Proverbs 2:14

2:10-22 If we are truly wise, we shall be careful to avoid all evil company and evil practices. When wisdom has dominion over us, then it not only fills the head, but enters into the heart, and will preserve, both against corruptions within and temptations without. The ways of sin are ways of darkness, uncomfortable and unsafe: what fools are those who leave the plain, pleasant, lightsome paths of uprightness, to walk in such ways! They take pleasure in sin; both in committing it, and in seeing others commit it. Every wise man will shun such company. True wisdom will also preserve from those who lead to fleshly lusts, which defile the body, that living temple, and war against the soul. These are evils which excite the sorrow of every serious mind, and cause every reflecting parent to look upon his children with anxiety, lest they should be entangled in such fatal snares. Let the sufferings of others be our warnings. Our Lord Jesus deters from sinful pleasures, by the everlasting torments which follow them. It is very rare that any who are caught in this snare of the devil, recover themselves; so much is the heart hardened, and the mind blinded, by the deceitfulness of this sin. Many think that this caution, besides the literal sense, is to be understood as a caution against idolatry, and subjecting the soul to the body, by seeking any forbidden object. The righteous must leave the earth as well as the wicked; but the earth is a very different thing to them.

Who rejoice to do evil,.... At the doing of it, or when they have done it; they are glad of an opportunity of doing mischief, and glory when they have done it; it is a sport and pastime to them, Proverbs 10:2 ; they take pleasure in the act of sin, and have no remorse of conscience afterwards; they speak of it in an exulting manner, and boast of it, and glory in their shame; and delight in the frowardness of the wicked: of the wicked man, as Aben Ezra and Gersom supply it; in the perversities and contradictions of every wicked man; they not only take pleasure in their own sins, but in the sins of others, and in them that commit them; which is an aggravation of their wickedness, Romans 1:32; they delight to hear a man speak froward and perverse things; things against God, and Christ, and religion, against all good men, and everything that is good; against the Gospel, the doctrines and ordinances of it; and they delight to see him do things perverse and contrary to the will of God. The Vulgate Latin version renders it, "they exult in the worst things".

Who rejoice to do evil; seeking and embracing occasions of sin with diligence and greediness, and pleasing themselves both in the practice and remembrance of sin; whereas upright men abhor and watch against all occasions of sin beforehand, and mourn bitterly for it afterwards. Delight in the frowardness of the wicked; not only in their own sins, but in the sins of other wicked men, which shows a greater malignity of mind and love to sin. See Romans 1:32 .

Verse 14. - Who rejoice to do evil. Another element is here brought forward, and the description increases in intensity. The wicked not only rejoice to do evil themselves, but they exult when they hear of evil in others (cf. Romans 1:32 ). Such may be the interpretation, though the latter part, of the verse is capable of a different and more general rendering as signifying exultation in evil generally, whether it appears in themselves or others. The expression rendered in the Authorized Version, in the frowardness of the wicked, is in the original ( בְּתַחְפֻכות רַע b'thah'pucoth ra ), in the perverseness of evil , or in evil perverseness, where the combination of the two nouns serves to give force to the main idea, which is that of perverseness. This rendering is adopted in the LXX., ἐπὶ διαστροφῇ κακῇ , "in evil distortion;" in the Vulgate, in pessimis rebus ; in the Targum, Syriac, and Arabic, in conversatione mala , "in a bad course of conduct;" and in the Targum, in malitiae perversione , "in the perversion of wickedness." It is not perverseness in its simple and common form that these men exult in. but in its worst and most vicious form (for a similar construction, see Proverbs 6:24 ; Proverbs 15:26 ; and Proverbs 28:5). How widely different is the conduct of charity, which "rejoiceth not in iniquity" ( 1 Corinthians 13:6 )! Proverbs 2:14

In this verse the regimen of the מן, 12b, is to be regarded as lost; the description now goes on independently. Whoever does not shrink back from evil, but gives himself up to deceit, who finally is at home in it as in his own proper life-element, and rejoices, yea, delights in that which he ought to shun as something destructive and to be rejected. The neut. רע is frequently an attributive genit., Proverbs 6:24 ; Proverbs 15:26 ; Proverbs 28:5 ; cf. טוב, Proverbs 24:25 , which here, since תּהפּכות are those who in themselves are bad, does not separate, but heightens: perversitates non simplices aut vulgares, sed pessimae et ex omni parte vitiosae (J. H. Michaelis). With אשׁר (οἵτινες), Proverbs 2:15 , this part is brought to a conclusion. Fleischer, Bertheau, and others interpret ארחתיהם, as the accus. of the nearer definition, as σκολιὸς τὸν νοῦν, τὰς πράξεις; but should it be an accus., then would we expect, in this position of the words, עקּשׁוּ ( Isaiah 59:8 ; Proverbs 10:8 , cf. Proverbs 9:15 ). עקּשׁים is the pred.; for ארח, like דּרך, admits of both genders. וּנלוזים carries in it its subject הם; לוּז, like the Arab. l'd, l'dh, is a weaker form of לוּץ, flectere, inclinare, intrans. recedere: they are turned aside, inclined out of the way to the right and left in their walk (בּ as Proverbs 17:20 ).

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