Proverbs 4:15 - Exposition

Avoid it; p'raehu, the kal imperative of para, properly, "to let go," hence "to reject, or abhor." (On the verb, see Proverbs 1:25 , where it is rendered, "set at naught.") The same verb also occurs in Proverbs 8:33 ; Proverbs 13:18 ; Proverbs 15:32 . It ; i.e. the way. The suffix of the verb in the original is feminine, "avoid her ;" derek, "the way," being common. Turn from it ( s'teh mealayv ) . The original is a pregnant expression equivalent to "turn aside from it, so that you do not come to stand upon it." The word mealayv, equivalent to the Latin desuper ea, has much the same force as the French de dessus and the Italian di sopra (Delitzsch). The verb satah is, as in the Authorized Version, "to turn, or go aside." Pass away; avor, kal imperative of avar, "to pass over," equivalent to Latin transire, here means "to pass on, or along," "to go beyond," like the German Ger weiter gehn. The counsel of the father is not only "turn aside from," but "put the greatest possible distance between you and it." The injunction, so absolutely stated, to have nothing to do with sin, is required, if not indeed prompted, by the knowledge of the fact that youth, confident in its own power of resistance, frequently indulges in the fatal mistake of imagining that it can dally with sin with impunity. The only course compatible with safety is to entirely avoid it.