Proverbs 1:10

1:10-19 Wicked people are zealous in seducing others into the paths of the destroyer: sinners love company in sin. But they have so much the more to answer for. How cautious young people should be! Consent thou not. Do not say as they say, nor do as they do, or would have thee to do; have no fellowship with them. Who could think that it should be a pleasure to one man to destroy another! See their idea of worldly wealth; but it is neither substance, nor precious. It is the ruinous mistake of thousands, that they overvalue the wealth of this world. Men promise themselves in vain that sin will turn to their advantage. The way of sin is down-hill; men cannot stop themselves. Would young people shun temporal and eternal ruin, let them refuse to take one step in these destructive paths. Men's greediness of gain hurries them upon practices which will not suffer them or others to live out half their days. What is a man profited, though he gain the world, if he lose his life? much less if he lose his soul?

Proverbs 1:10-14 . My son, if sinners — Sinners of any description; entice thee — To sin, to commit any known iniquity, or to omit any known duty; consent thou not — Yield not in any degree to their advice, persuasions, or solicitations, for why shouldest thou destroy thyself to gratify them? If they say, Come with us — We are numerous, and strong, and sociable. Let us lay wait for blood — That is, to shed blood. He does not intend to express their words, for such words would rather affright than inveigle one that was yet a novice in wickedness, but he signifies what was the true nature, and would be the consequence of the action, in which they wished the person they addressed to join them, and what lay at the bottom of their specious pretences. Let us lurk privily for the innocent — For harmless travellers, suppose, and others that, suspecting no danger, are not prepared for opposition; without cause — Though they have not provoked us, nor deserved this usage from us. This Solomon adds, to discover their malignity and baseness, and so to deter the young man from associating with them. Let us swallow them up as the grave — Which speedily covers and consumes dead bodies. We shall do our work quickly, easily, and without fear of discovery. We shall find all precious substance — As our danger is little, so our profit will be great.

Cast in thy lot among us — Or, rather, Thou shalt cast thy lot among us, that is, Thou shalt have a share with us, and that equally, and by lot, although thou art but a novice, and we are veterans. Let us all have — Or, we will all have; one purse — One purse shall receive all our profits, and furnish us with all expenses. So we shall live with great facility, and true friendship.

(10) If sinners entice thee.— A warning against taking part in brigandage, a crime to which Palestine was at all times peculiarly exposed, from the wild character of its formation, and from its neighbourhood to predatory tribes, who would invade the country whenever the weakness of the government gave them an opening. The insecurity to life and property thus occasioned would provide a tempting opportunity for the wilder spirits of the community to seek a livelihood by plunder.

The Teacher passes from Appeal to Warning: Against Evil Companions. Chap. 1. Proverbs 1:10-19 10 . sinners ] The warning points to a state of society of which indications are to be found not only in the unsettled times “when the Judges ruled” and before the monarchy was firmly established, when “vain” and “discontented” men banded together to lead the life of the outlaw and the freebooter ( Jdg 11:3 ; 1 Samuel 22:2 ); but also in the better ordered periods of Jewish history when Psalmist and prophet inveigh against those who lurk privily in secret to murder the innocent ( Psalm 10:8-10 ), and those whose feet are swift to shed blood ( Isaiah 59:7 ). When our Lord was upon earth such robbing with violence and bloodshed was so familiar an incident in Palestine that He was able to make it the groundwork of a parable ( Luke 10:30 ). And it is so still. “Strange country! and it has always been so. There are a hundred allusions to just such things in the history, the psalms and the prophets of Israel. A whole class of imagery is based upon them. Psalm 10:8-10 ; ‘He sitteth in the lurking-places of the villages’ &c.

And a thousand rascals, the living originals of this picture, are this day crouching and lying in wait all over the country to catch poor helpless travellers.” (Thomson, The Land and the Book , p. 314.) Two hundred years ago, when young men even of birth and education were to be found in the ranks of the highwaymen who overran the country (see, for example, Macaulay, Hist. of Eng . Vol. i. ch. iii.), the warning was no less apposite in England. In our own day, even in the special form which it here assumes, the warning, in view of the gangs of desperate men, poachers and burglars, to be found still both in towns and in the country, has not come to be superfluous, while in its wider aspect, “My son, if sinners entice thee consent thou not,” it is of universal application.

Verse 10. - My son, if sinners entice thee. (As to the form of address, see ver. 8.) It is here used because the writer is passing to a warning against bad company, and hence the term is emphatic, and intended to call especial attention to what is said. It is repeated again in ver. 15, at a further stage in this address, with the same view. Sinners ; חַטָּאִים ( khattaim ), the plural of חַטָּא ( khatta ), from the root חָטָּא ( khata ), properly "to miss the mark, to err;" cf. Greek, ἀμαρτάνω , "to sin" (Gesenius), here equivalent to "habitual, abandoned sinners," and those especially who make robbery and bloodshed a profession. Not simply peccantes, i.e. sinners as a generic designation of the human race, for "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God" ( Romans 3:23 ), but peccatores (Chaldee, Syriac, Pagin., Tigur., Versions and Vulgate). "sinners," i.e. those who sin habitually, knowingly, wilfully, and maliciously (Gejerus), or those who give themselves up to iniquity, and persuade others to follow their example (Cartwright). In the New Testament they are styled ἀμαρτωλοὶ . They are those of whom David speaks in strikingly parallel language in Psalm 26:9 , "Gather not my soul with sinners ( khattaim ), nor my life with bloody men" (cf. Psalm 1:1 ). The LXX. has ἄνδρες ἀσεβεῖς ( i.e. ungodly, unholy men).

Entice thee ; ' יְפַתּוּך ( y'phattukha ); the piel form, פִתָּה ( pitah ), of the kal פָתָּה ( patah ), "to open," and hence to make accessible to persuasion, akin to the Greek πειθεῖν , "to persuade." The noun פְּתִי ( p'thi ), is "one easily enticed or persuaded" (Gesenius). The LXX. reads μὴ πλανήσωσιν , "let them not lead thee astray." The idea is expressed in the Vulgate by lactaverint ; i.e. "if sinners allure or deceive thee with fair words." The Syriac, Montan., Jun. et Tremell., Versions read pellexerint , from pellicio , "to entice." Consent thou not. ( אַלאּתֹּבֵא , al-tove א ). The Masoretic text here has been emended by Kennicott and De Rossi, who, on the joint authority of fifty-eight manuscripts, maintain that תֹּבֵא ( tove א ) should be written תּלֺאבֵא ( tosves ). Others read תָּבלֺא ( tavos ) , i.e. "thou shalt not go," which, though good sense, is incorrect. אַלאּ ( al ) is the adverb of negation, i . q. μὴ , ne. The Hebrew תֹּבֵא ( toves ) is derived from אָבָה ( avah ). "to agree to, to be willing" (Gesenius, Delitzsch), the preformative א being omitted, and is accurately rendered by the LXX., μὴ βουληθῇς , and the Vulgate, ne acquiescas. The warning is especially brief and striking. The only answer to all enticements of evil is a decided negative (Plumptre). Compare St. Paul's advice to the Ephesians ( Ephesians 5:11 , "And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them"). Proverbs 1:10