Whose ways are crooked, and they froward in their paths:
The verse identifies a class whose conduct and personal example depart from what is right, characterized by crooked ways and distorted, perverted paths. It is not merely private wrongdoing but a bent course of life that misdirects others who observe it. Applied to religious leaders, it marks those whose erroneous course presents a crooked pattern of religion before the people. Such leadership exerts a corrupting influence, and by leading others into the same crookedness it can end in the ruin of souls.
The verse identifies a class whose conduct and personal example depart from what is right, characterized by crooked ways and distorted, perverted paths. It is not merely private wrongdoing but a bent course of life that misdirects others who observe it. Applied to religious leaders, it marks those whose erroneous course presents a crooked pattern of religion before the people. Such leadership exerts a corrupting influence, and by leading others into the same crookedness it can end in the ruin of souls.