Proverbs 14:8 Commentary and Bible Study

By unexpectedly contrasting the wise who understand their way with the fool who lives by deceit, Solomon tells us two things at once. He tells us that the wise are given a great advantage – life has great clarity and purpose for them, and he tells us why the foolish do not have this clarity – they suffer from a self-inflicted evil. As often he makes multiple comparisons at once, and, in so doing, takes his reader by surprise, thereby causing him to consider an aspect of things which he would not otherwise have been aware of. Here it is the way in which the fool brings harm on himself by playing with fire. God’s dealings with the wicked are perfectly just as is seen in how often their evil ways are made to rebound upon them.To understand our way is to know where we are going. Christ told his disciples. ‘Where I go you know, and the way you know’ (John 14:4), and of himself he said, ‘I know where I came from and where I am going’ (John 8:14). God does not call his people to follow a path that leads nowhere, or that leads to an unknown destination; he tells us that our journey leads to life and that he is waiting for us at the end of the journey. Christians are those who walk in the light and it would be quite incongruous for them not to know where they are going. But those who walk by deceit shed darkness upon their own path. Their deceit hands them over to the power of the devil – the arch-deceiver, since they forfeit the protection of the Lord. The fool thinks that he can take advantage of deceit without himself being affected by it, but his use of deceit makes him a fool, ‘deceiving, and being deceived’ (2 Timothy 2:13). What he counts as wisdom turns out to be folly. He thinks he can take advantage of deceit to cover his tracks, to hide his shame, to gain what does not belong to him; he thinks he can manage deceit like a servant, but it soon becomes his master. He thinks he can hunt with the weapon of deceit, but he discovers that he is being hunted with the same weapon by a more cunning adversary than himself. Deceit is not a tool that any man can handle safely, for whoever lives by it will be destroyed by it.