Proverbs 17:12 Commentary and Bible Study

The proverb warns us against a danger which many do not take seriously enough, but comparing it with a danger which everyone takes very seriously: the first danger is far worse. Here is a person committed to trouble, not wanting to make progress. The fool is, as always in the Book of Proverbs, the moral fool not the intellectual fool, who can have a lot more spiritual sense than many who have ten times his education. The fool is obviously not just a source of harm to himself. We think of fools as those who make bad choices, unwise choices, and by these they bring trouble upon themselves, which a wise man would have avoided. They do not see the snares and pitfalls in life which are obvious to those with discernment who would never have gone that way for it was obvious to them that temptation lay along that path. So the fool hurts himself, but he also hurts others; it is a danger to be with him. He has a thousand ways of hurting others, which are likely to take the undiscerning by surprise. The young Christian certainly has experience of his own depravity, but the mature depravity of those who are advanced in the ways of evil are likely to be underestimated and to take him by surprise. The cunning of the evil man and his ability to hide what he does is a trap for the inexperienced. Can he really be as bad as to deliberately lie about this important matter? Can he really be so selfish that he is prepared to hurt so many others to gain such a small advantage and pleasure for himself? Folly in the form of ungodliness is bound up in his heart and it inevitably finds expression in his behaviour. He is quite happy to be a friend to those who are ready to join him in his sin and to corrupt and lead astray the innocent. He knows how to dress up his schemes as harmless sport and cares nothing about the conscience of the other or the judgment that a bad conscience preludes. His own conscience is long since seared with a hot iron so that he is past feeling. Why should he not drag others along the same fatal path? What is another eternal human soul to him? If he does not care about his own soul but has sold it for a few trifling pleasures of the here and now, why should he take care for another soul? His outlook ought to be a matter of horror to the conscientious believer for he is on the road to hell, but it is as if he is taking a jaunt down the road to the corner shop. The believer who knows the value of his soul is aghast that anyone else can treat the soul as a worthless item. Therefore he wants to get away from the fool and his folly more than a man would want to get away from a bear angry because it is deprived of its cubs.