"Whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways"
This proverb is a continuation of the listing of the traits of people from whom wisdom will protect you.
What we do not often realize is that people do not come with labels attached to them. Evil people don't look worse than righteous people. But what we must do is discern actions. Behavior can be evaluated. It doesn't matter whether they have a likeable personality or are a relative, God's Word says that we are to look for certain actions to avoid and certain actions to embrace.
crooked
This is the Hebrew word iqqes which means twisted, crooked, perverse. The idea is that the behavior of certain people is twisted in a bizarre way. They act in ways beyond just being sinful. They are past basic lying. They are past sexual unfaithfulness. They are past simple theft. They embrace a twisted way of living and seek to pull other people into their crooked path.
devious
This is the Hebrew word lazut which means a deviation or crookedness or perversion. The translation makes it sound like they are deceptive, but the word refers to the kind of spur off the main line of normal moral behavior that they take.
God wants to spare us from this kind of person. Unfortunately, we celebrate these wacky lifestyles on daytime television. You don't want to understand the way they think or how they go to that place. You don't want to be in that world.
Wisdom will save you from ending up in these kinds of places. Unfortunately, because selfishness and moral license are being given free reign, more and more people are ending up in perverse behavior and twisted lifestyles. God, through the words of Solomon, accurately describes the result of selfishness. It gets incredibly bizarre.
Understand that wisdom will steer you clear of this kind of person. That means that their choices cannot be your choices if you are wise. It is never okay to move in the directions that those who violate the Ten Commandments take.
Until tomorrow,
Gil Stieglitz