Proverbs 29:24 Commentary and Bible Study

Partnership necessitates common purpose and agreement, and therefore to make an alliance we must have accepted the behaviour of our partner, unless we have acted in ignorance. On the assumption that we are not ignorant, then in order to make common cause with a thief we must have chosen to stifle any criticism of his thieving. We have accepted his standards from the start and why would we later be shocked by what he does for we knew what we were entering into. All the important decisions were made up front, and there was an implicit agreement that we would not raise the matter later. Partnership therefore binds us to others and we should be very careful who we count as our partners, for we have a common destiny with them.Here is someone who has joined himself to a thief. He knows his character but he does not know exactly what he is going to do at every moment. Now the thief is cursing someone, and the partner of the thief has no choice but to go along with it. The right thing to do would be to speak up and expose the thief’s evil intentions before they can be carried out. But the partner has silenced himself so that his standards are compromised, and however uncomfortable he feels about it he cannot now divulge the evil that he has heard. Why is he said to hate his own soul? Because he has bound himself to do evil and as a result he will suffer the punishment due to the wicked. He has left himself no way of escape because he has forced himself to follow the same path as the thief. At the very least he has made it extremely hard to do what is right. Desperate measures are now called for and he must break free at all costs to save his own soul. He must be ready to renounce his covenant with wickedness and to cry out to the Lord to forgive his foolishness.