it, and to which, as unto God, youth ought to yield obedience. For elder years He hath appointed covenants as bonds and chains to hold them sure.—Jermin.
There is no trusting them that will fail God and their near friends. If they fail God, they will fail men for their advantage. If they fail friends—much more strangers.—Francis Taylor.
Pro_2:18. When you get into the company of the licentious, you are among the dead. They move about like men in outward appearance, but the best attributes of humanity have disappeared—the best affections of nature have been drained away from their hearts.—Arnot.
Her house is not a building reared up, but inclined and bowed down, and she who dwelleth in it will, by her life, bring thee to the dead.… Death is here twice mentioned to show that it is a double death, a temporal death, and an eternal death, to which she bringeth men.—Jermin.
Pro_2:19. Who would cast himself into a deep pit in the hopes of coming out alive, when almost all that fell into it were dashed in pieces.—Lawson.
It is as hard to restore a lustful person to chastity as it is to restore a dead person to life.—Chrysostom.
A sin which, I am verily persuaded, if there be another that slays her thousands, may with truth be affirmed to slay its ten thousands.—Wardlaw.
Pro_2:20. Here follows the whole ground of the exhibition: “That,” for the very purpose that “thou mayest walk in the way of good men.” This is a grand, pregnant doctrine. This bad life was abandoned to its worst partly as a lesson.—Miller.
It is not enough to shun the evil way, unless men walk in the good way.—Muffet.
He that walks in the way of good men shall meet with good men, and that shall keep him from the company of evil men and women. The paths of the righteous are too narrow for such: he shall not be troubled with them.—Jermin.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0On v14They rejoice
They rejoice
"They" refers to the same people as in Proverbs 2:12.
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delight in the perversities of evil
This means basically the same thing as the first part of the sentence. AT: "delight in doing what they know is evil" (See: Parallelism)
They follow crooked paths
People who lie to others are spoken of as if they walk on crooked or twisted paths. AT: "They deceive other people" (See: Metaphor)
using deception they hide their tracks
People lying so that others will not find out what they did is spoken of as if they covered the tracks on a path so that no one could follow them. AT: "they lie so that no one will know what they have done" (See: Metaphor)
Tyndale Open Study Notes2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0On v122:12-15 Wisdom discerns when words are twisted to represent…
2:12-15 Wisdom discerns when words are twisted to represent what is wrong as being right. The right way leads to life, the wrong way to death (1:10-19; 2:18-19; 5:5-6; 9:1-6, 13-18). • dark paths: In the New Testament, darkness represents the realm of evil, while light represents the realm of God’s goodness (Matt 4:16; 5:14-16; John 1:14; Rom 2:19).
GEBible — Godless Engineer's Bible App
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv13–14 That is, the word of God, which is the…
That is, the word of God, which is the only light, to follow their own fantasies which are darkness.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv12–15 Pro 2:12 To deliver thee from the way of…
Pro 2:12 To deliver thee from the way of the evil [man], from the man that speaketh froward things;
Ver. 12. That speaketh froward things.] As if his mouth were distorted, or the upper lip stood where the nether should. See Act 20:30. {a}
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{a} διεστραμμενα.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv12–15 From the way of the evil man; from following…
From the way of the evil man; from following his counsel or example, which others for want of wisdom commonly do.
That speaketh froward things; with design to corrupt thy mind, and entice thee to evil principles or practices.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv12–15 To deliver thee from the way of the evil…
To deliver thee from the way of the evil man,.... Who is so by nature and practice, who is hardened in sin and abandoned to it, whose course of life is evil, and who endeavours to draw others into the same evil practices; now the Gospel, and a spiritual knowledge of it, are a means of preserving men from following the examples of such persons, and from walking with them in the ways of sin: or from "the evil way" (t), from every evil way, from a vicious course of life; not from idolatry only, as some interpret it, though this may be included, and chiefly designed; but from all manner of sin, from everything that is contrary to the law of God and sound doctrine;
from the man that speaketh froward things; perverse things, things contrary to the light of nature, to divine revelation, to the word of God, both law and Gospel; if a single man is meant, he might be thought to be the man of sin, antichrist, who has a mouth speaking blasphemies against God, his name, his tabernacle, and them that dwell therein, Rev 13:5; and the Gospel delivers men from following him, and falling in with his perverse doctrines and practices; but the word seems to be a collective one, and to be understood of all wicked men, to whom the description agrees, as it is explained in the following verses in the plural number; who out of their evil hearts, and the abundance of wickedness there, speak evil things, tending to debauch the minds and manners of others; to be delivered from whom is a singular mercy. Jarchi restrains this to heretics, and such as caused Israel to apostatize to idolatry, and turned the law into evil. The Gospel is undoubtedly a means of preserving from error and heresy.
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(t) "a via mala", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Mercerus, Cocceius, Gejerus, Michaelis.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv13, 15 Darkness - Of sin.
Darkness - Of sin.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On v12 Verse 12. The man that speaketh froward things.] תהפכות…
Verse 12. The man that speaketh froward things.] תהפכות tahpuchoth, things of subversion; from תפך taphach, to turn or change the course of a thing. Men who wish to subvert the state of things, whether civil or religious; who are seditious themselves, and wish to make others so. These speak much of liberty and oppression, deal greatly in broad assertions, and endeavour especially to corrupt the minds of youth.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On v12 The evil-doers here include not robbers and murderers only…
The evil-doers here include not robbers and murderers only Pro 1:10-16, but all who leave the straight path and the open day for crooked ways, perverse counsels, deeds of darkness. “To delight etc.” Pro 2:14 is the lowest depth of all.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Charles Bridges 1846 · Public Domain On v12 The various snares for the young, about to be…
The various snares for the young, about to be detailed, furnish a fearful picture of the temptations to which our children are exposed. Will it not awaken out earnest cries for their deep and solid conversion to God; that wisdom may indeed enter into their hearts, and its pleasures be really enjoyed; that they may have a religious taste, as well as a religious education; that they may know the Gospel, not only in the conviction of their conscience, or the excitement of their feelings, but in the entire renewal of their hearts before God? This, and nothing less, will preserve them from the snare of their cruel foe. Every town and village swarms with his emissaries; first, initiated themselves into the mysteries of his art; then, going forth, laborious and practiced teachers, well instructed for his murderous work. Against one of these enticements we have been before warned. (Pro 1:10-13 .) Another is here given: The tempter bears his character upon his lips; the evil man that speaketh proud things against God and his law; like a poisonous fountain sending up poisoned waters. Oh! how quickly does the contamination spread! He does not sin in ignorance. He and his companions†1 have probably been trained in the paths of uprightness. Having come in contact with the pestilential breath of the ungodly, they have caught the contagion, and eagerly spread it. Readily do they leave the paths, which they never heartily loved, to walk in the ways of darkness, which their hearts do love. (Pro 4:16-17 . Job 24:13-16 . Joh 3:19-20 .) Having left the hated paths, they become therefore foremost in iniquity. Poisoned themselves, they would poison all around them. They rejoice, like Satan himself, to do evil:†2 to draw their fellow-sinners into the net; and they delight in those, who are most froward in their wickedness.†3 Thus they plunge deeper and deeper into sin, till they lose all traces of the straight way, and all their ways become crooked, leading with sure steps to eternal ruin. Is not this the picture, drawn to the very life, of many a Sunday-scholar, or a child of godly parents, the subject of deep and tender care; "hardened through the deceitfulness of sin" (Heb 3:13 ), the neglect of faithful warning, the stifling of solemn conviction? How do they deserve to be left of God , who have first left him with such fearful aggravation! Young man! Especially shun companions, who are sinning against better knowledge and instruction. They are hardened in devotedness to their master’s work. Oh! if misguided sinners could but see sin in its horrid deformity and certain end, would not "their hearts meditate terror"? But the crookedness of their ways hides the end from view. Satan presents the bait, palliates the sin, covers the enormity, closes the eyes, and conceals the certain end of all — Hell. (Psa 125:5 . Rom 6:21 ; with 2Co 4:3-4 .) The froward in their paths cannot — will not — turn back.
Footnotes
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†1 The change to the plural number (the man — who leave) implies confederacy.
†2 Compare Isa 3:9 ; Jer 9:15 . God’s heavy judgment. 2Th 2:12 .
†3 The sin of the heathen, Rom 1:32 .
Charles Bridges, An Exposition of the Book of Proverbs (1846) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv12, 14 Things. The danger of such company for young people…
Things. The danger of such company for young people is very great, as the heart is misled by the understanding, (Calmet) if it do not itself shew the way to error. (Haydock) --- We all possess a fund of corruption. (Calmet)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv12–15 To deliver--as from great danger (Pro 6:5).
To deliver--as from great danger (Pro 6:5).
way . . . man-- (Psa 1:1).
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froward things--perversity (Pro 6:14; Pro 23:23), what is opposed to truth.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv12–13 12. They do this, to deliver thee (now their…
12. They do this, to deliver thee (now their ward) from the way of the evil man, (especially) from the man that speaketh froward things — תהפכות, (tahpukhoth,) another obscure word, found almost exclusively in this book. It is the opposite of m’sharim, (Pro_1:3,) equity, rectitude. It seems to be a comprehensive term, implying all manner of evil doing. Perhaps subversions or perversions comes as near the original as any English word; that is, the man uttering words calculated to subvert or pervert — to turn the hearer from the right to the wrong, or to change the condition of things, whether in the Church or State, from good to evil. It applies to all reckless innovators and revolutionists, particularly to such as seek to overthrow a good government in order to put another in its place. This conception is somewhat supported by the preceding word, רע, (ra’h,) evil, badness, worthlessness. The radical idea of this word is to break; and it denotes “the breaking of some established order of things, or some preconceived design, plan, or the like.” Gesenius says, “Intransitive — to be evil, bad; from the idea of breaking, being broken, and so made worthless.” But may not the idea of moral badness also appropriately come from the active conception of breaking, destroying? It is certainly a very vivid and truthful conception of a bad man, that he is a breaker, a destroyer of things, like his father Abaddon, the destroyer. He breaks law and order, peace, quietness, and harmony. He destroys virtue, character, reputation, property, government — in short, every thing he lays his hands on or influences; he destroys his associates, and, finally, himself.
The Septuagint adds to this verse the following, not found in the Hebrew: “He that stays himself upon falsehoods attempts to rule the winds, and the same will pursue birds in their flight: for he has forsaken the ways of his own vineyard, and he has caused the axles of his own husbandry to go astray; but he goes through a dry desert, and a land appointed to drought, and he gathers barrenness with his hands.”
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv12, 14, 15 12. the evil man] Or, evil, R.V. text (marg.…
12. the evil man] Or, evil, R.V. text (marg. as A.V.); ἀπὸ ὁδοῦ κακῆς, LXX.; a via mala, Vulg.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv12, 14 (12) Froward things.—(Heb., tahpûkhôth), i.e., misrepresentations, distortions of the…
(12) Froward things.—(Heb., tahpûkhôth), i.e., misrepresentations, distortions of the truth.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv12–15 To deliver thee from the way of the evil…
To deliver thee from the way of the evil man. The first special advantage resulting from the protecting guardianship of discretion and understanding. From the way of the evil man; properly, from an evil way; Hebrew, r (midarek ra), not necessarily, though by implication, connected with man, as in the Authorized Version. r (ra), "evil," "wicked," in an ethical sense, is an adjective, as in Jer_3:16 (r ble, lev ra), "an evil heart;" cf. the LXX, apo odou kakhv ; the Vulgate, Targum, and Arabic, a vid mala, and the Syriac, a viis pravis.
"Way," is here used in the sense of "conduct," and the evil way is a line of conduct or action which is essentially wicked or evil. The teacher has already Warned youth against the temptations and dangers of the way of evil men in Pro_1:10-15; he now shows that discretion, arising from wisdom being resident in the heart, will be a sufficient safeguard against its allurements. From the man that speaketh froward things. Perverse utterances are here brought in contradistinction to the evil way or froward conduct. Man (vai, ish) is here used generically, as the representative of the whole class of base and wicked men, since all the following verbs are in the plural, Froward things. The word tWokpuhT (tah"pucoth), here translated "froward things," is derived from the root XXX (haphak), "to turn," "to pervert," and should be translated "perverseness." Perverseness is the wilful misrepresentation of that which is good and true. The utterances are of a distorted and tortuous character. The word, only found in the plural, is abstract in form, and is of frequent, though not of exclusive, occurrence in the Proverbs. It is attributed to the Israelites in Deu_32:20. It is met with again in such expressions as "the mouth of perverseness," Authorized Version "froward mouth"; (Pro_8:13) "the tongue of perverseness," "froward tongue," Authorized Version; (Pro_10:31) "the man of perverseness," "froward man," Authorized Version. (Pro_16:28) What is here said of wicked men is attributed to drunkards in Pro_23:33, "Thine heart shall utter perverse things." The expression finds its explanation in Pro_6:13, Pro_6:14. The spirit which indulges in this perverseness is stubborn, scornful, self-willed, and rebellious, and it is from such a spirit that discretion is a preservative. In Job_5:13 it is said that "the counsel of the froward is carried headlong". (see also 2Sa_22:27 Psa_18:26 Psa_101:4) The LXX rendering of this word is mhden , "nothing trustworthy," which is amplified in the Arabic, quod nullam in se continet veritatem, "that which contains in itself no truth."
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v12 To deliver thee from the way of the evil…
Pro_2:12
To deliver thee from the way of the evil man.
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Wickedness and wisdom, the bane and the antidote
I. A terrible description of wicked persons.
1. Their character. Their speech is corrupt. Their habit is corrupt. Their heart is corrupt. Their influence is corrupt.
2. Their peril. The spell of lust palsies the grasp of her victims. Everything dies under the influence of wickedness--self- respect, spiritual sensibility, mental freedom, the freshness, the vigour, and the beauty of life.
3. Their doom. They are rooted out from the esteem of the good, from the sphere of improvement, from the realm of mercy, and from the domain of hope.
II. The antidote. Wickedness is terribly powerful, but wisdom is mightier. Its mightiness in man, however, depends upon its right reception.
1. Wisdom guards the innocent. The way to keep out evil is to fill the soul with goodness.
2. It delivers the fallen. Heavenly wisdom in the soul is the only soul-redemptive force.
3. It guides the redeemed. Like the star to the mariner, it this wisdom shine within us it will guide us safely over the voyage of life. (David Thomas, D.D.)
The influence of associates
The tree frog acquires the colour of whatever it adheres to for a short time. If it be found on the oak, it is a brown colour; on the sycamore or cedar, he is of a whitish brown colour; but when found on the growing corn, he is sure to be green. Just so it is with young men. Their companions tell us what their characters are; if they associate with the vulgar, the licentious, and the profane, then their hearts are already stained with their guilt and shame, and they will themselves become alike vicious. Our moral and physical laws show how important it is to have proper associations of every kind, especially in youth. How dangerous it is to gaze on a picture or scene that pollutes the imagination or blunts the moral perceptions, or has a tendency to deaden a sense of our duty to God and man! (Christian Treasury.)
From the man that speaketh froward things.--
Froward
This is a word which occurs more than once in these verses, and which occurs frequently throughout this book, and whereof I have not met with an exactly defined signification. Some understand by it peevishness or perverseness. Were I to consult its etymology I should rather conceive that it was fromward; and so, impetuous, headstrong, acting on the impulse of whatever feeling is uppermost in the mind, unrestrained by calculation or conscience, and the opposite, therefore, of discretion. In Pro_2:12 I should render the word by unfaithful; in Pro_2:14, by perverse; in Pro_3:32, by unlawful, or transgressor of the law. But it is not easy to gather the precise meaning of the word froward, as the original words for it are various. (T. Chalmers, D. D.)
Verses 13. To walk in the ways of darkness.--
Perils in the deep
Here an arm of the sea of life is spread out before us, and we are led to an eminence whence we may behold its raging. We must, one by one, go down into these great waters. We see many of our comrades sinking beneath the surge. It is good to count the number, and measure the height of these ranks of raging waves, that we may be induced to hold faster by the anchor of the soul, which is sure and steadfast. The dangers are delineated in exact order.
I. the way of evil. Whether they be persons or principles the word does not expressly say. The way of the evil is the way which Satan trod, and by which all his servants follow.
II. the man that speaketh froward things. He is one of the foremost dangers to young men. In a workshop, or warehouse, or circle of private friendship, one with a foul tongue is a serious mischief-maker. It may be that the froward things are swearings; or impurities, or infidel insinuations; or mere silliness that fills with vanity, and tends to weaken the moral fibre. Even when a person does not sympathise with the evil, and imitate it, his conscience gets a wound. It is not good for us, in an experimental way, thus to know evil.
III. Who leave the paths of righteousness. When the imagination is polluted, and the tongue let loose, the feet cannot keep on the path of righteousness. Thinking, and hearing, and speaking evil, will soon be followed by doing it. In all of us are the seeds of crime, and in many the seedlings are growing apace. He who would be kept from the path of the destroyer must crucify the flesh, with its affections and lusts. In the matter of watching for ones soul the true wisdom is to take care of the beginnings.
IV. to walk in the ways of darkness. The doing of evil produces darkness, and darkness produces the evil-doing. Indulged lusts put out the eyesight of the conscience; and under the darkened conscience the lusts revel unchecked.
V. Who rejoice to do evil. A more advanced step in guilt. At first the backslider is ashamed of his fall. He palliates, alleges the strength of the temptation, and promises amendment. As the hardening progress goes on, he begins to feel more easy, and comes to rejoice in evil.
VI. Who delight in the frowardness of the wicked. These are more abandoned than the wicked themselves. To take pleasure in sin is a characteristic of fallen humanity; to delight in seeing others sinning is altogether devilish. To complete the picture of the dangers to which the young are exposed, one other peril of the worlds deep is marked on the chart which is mercifully placed in the voyagers hands--it is the strange woman. The deceiver is so-called. Marriage is honourable in all. Unlawful relations of the sexes mean wild, selfish passions, which will surely be followed by visible marks of Gods vengeance. Gods anger will track lust through all its secret doublings. He makes sin generate its own punishment. And the woe of a hardened sensualist is a hell indeed. (W. Arnot, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v12 "To deliver thee from the way of the evil…
CHAPTER 3
WISDOM AS THE GUIDE OF CONDUCT
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"To deliver thee from the way of the evil man…To deliver thee from the strange woman."- Pro_2:12-16
WISDOM is concerned, as we have seen, with the whole universe of fact, with the whole range of thought; she surveys and orders all processes of nature. We might say of her,
"She doth preserve the stars from wrong, And the most ancient heavens by her are fresh and strong."
But while she is occupied in these high things, she is no less attentive to the affairs of human life, and her delight is to order human conduct, not despising even the smallest detail of that which is done by men under the sun. Side by side with physical laws, indeed often intertwined with them, appear the moral laws which issue from the lively oracles of Wisdom. There is not one authority for natural phenomena, and another for mental and moral phenomena. As we should say now, Truth is one: Science is one: Law is one. The laws of the physical order, the laws of the speculative reason, the laws of practical life, form a single system, come from the sole mind of God, and are the impartial interests of Wisdom.
As the great authority on Conduct, Wisdom is pictured standing in the places where men congregate, where the busy hum of human voices and the rush of hurried feet make it necessary for her to lift up her voice in order to gain attention. With words of winsome wooing-"for wisdom shall enter into thy heart, and knowledge shall be pleasant unto thy soul" {Pro_2:10}-or with loud threats and stern declarations of truth -"the backsliding of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them" {Pro_1:32} -she tries to win us, while we are yet young, to her paths of pleasantness and her ways of peace. Her object is to deliver youth,
(1) from the evil man, and
(2) from the evil woman, or in the most comprehensive way "to deliver us from evil."
First of all, we may spend a few moments in noting the particular temptations to which men were exposed in the days when these chapters were written. There was a temptation to join a troop of banditti, and to obtain a living by acts of highway robbery which would frequently result in murder; and there was the temptation to the sin which we call specifically Impurity, a temptation which arose not so much from the existence of a special class of fallen women, as from the shocking looseness and voluptuousness of married women in well-to-do circumstances.
Society under the kings never seems to have reached anything approaching to an ordered security. We cannot point to any period when the mountain roads, even in the neighborhood of the capital, were not haunted by thieves, who lurked in the rocks or the copses, and fell upon passing travelers, to strip and to rob, and if need be to kill them. When such things are done, when such things are even recounted in sensational literature, there are multitudes of young men who are stirred to a debased ambition; a spurious glory encircles the brow of the adventurer who sets the laws of society at defiance; and without any personal entreaty the foolish youth is disposed to leave the quiet ways of industry for the stimulating excitement and the false glamour of the bandit life. The reckless plottings of the robbers are described in Pro_1:11-14. The character of the men themselves is given in Pro_4:16-17 : "They sleep not, except they have done mischief; and their sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to fail. For they eat the bread of wickedness, and drink the wine of violence." The proverb in Pro_24:15 is addressed to such a one: "Lay not wait, O wicked man, against the habitation of the righteous; spoil not his resting-place."
The rebukes of the prophets-Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah-may have a wider application, but they seem at any rate to include this highwaymans life. "Your hands are full of blood" is the charge of Isaiah; and {Isa_1:15} again, "Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity." {Isa_59:7} "They build up Zion with blood," says Micah indignantly. {Mic_3:10} Jeremiah cries with still more vehemence to his generation, "Also in thy skirts is found the blood of the souls of the innocent poor": {Jer_2:34} and again, "But thine eyes and thine heart are not but for thy covetousness, and for to shed innocent blood, and for oppression, and for violence, to do it." {Jer_22:17}
We are to conceive, then, the young and active men of the day constantly tempted to take these unhallowed paths which seemed to promise wealth; the sinners were always ready to whisper in the ears of those whose life was tedious and unattractive, "Cast in thy lot among us; we will all have one purse." The moral sense of the community was not sufficiently developed to heartily condemn this life of iniquity; as in the eighteenth century among, ourselves, so in Israel when this book was written, there existed in the minds of the people at large a lurking admiration for the bold and dashing "gentlemen of the way."
The other special temptation of that day is described in our book with remarkable realism, and there is no false shame in exposing the paths of death into which it leads. In Pro_5:3-20 the subject is treated in the plainest way: "Her latter end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on Sheol." It is taken up again in Pro_6:24-35 : "Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? or can one walk upon hot coals and his feet not be scorched?" The guilty man who has been betrayed by the glitter and beauty, by the honeyed words and the soft entreaties, "shall get wounds and dishonor, and his reproach shall not be wiped away."
Pro_7:5-27 a most vivid picture is drawn of the foolish youth seduced into evil; there he is seen going as an ox to the slaughter, as one in fetters, "till an arrow strike through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life." And the Introduction closes with a delineation of Folly, which is obviously meant as a counterpart to the delineation of Wisdom in Pro_1:20, etc. {Pro_9:13-18} The miserable woman sits at the door of her house, on a seat in the high places of the city; with seductive words she wins the foolish passers-by to enter her doors: "The dead are there; her guests are in the depths of Sheol."
It is a temptation which in many varying forms has always beset human life. No small part of the danger is that this evil, above all others, grows in silence, and yet seems to be aggravated by publicity. The preacher cannot speak plainly about it, and even writers shrink from touching the subject. We can, however, be thankful that the book, which is Gods book rather than mans, knows nothing of our false modesty and conventional delicacy: it speaks out not only boldly, but minutely; it is so explicit that no man who with a prayerful heart will meditate upon its teachings need fall into the pitfall-that pitfall which seems to grow even more subtle and more seductive as civilization advances, and as the great cities absorb a larger proportion of the population; or if he fail he can only admit with shame and remorse, "I have hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof. Neither have I obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me. I was well-nigh in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly." {Pro_5:12-14}
In the second place, we must try to look at these temptations in the light of our own day, in order that we may listen to the voice of wisdom, not in the antiquarian, but rather in the practical spirit. The second temptation exists amongst us almost unchanged, except that the vast accumulation and concentration of vice in great cities has provided that mournful band of women whom a great moralist has designated the Vestal Virgins of Humanity, consecrated to shame and ruin in order to preserve unsullied the sacred flame of the domestic altar. The result of this terrible development in evil is that the deadly sin has become safer for the sinner, and in certain circles of society has become recognized as at any rate a venial fault, if not an innocent necessity. It is well to read these chapters again with our eye on the modern evil, and to let the voice of Wisdom instruct us that the life is not the less blighted because the body remains unpunished, and vice is not the less vicious because, instead of ruining others for its gratification, it feeds only on those who are already ruined. If the Wisdom of the Old Testament is obscure on this point, the Wisdom of the New Testament gives no uncertain sound. Interpreting the doctrine of our book, as Christians are bound to do, by the light of Christ, we can be left in no doubt, that to all forms of impurity applies the one principle which is here applied to a specific form: "He doeth it that would destroy his own soul." "His own iniquities shall take the wicked, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sin." {Pro_6:32 and Pro_5:22}
But with regard to the first of the two temptations, it may be urged that in our settled and ordered society it is no longer felt. "We are not tempted to become highwaymen, nor even to embark on the career of a professional thief." We are disposed to skim lightly over the warning, under the impression that it does not in any way apply to us. But stop a moment! Wisdom spoke in the first instance direct to the vice of her day, but she gave to her precepts a more general coloring, which makes it applicable to all time, when she said, "So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; it taketh away the life of the owners thereof." {Pro_1:19} The specific form of greediness described in this first chapter may have become obsolete among decent and respectable people; but that greed of gain which showed itself then in a particular form is alive today. Dressed in a different garb, it presents temptations of a slightly different order; but the spirit is the same, the issue, the fatal issue, is the same. It is a melancholy fact that in the most progressive and civilized communities the greed of gain, instead of dying out, becomes aggravated, acquires a dominant influence, and sways men as the master passion. The United States, a country so bountiful to her children that a settled peace might be supposed to pervade the life of men who can never be in fear of losing the necessaries, or even the comforts, of life, are inflamed with a fierce and fiery passion. Society is one perpetual turmoil; life is lived at the highest conceivable pressure, because each individual is seeking to gain more and ever more. In our own country, though society is less fluid, and ancient custom checks the action of disturbing forces, the passion for gain becomes every year a more exacting tyranny over the lives of the people. We are engaged in a pitiless warfare, which we dignify by the name of competition; the race is to the swift, and the battle to the strong. It becomes almost a recognized principle that man is at liberty to prey upon his fellow man. The Eternal Law of Wisdom declares that we should treat others as we treat ourselves, and count the interests of others dear as our own; it teaches us that we should show a tender consideration for the weak, and be always ready, at whatever cost, to succor the helpless. But competition says, "No; you must try rather to beat the weak out of the field; you must leave no device untried to reduce the strength of the strong, and to divert into your own hands the grist which was going to your neighbors mill." This conflict between man and man is untempered by pity, because it is supposed to be unavoidable as death itself. In a community so constituted, where business has fallen into such ways, while the strong may hold their own with a clean hand, the weaker are tempted to make up by cunning what they lack in strength, and the weakest are ground as the nether millstone. The pitilessness of the whole system is appalling, the more so because it is accepted as necessary.
The bandit life has here emerged in a new form. "Come, let us lay wait for blood," says the Sweater or the Fogger, "let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause; let us swallow them up alive as Sheol, and whole as those that go down into the pit." The Bandit is an outcast from society, and his hand is turned against the rich. The Sweater is an outcast from society, and his hand is turned against the poor. By "laying wait" he is able to demand, from weak men, women, and children, the long hours of the day for unceasing toil, and the bitter hours of the night for hunger and cold, until the gaunt creatures, worn with weariness and despair, find a solace in debauchery or an unhallowed rest in death.
Now, though the temptation to become a sweater may not affect many or any of us, I should like to ask, Are there not certain trades or occupations, into which some of us are tempted to enter, perfectly honeycombed with questionable practices? Under the pretext that it is all "business," are not things done which can only be described as preying upon the innocence or the stupidity of our neighbors? Sometimes the promise is, "We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil." {Pro_1:13} Sometimes the simple object is to escape starvation. But there is the miserable temptation to sacrifice probity and honor, to stifle compassion and thought, in order to bring into our own coffers the coveted wealth. And is there not, I ask, a similar temptation lurking in a thousand haunts more or less respectable-a temptation which may be described as the spirit of gambling? The essence of all gambling, whether it be called speculative business or gaming, in stock and share markets or in betting clubs and turf rings, is simply the attempt to trade on the supposed ignorance or misfortune of others, and to use superior knowledge or fortune for the purpose, not of helping, but of robbing them. It may be said that we do it in self-defense, and that others would do the same by us; yes, just as the bandit says to the young man, "We do not want to injure the traveler yonder; we want his purse. He will try to shoot you; you only shoot him in self-defense." It is the subtlety of all gambling that constitutes its great danger. It seems to turn on the principle that we may do what we like with our own; it forgets that its object is to get hold of what belongs to others, not by honest work or service rendered, but simply by cunning and deception.
It is, then, only too easy to recognize, in many varied shapes of so-called business and of so-called pleasure, "the ways of those who are greedy of gain." Wisdom has need to cry aloud in our streets, in the chief place of concourse, in the city, in exchanges and marts. Her warning to the young man must be explicit and solemn: "My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not." The bandit life still has its attractions, though its methods are changed; it plays upon the idle imagination: it promises freedom from laborious and distasteful toil; but it says nothing of the ways of death into which it leads.
Now, in the third place, we come to the protest of Divine Wisdom against these evil ways in which men are tempted to walk. They are, she says, folly of the most egregious kind. There may be an apparent success or a momentary gratification: "precious substance may be amassed, and houses may be filled with spoil"; but the people who are betrayed into these wicked courses "shall be cut off from the land." {Pro_2:22} They "lay wait for their own blood"; greed "taketh away the life of the owner thereof"; {Pro_1:19} and as for the strange woman, that flattereth with her words, "none that go unto her return again." {Pro_2:19}
It needs but a clear vision or a little wise reflection to see the destructive tendency of Evil. It is the commonest fact of experience that where "vice goes before, vengeance follows after." Why do men not perceive it? There is a kind of fatuity which blinds the eyes. The empty-headed bird sees the net spread out before its eyes; {Pro_1:17} many of its fellows have already been caught; the warning seems obvious enough, but it is all "in vain": eager to get the bait-the dainty morsel lying there, easy obtainable - the foolish creature approaches, looks, argues that it is swifter and stronger than its predecessors, who were but weaklings! it will wheel down, take the food, and be gone long before the flaps of the net can spring together. In the same way the empty-headed youth, warned by the experience of elders and the tender entreaties of father and mother, assured that these ways of unjust gain are ways of ruin, is yet rash enough to enter the snare in order to secure the coveted morsel. And what is the issue? Setting at naught all the counsel of Wisdom, he would none of her reproof. {Pro_1:25} A momentary success led to wilder infatuation, and convinced him that he was right, and Wisdom was wrong; but his prosperity destroyed him. Soon in the shame of exposure and the misery of remorse he discovers his mistake. Or, worse still, no exposure comes; success continues to his dying day, and he leaves his substance to his heirs; "he eats of the fruits of his own way, and is filled with his own devices," {Pro_1:31-32} but none the less he walks in the ways of darkness-in paths that are crooked and perverse-and he is consumed with inward misery. The soul within is hard, and dry, and dead; it is insensible to all feelings except feelings of torture. It is a life so dark and wretched, that when a sudden light is thrown upon its hidden secrets men are filled with astonishment and dismay, that such things could exist underneath that quiet surface.
Finally, note these two characteristics of the Divine Wisdom:
(1) she is found in her fullness only by diligent seekers; and
(2) rejected, she turns into the most scornful and implacable foe.
She is to be sought as silver or hidden treasure is sought. The search must be inspired by that eagerness of desire and passion of resolve with which avarice seeks for money. No faculty must be left unemployed: the ear is to be inclined to catch the first low sounds of wisdom; the heart is to be applied to understand what is heard; the very voice is to be lifted up in earnest inquiry. It is a well-known fact that the fear of the Lord and the knowledge of God are not fruits which grow on every wayside bush, to be plucked by every idle passer-by, to be dropped carelessly and trodden under foot. Without seriousness and devotion, without protracted and unflagging toil, the things of God are not to be attained. You must be up betimes; you must be on your knees early; you must lay open the book of Wisdom, pore over its pages, and diligently turn its leaves, meditating on its sayings day and night. The kingdom of God and His righteousness must be sought, yes, and sought first, sought exclusively, as the one important object of desire. That easy indifference, that lazy optimism-"it will all come right in the end"-that habit of delay in deciding, that inclination to postpone the eternal realities to vanishing shadows, will be your ruin. The time may come when you will call, and there will be no answer, when you will seek diligently, but shall not find. Then in the day of your calamity, when your fear cometh, what a smile of scorn will seem to be on Wisdoms placid brow, and around her eloquent lips! What derision will seem to ring in the well-remembered counsels which you rejected. {Pro_1:24-31} O tide in the affairs of men! O tide in the affairs of God! We are called to stand by death-beds, to look into anguished eyes which know that it is too late. The bandit of commercial life passes into that penal servitude which only death will end; what agony breaks out and hisses in his remorse! The wretched victim of lust passes from the house of his sin down the path which inclines unto death; how terrible is that visage which just retains smirched traces that purity once was there! The voice rings down the doleful road, "If I had only been wise, if I had given ear, wisdom might have entered even into my heart, knowledge might have been pleasant even to my soul!"
And wisdom still cries to us, "Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you."
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v12 Pro_2:12. Deliver, “snatch,” as a brand out of the…
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Pro_2:12. Deliver, “snatch,” as a brand out of the fire. Evil man, rather “an evil way.”
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Pro_2:13. “Level” paths.
Pro_2:16. Strange, “unknown,” “wanton” (see 1Ki_11:1-8).
Pro_2:17. Guide, or “companion,” “confidant,” her lawful husband.
Pro_2:18. House, in the East means “interests;” a man’s whole blended well-being (Exo_1:21).—Miller. (On Pro_2:16-18 see Note at the beginning of Chap. 7)
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH—Pro_2:12-20
THE CHARACTER OF THOSE FROM WHOM WISDOM PRESERVES
I. The evil man.
1. His speech is corrupt, Pro_2:12. The closed grave contains death and holds within it the seeds of pestilence, but while it remains unopened the corrupt influence remains enclosed in its narrow walls. But should it be opened, and its foulness allowed to fill the air, it begins to set in motion what will strike men down to its own level. The mouth of the wicked man while kept shut is a closed grave, his iniquity is shut up within himself, but when he speaks out the thoughts of his heart his mouth is as an open sepulchre, and he spreads around him moral disease and death.
2. He is a man of progressive iniquity. “He walks in the ways of darkness.” When a stone is set in motion, the momentum given to it, if no other law comes into operation to prevent it, will carry it to the lowest level in the direction in which it travels. The progress of wickedness is downhill, and walking in the ways of darkness implies a destination which in Scripture is called “outer darkness.”
3. He delights in his downward progress. Sorrow and joy are revealers of human hearts. The saint rejoices in whatsoever things are pure, lovely, and of good report, and in his increase of power to do the same. That which rejoices him reveals his heart. The sinner that “rejoices to do evil and delights in the forwardness of the wicked,” brings to light the hidden things of darkness that are within him.
II. The wicked woman.
1. She is, pre-eminently, a covenant-breaker. The ribs of a vessel hold and keep together the whole structure, and enable it to keep its cargo safe. If the ribs give way, all goes to pieces, and the precious things which have been stored up within the ship are lost in the ocean. Human society is belted together—kept from going to pieces—by covenants. They are the ribs which keep together the State. The marriage covenant holds the first place. The woman whose character is here depicted has broken the bonds of this most sacred covenant—to which God was a witness (the covenant of an institution of His own ordination)—and has taken to the “strange” way of the devil. Well may she be called a strange woman. That a woman should be guilty of such a crime—should choose such a course of life, so opposed to all that is pure and womanly—is indeed a mystery.
2. She is a destroyer, not only of herself, but of others. When the river has broken through its proper boundaries there is a present and continual destruction, of which the bursting of its banks was only the beginning. This woman in the past broke the moral boundaries of her life, and is now not content to go to ruin herself, but tries to take others with her. To this end are her false and flattering words, of which we shall hear more in chapter Pro_5:3. She carries her victims beyond hope of recovery. There are no rules without exceptions. We know that there are those who have for a time been under the influence of such characters, and have returned to the paths of virtue and honour. But these are rare exceptions. In the main, it is, alas! true that “none that go unto her return again.” A vessel founders at sea, and we say that the crew is lost, although one survivor may have been rescued. We speak of an army being destroyed if one escapes to tell the tale. Where one who has taken hold on her paths struggles back to life and purity, thousands go down with her to death, bodily, social, and spiritual.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Pro_2:12. To snatch (see “Critical Notes.”) “The way of evil.” The terms begin gently. It is only the gentle aspects that are dangerous at first. These are so fascinating that it requires us to be snatched to keep us out of the ways of darkness.—Miller.
Pro_2:13. Among the pests of men, none are such virulent pests of everything that is good as those that once made a profession of religion, but have left the way of uprightness. The stings of conscience which such persons experience, instead of reclaiming them, tend only to irritate their spirits, and inflame them into fierce enmity against religion.—Lawson.
Darkness, as thus set in contrast with uprightness, may be interpreted as descriptive both of the nature of the ways, and of their tendency and end. The man who walks in uprightness walks in light. His eye is “single.” There is “none occasion of stumbling in him.” He has but one principle; his “eyes look right on, his eyelids look straight before him.” He is not always looking this way and that, for devious paths that may suit a present purpose, but presses on ever in the same course; and thus all is light, all plain, all safe. “The ways of darkness” are the ways of concealment, evasion, cunning, tortuous policy and deceit. He who walks in them is ever groping; hiding himself among the subtleties of “fleshly wisdom”: and being ways of false principle and sin, they are ways of danger, and shame, and ruin.—Wardlaw.
There is a strictly causal and reciprocal relation between unrighteous deeds and moral darkness. The doing of evil produces darkness, and darkness produces the evil doing. Indulged lusts put out the eye-sight of the conscience; and under the darkened conscience the lusts revel unchecked.—Arnot.
The light stands in the way of their wicked ways as the angel did in Balaam’s way to his sin.—Trapp.
Pro_2:14. Though it be wormwood which they drink (Lam_3:15), yet being drunk with it, they perceive not the bitterness thereof, but like drunken men rejoice in their shame and misery.—Jermin.
Better is the sorrow of him that suffereth evil than the jollity of him that doeth evil, saith St. Augustine.—Trapp.
Here is a note of trial to discern our spiritual estate. Wicked men rejoice in sin; good men sorrow more for sin than for troubles.… Many triumph in their evil deeds because they have no good to boast of. And men are naturally proud and would boast of something.—Francis Taylor.
Pro_2:16. There is no viler object in nature than an adulteress. Though born and baptised in a Christian land, she is to be looked upon as a heathen woman and a stranger, and as self-made brutes are greater monsters than natural brute beasts, so baptised heathens are by far the worst of pagans.—Lawson.
This strange woman is an emblem of impenitence. The passage 16–19, means the seductiveness and yet the betraying wretchedness of impenitence. The woman who has left her husband has also left her God; and the nulla vestigia retrorsum witnessed in her dupes is the warning for the saint by which he keeps clear of her undoing. No man would err who would treat of adultery as having its lessons here. But no man would understand the passage who did not understand it further as a great picture of impenitence. The warnings are two:
(1) the un-stopping-short character of sin; she who wrongs her husband will be seen universally wronging God; and
(2) the unrecuperative history of the lost.—Miller.
Twice Solomon uses a similar expression, “the strange woman (even) the stranger,” to impress more forcibly on the young man the fact that her person belongs to another. The literal and spiritual adulteress are both meant. The spiritual gives to the world her person and her heart, which belong by right to God. In this sense the foreign women who subsequently drew aside Solomon himself, were “strange women,” not so much in respect to their local distance from Israel, as in respect to their being utterly alien to the worship of God. Lust and idolatry were the spiritual adultery into which they entrapped the once wise king. How striking that he should utter beforehand a warning which he himself afterwards disregarded.—Fausset.
We are not to forget that the accomplished seducer has herself perhaps been seduced. The fair and flattering words, the endless arts of allurement, are on both sides.—Wardlaw.
One who is as it were, a stranger to her own house and husband by faithlessness (Hitzig), and hence a type of anything that is false and seductive in doctrine or practice.… By God’s goodness Solomon’s words in this divinely inspired book were an antidote to the poison of his own vicious example.—Wordsworth.
Pro_2:17. False doctrine and false worship are in Scripture compared to harlotry and adultery. (Num_14:33; Jdg_2:17; Jdg_8:33; Psa_106:39; Rev_17:1-2; Rev_18:3.—Wordsworth.
It is God that is the guide of her youth, whoever may be under Him; it is God’s covenant that is made, whosoever may be the contractor in it. It is God who is first forsaken, then forgotten; forsaken in the beginning of wickedness, forgotten in the hardened practice of it. God hath appointed guides for youth—to stay the weakness of it, and to which, as unto God, youth ought to yield obedience. For elder years He hath appointed covenants as bonds and chains to hold them sure.—Jermin.
There is no trusting them that will fail God and their near friends. If they fail God, they will fail men for their advantage. If they fail friends—much more strangers.—Francis Taylor.
Pro_2:18. When you get into the company of the licentious, you are among the dead. They move about like men in outward appearance, but the best attributes of humanity have disappeared—the best affections of nature have been drained away from their hearts.—Arnot.
Her house is not a building reared up, but inclined and bowed down, and she who dwelleth in it will, by her life, bring thee to the dead.… Death is here twice mentioned to show that it is a double death, a temporal death, and an eternal death, to which she bringeth men.—Jermin.
Pro_2:19. Who would cast himself into a deep pit in the hopes of coming out alive, when almost all that fell into it were dashed in pieces.—Lawson.
It is as hard to restore a lustful person to chastity as it is to restore a dead person to life.—Chrysostom.
A sin which, I am verily persuaded, if there be another that slays her thousands, may with truth be affirmed to slay its ten thousands.—Wardlaw.
Pro_2:20. Here follows the whole ground of the exhibition: “That,” for the very purpose that “thou mayest walk in the way of good men.” This is a grand, pregnant doctrine. This bad life was abandoned to its worst partly as a lesson.—Miller.
It is not enough to shun the evil way, unless men walk in the good way.—Muffet.
He that walks in the way of good men shall meet with good men, and that shall keep him from the company of evil men and women. The paths of the righteous are too narrow for such: he shall not be troubled with them.—Jermin.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v14 They rejoice
They rejoice
"They" refers to the same people as in Proverbs 2:12.
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delight in the perversities of evil
This means basically the same thing as the first part of the sentence. AT: "delight in doing what they know is evil" (See: Parallelism)
They follow crooked paths
People who lie to others are spoken of as if they walk on crooked or twisted paths. AT: "They deceive other people" (See: Metaphor)
using deception they hide their tracks
People lying so that others will not find out what they did is spoken of as if they covered the tracks on a path so that no one could follow them. AT: "they lie so that no one will know what they have done" (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
joy
evil
deceive
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v12 2:12-15 Wisdom discerns when words are twisted to represent…
2:12-15 Wisdom discerns when words are twisted to represent what is wrong as being right. The right way leads to life, the wrong way to death (1:10-19; 2:18-19; 5:5-6; 9:1-6, 13-18). • dark paths: In the New Testament, darkness represents the realm of evil, while light represents the realm of God’s goodness (Matt 4:16; 5:14-16; John 1:14; Rom 2:19).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.