10 For wisdom will enter your heart And knowledge will be pleasant to your soul ; 11 Discretion will guard you, Understanding will watch over you, 12 To deliver you from the way of evil , From the man who speaks perverse things ; 13 From those who leave the paths of uprightness To walk in the ways of darkness ; 14 Who delight in doing evil And rejoice in the perversity of evil ; 15 Whose paths are crooked , And who are devious in their ways ; 16 To deliver you from the strange woman , From the adulteress who flatters with her words ; 17 That leaves the companion of her youth And forgets the covenant of her God ; 18 For her house sinks down to death And her tracks lead to the dead ; 19 None e who go to her return again, Nor do they reach the paths of life . 20 So you will walk in the way of good men And keep to the paths of the righteous . 21 For the upright will live in the land And the blameless will remain in it; 22 But the wicked will be cut off from the land And the treacherous will be uprooted from it.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Proverbs 2:10-22
Commentary on Proverbs 2:10-22
(Read Proverbs 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. To the wicked it is all the heaven they ever shall have; to the righteous it is the place of preparation for heaven. And is it all one to us, whether we share with the wicked in the miseries of their latter end, or share those everlasting joys that shall crown believers?