Proverbs 1:10-19 My son, if sinners entice you, consent you not.… The temptation against which the teacher seeks to guard his disciple is that of joining a band of highway robbers. At no period in its history has Palestine ever risen to the security of a well-ordered police system, and the wild license of the marauder's life attracted, we may well believe, many who were brought up in towns. The "vain men" who gathered round Jephthah (Judges 11:3), the lawless or discontented who came to David in Adullam (1 Samuel 22:2), the bands of robbers who infested every part of the country in the period of the New Testament, and against whom every Roman governor had to wage incessant war, show how deeply rooted the evil was there. The story of St. John and the young convert who became a robber, the most interesting of all apostolic traditions, may serve as another illustration. The history of many centuries (our own, e.g., in the popular traditions of Robin Hood and of Henry V.), presents like phenomena. The robber-life has attractions for the open-hearted and adventurous. No generation, perhaps no class, can afford to despise the warning against it. (Dean Plumptre.) Parallel Verses KJV: My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. |
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