Who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the frowardness of the wicked;
Proverbs 2:14 describes and warns against those who rejoice to do evil and delight in the frowardness of the wicked and in wrongdoing. In its chapter setting it shows that righteousness by faith includes wisdom by faith, making faith-based wisdom a foundation of true education and religious work. It belongs to instruction meant to guard the young from sexual temptation, applying amid influences that arouse and corrupt sexual desire.
Breaking the great spiritual laws of being produces spiritual disease and death, and refusing to hearken to the reproofs of instruction that plead to choose the path of wisdom, which is the path of life, is a deception reaped in ruin ending in a broken and wasted life with manhood lost and hands stained with crime. The wicked find joy in doing wrong, love lies and wrongdoing, and at last lose all feeling, for the consciences of the greatest sinners are dulled so that greater wickedness brings less mental suffering. For this reason a guilty conscience cannot be the punishment of the lost.
The verse depicts city life, where fair exteriors are a sham to deceive and make things appear what they are not, and where attractive fronts hide drunkards, gamblers, panders, harlots and desperadoes. There the meanest political plots and darkest crimes are hatched and bred, the steps from innocence to infamy are quick, and many invitingly open byways of wrongdoing and ruin lie before careless feet. There entrancing seductive voices lure to destruction, while constant stress and struggle wear on the nerves and life of even the straightforward and honest.
The verse describes the dangerous classes now filling society with peril under names such as nihilists, socialists, communists, land-leagues, the black hand, and the hordes of desperate men infesting the United States through errors in immigration laws and the shipment of European criminals and suspects. They glory in evil and rejoice in iniquity and count human life as having no value whatever. They hold every nation in Europe in fear, make crowned heads tremble, threaten men of wealth and government property, check commerce by stopping railroad travel and destroying railroad property, and prepare means to destroy life and property.
Proverbs 2:14 describes and warns against those who rejoice to do evil and delight in the frowardness of the wicked and in wrongdoing. In its chapter setting it shows that righteousness by faith includes wisdom by faith, making faith-based wisdom a foundation of true education and religious work. It belongs to instruction meant to guard the young from sexual temptation, applying amid influences that arouse and corrupt sexual desire.
Breaking the great spiritual laws of being produces spiritual disease and death, and refusing to hearken to the reproofs of instruction that plead to choose the path of wisdom, which is the path of life, is a deception reaped in ruin ending in a broken and wasted life with manhood lost and hands stained with crime. The wicked find joy in doing wrong, love lies and wrongdoing, and at last lose all feeling, for the consciences of the greatest sinners are dulled so that greater wickedness brings less mental suffering. For this reason a guilty conscience cannot be the punishment of the lost.
The verse depicts city life, where fair exteriors are a sham to deceive and make things appear what they are not, and where attractive fronts hide drunkards, gamblers, panders, harlots and desperadoes. There the meanest political plots and darkest crimes are hatched and bred, the steps from innocence to infamy are quick, and many invitingly open byways of wrongdoing and ruin lie before careless feet. There entrancing seductive voices lure to destruction, while constant stress and struggle wear on the nerves and life of even the straightforward and honest.
The verse describes the dangerous classes now filling society with peril under names such as nihilists, socialists, communists, land-leagues, the black hand, and the hordes of desperate men infesting the United States through errors in immigration laws and the shipment of European criminals and suspects. They glory in evil and rejoice in iniquity and count human life as having no value whatever. They hold every nation in Europe in fear, make crowned heads tremble, threaten men of wealth and government property, check commerce by stopping railroad travel and destroying railroad property, and prepare means to destroy life and property.