Proverbs 22:5 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Proverbs 22:5

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There are two people in this proverb, the froward first of all. The Hebrew is ‘the knotted’ or ‘the twisted’, but it is a figure and it means the wayward, the perverted sometimes, but the wayward. The other is the one who keeps his own soul or the keeper of his life. This is the person who has integrity.But here is how the proverb works. ‘Thorns and snares are in the way of the froward.’ What he has done is he has abandoned the route. He has gone off the road because he does not like it. He has got a map perhaps, and he says to himself, ‘This is the road from my town to such-and-such a place where I am going. But I do not like roads, I know better than to use roads so I am going off road.’ As the result he finds himself in masses of giant thorns and snares, and the Hebrew says metal plates. It describes a kind of snare, a trapper’s metal snare with strong jaws that will clamp the leg of an animal. So he finds himself in rough ground with scratching cutting thorns and snares to trap him, which illustrate all the problems of life he is going to be in by going off the road. What does the road represent? Well, it is the principles or the standards of God by which we must live, which integrity seeks to keep to. But here is somebody who is wayward, and does not like rules. ‘Thorns and snares are in the way of the froward,’ those that leave the path, but integrity means you stick to the path. ‘He that doth keep his soul.’ Life, the Hebrew says; soul, the translators say, quite right too. It is obvious. ‘He that doth keep his soul.’ He will stick to the road. He will not go near those wild patches, those shortcuts through the thorns and the ensnared ground.

Application

Let me give you an example. We are in the middle of the great gay-lesbian moral revolution. And the media push it ahead because they are like putty in the hands of the devil, and so constantly it is being urged forward. The legislators are terrified that people will vote against them or they will lose the pink vote or the gay vote, or whatever they like to call it, if they do not give in to all the demands of the gay-lesbian lobby. So we are seeing it pushed forward at such a rate. And now it is legal and proper, and you can adopt, and you can even have children by various methods into same-sex marriage and so on. But look, they have left the road, the clear standards of God, the clear revelation of God, the distinction between men and women and the duties of each. They are now in the thorns and the snares, and though it is going forward at a tremendous pace, we shall see with horror all that will be reaped in the coming years as this goes on, and children grow up, and things get worse, and people suffer all kinds of problems, medical, biological, psychological, social. Who knows what is coming out of all this, and what will go wrong?

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Proverbs 22:5 Commentary and Bible Study