Proverbs 1:16 - Exposition

For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood. This is the first dissuasive urged to enforce the warning against evil companionship, as showing the extremes to which entering upon the ways of the wicked lead ultimately. At once the youth who listens will be hurried along impetuously to the two crimes of robbery and murder, which God has expressly forbidden in the eighth and sixth commandments respectively of the moral code. Evil ( רַע , ra ) is "wickedness," τὸ κακόν , generally, but hero more specifically highway robbery, latrocinism (Cornelius a Lapide), as appears from Proverbs 1:11-13 , where also murder, the laying in wait for blood, is proposed. The Rabbis Salomon and Salazar understand the evil to refer to the evil or destruction which sinners bring upon themselves, and the shedding of blood to the fact that they lay themselves open to have their own blond shed by judicial process (see also Holden). The former explanation seems preferable to this, as putting a higher law than that of self-preservation before youth. The fear of judges who can condemn to death is notbing comparatively to the fear of him "who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell." This verse is wanting in the Vatican LXX ; and Arabic, and hence Hitzig has concluded that it is an interpolation made from Isaiah 59:7 , but upon insufficient evidence, as it is found in the Alexandrian LXX ; Chaldea Paraphrase, Vulgate, and Syriac Versions, all which follow the Hebrew text. The latter part of the verse is quoted by St. Paul in Romans 3:15 .