Proverbs 2:15

Whose ways are crooked, and they froward in their paths:

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

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?

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The evil-doers here include not robbers and murderers only Proverbs 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." Proverbs 2:14 is the lowest depth of all.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

15. crooked—tortuous, unprincipled.

froward—literally, (they) are going back, not only aside from right, but opposite to it.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Whose ways are crooked, or, who make their ways crooked, i.e. whose course of life swerves from the right and straight way of God’s law.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Whose ways are crooked,.... Which swerve from and are not agreeably to the rule of the divine word, either the law of God or the Gospel of Christ; sin is an aberration, a straying from the rule of God's word, a transgression of his law; and a walk in it is unbecoming the Gospel of Christ; it has many serpentine windings and turnings in it; full of distortions and excursions, and many retrograde actions; see Psalm 125:5;

and they froward in their paths; declining here and there, sometimes going one way and sometimes another, but always following that which is evil, and resolute to continue therein.

Geneva Study Bible

Whose ways are crooked, and they froward in their paths:

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

15. whose ways, &c.] Rather, with R.V.:

Who are crooked in their ways,

And perverse in their paths.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 15. - Whose ways are crooked; better, perhaps, who as to their ways are crooked. This is the construction adopted by Fleischer, Berthean, Zockler, and others, though it may be remarked that the substantive אֹרַח (orakh), "way," is common gender, and may thin; agree with the adjective עֵקֵשׁ (ikesh), "perverse," which is masculine. The Targum, LXX., Vulgate, Syriac, and Arabic, all make "crooked" agree with "ways," do that, grammatically, the Authorized Version may be regarded as not incorrect. Crooked (עִקְּשִׁים ik'shim); i.e. tortuous, perverse, not straightforward, (σκολιαὶ, LXX.). Symmachus translates the original by σκαμβαί, i.e. "bent." Theodotion, by στριβλαί, "twisted, crookt? Sinners, in their perverseness, are ever winding about, turning in every direction, and changing from purpose to purpose, as wayward caprice or shifting inclination, the alternations of evil propensity, happen to dictate (Wardlaw). (For the expressions "crooked ways," see Psalm 125:5.) And they froward in their paths; i.e. perverse in their paths. The root idea of the Hebrew niph. participle וּנְלוזִים (vun'lozim), translated "and they froward," is "to bend aside," "to turn away." They are turned aside to the right hand and to the left in their walk. The niph. participle נָלוז (naloz) only occurs four times in the Scriptures - here; Proverbs 3:32; Proverbs 14:2; and Isaiah 30:12. This is the last feature in their wickedness. Proverbs 2:15

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

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).