Proverbs 2:10 - Meaning and Application

These verses show three things: the great benefit true wisdom gives us, the right use we should make of God’s wisdom, and the marks by which we can tell whether we truly have it. True wisdom will keep us from the paths of sin, which lead to ruin. That protection is a greater kindness than if wisdom gave us all the wealth in the world.

We should use the wisdom God gives us to guide our own lives in the path of virtue and to defend ourselves against every kind of temptation. Like a tree known by its fruit, real wisdom shows itself in our care to avoid evil company and evil practices. If we are truly wise, it will be seen in the way we live.

Wisdom will preserve us from evil, and therefore from the trouble that sin brings. In general, when wisdom has full control of a person, it keeps that person safe (Pro 2:10, Pro 2:11). This happens when wisdom rules the heart, not just fills the mind with ideas. It also happens when a person takes real delight in wisdom, so that knowledge becomes pleasant to the soul. Then the restraints of godliness, even if they are hard on the body at times, are still sweet to the soul.

When wisdom has this place in us, discretion will preserve us and keep us. God keeps the way of his saints (Pro 2:8) by giving them good judgment, so they can avoid danger and keep themselves from the evil one. A living principle of grace in the heart is a strong protection against inward corruption and outward temptation (Ecc 9:16, Ecc 9:18).

More particularly, wisdom keeps us from men and women who lead others into sin. It first delivers us from the evil man (Pro 2:12), and that is a blessed rescue, like being saved from the very jaws of death. Such people speak twisted things against religion and try to turn young minds away from it and toward vice. They are not alone, either, but belong to a group that works together against God’s truth.

These people oppose what is good. They speak perverse things, saying all they can against religion to show their own hatred and to turn others away. They are advocates for Satan. They also leave the paths of uprightness, though they were once taught them, and walk in the ways of darkness (Pro 2:13). Sin is dark, unsafe, and unhappy. How foolish it is to leave the clear and pleasant paths of upright living for those ways.

They also take pleasure in sin, both when they do it themselves and when others do it too (Pro 2:14). It is a game to them to do wrong. They are glad when they can see wicked plans succeed, or when hopeful people are drawn into sin and then hardened in it. They are pleased when the devil’s kingdom seems to gain ground (see Rom 1:32). They are set in their sin as well. Their ways are crooked, full of twists and excuses to avoid the sting of conscience and the warnings of God’s word (Pro 2:15). Every wise person should avoid their company.

Wisdom also keeps us from women of corrupt conduct. The first kind of evil leads to sins of the mind, while this kind leads to bodily lusts that defile the body, which is meant to be a living temple, and also fight against the soul. The adulteress is called the strange woman because no one who has wisdom or goodness should have anything to do with her. Every Israelite should shun her as if she were a foreigner, a stranger to God’s people.

It is a great mercy to be rescued from her temptations, especially because she is so false. She is false to the man she tempts. She speaks sweetly and pretends great affection, but she only flatters with her words. She has no real care for his good, any more than Delilah cared for Samson. She only wants to satisfy her own lust and take what she can from him.

She is also false to her husband, breaking the sacred duty she owes him. He was the guide of her youth, the man she chose to follow in marriage. She promised to be faithful to him and to leave all others. But she has forsaken him, so no one should think she would be faithful to anyone else. Anyone who welcomes her shares in her falsehood.

Thirdly, she is false to God himself. She forgets the covenant of her God, the marriage covenant (Proverbs 2:17). God is not only a witness to that covenant, but also a party to it, because he established marriage. So both husband and wife promise him to be faithful to each other. In sinning, she is not only wronging her husband, but also her God, who will judge sexually immoral people and adulterers because they despise the oath and break the covenant (Ezekiel 17:18; Malachi 2:14).

[2.] Consider how dangerous it is for those who join themselves to her (Proverbs 2:18, Proverbs 2:19). Let the suffering of others warn us. We must watch out for the sin of sexual immorality. First, the ruin of those guilty of it is sure and cannot be avoided, unless they repent. This sin tends directly toward the death of the soul. It kills good desires and good habits in the heart, and it exposes a person to God’s anger, his curse, and the sword of his justice. Those who live for forbidden pleasures are dead while they live.

Let wisdom keep every man from the evil woman, and also from the evil house, because that house leads toward death. It is on the road that goes straight to eternal death. Her paths lead to Rephaim, or the dead, as some read it, meaning the giants, the sinners of the old world, who lived in luxury and wild living, and were cut down too soon when the flood swept away their foundation. Our Lord Jesus warns us away from sinful pleasures by reminding us of the lasting punishments that follow them, where the worm does not die and the fire is not put out (Matthew 5:28, Matthew 5:29).

Second, repentance and recovery are extremely risky. Few, if any, who go to her ever return again. It is very rare for anyone trapped in this snare of the devil to free himself again, because this sin hardens the heart and blinds the mind. Once people lose their grip on the paths of life, they do not know how to take hold of them again. They become deeply foolish and enslaved by those shameful desires.

Many learned interpreters think this warning about the strange woman should also be taken in a spiritual sense, as a warning against idolatry, which is spiritual adultery. Wisdom will keep you from getting too close to the worshipers of images, and from any desire to join them, something that had long harmed Israel and had harmed Solomon himself. It also warns against the mind and soul being corrupted by the body’s lusts and appetites. Wisdom will keep you from being controlled by the fleshly mind, and from putting the spirit under the rule of the flesh. The flesh is that unfaithful adulteress that leaves its guide, breaks the covenant of our God, leads to death, and, when it gains full control, leaves the soul in a desperate condition.

II. This wisdom will also guide us in what is good (Proverbs 2:20): that you may walk in the way of good men. We must avoid the way of the evil man and the strange woman if we want to walk in good paths. We must stop doing evil before we can learn to do good. There is a way that belongs especially to good men, the way that good men have always walked, so far as they truly have been good. It is wisdom to walk in that way, to ask for the good old way and walk in it (Jeremiah 6:16; Hebrews 6:12; Hebrews 12:1).

We must not only walk in that way for a little while, but keep to it and never turn aside. The paths of the righteous are paths of life, and all who are wise will keep hold of them. As Bishop Patrick puts it, we should imitate those excellent people, the patriarchs and prophets, and stay in the paths of those righteous men who followed after them. We should not only choose our path in general by the good examples of the saints, but also take direction from them in our daily choices. We should watch their track and go where the flock has gone.

Two reasons are given for choosing this way. First, a man’s integrity will give him stability, and that stability will last (Proverbs 2:21). It will establish their persons: the upright will dwell in the land peacefully and quietly as long as they live. Their honesty helps with that, because it settles their minds, guides their plans, wins their neighbors’ goodwill, and gives them God’s special favor. It will also establish their families: the blameless will remain in it through their descendants. They shall dwell and remain forever in the heavenly Canaan, of which the earthly land was only a picture.

Second, a man’s sin will be his ruin (Proverbs 2:22). See what becomes of the wicked who choose the way of the evil man: they will be cut off, not only from heaven in the life to come, and from all hope of it, but also from the earth now, which they love and on which they set their hearts. They think they will take root in it, but they and their families will be uprooted. That will be judgment on them, but mercy to the earth. A day is coming when they will have neither root nor branch (Malachi 4:1). Let this wisdom enter our hearts and become sweet to our souls, because it will keep us out of a path that ends like that.