Proverbs 4:14 - Exposition

From admonition the father passes to warning. The connection with the preceding section is obvious. There are two ways diametrically opposite—the way of wisdom and the way of evil; the one the way of life, the other fraught with death, because a way of darkness and violence. As the father has dealt with the former, so now he deals with the latter. With these warnings we may also comp. Proverbs 1:10-15 and Proverbs 2:10-15 , where much the same warning is given, and the way of the wicked is described in almost the same terms. The warning of the father takes a threefold form:

In effect he says this is the only course to be adopted in order to keep a firm hold of Wisdom which he has counselled in the preceding verse (13). Enter not; al-tavo, from bo . "to come in," "to enter," i.e. do not even enter. The Vulgate renders, "Delight not in," evidently from reading tove, which occurs in Proverbs 1:10 . But our reading is to be preferred, as avah , "to acquiesce in," from which tov'e, is not used with בִּ , here denoting place, but with לִ . Go not ( al-t'ashsher ); i.e. do not walk in. The two verbs "to enter" ( bo ) and "to go" ( ishsher ) stand in the relation of entering and going on—ingressus and progressus. So Gejerus and Delitzsch. The piel ishsher, here used, is properly "to go straight on," like the kal ashar, of which it is an intensive (cf. Proverbs 9:6 ). It is the bold, presumptuous walk, the stepping straight out of the evil, which is here indicated, and against this the father warns his son. The sense is, "If you have entered the way of the wicked, do not continue or persevere in it." The other meanings of the verb ashar, viz. "to guide straight" ( Proverbs 23:19 ), "to esteem happy and prosperous" ( Proverbs 31:28 ), are not in place here, as they destroy the parallelism of thought, and on the same ground the LXX . and Syriac renderings, "envy not" and μηδὲ ζηλώσῆς , are to be rejected. The wicked ( ishaim ) , i.e. the godless (cf, Psalms 1:1 ), is parallel with "evil men" ( raim ) , i.e. the habitually wicked.