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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
4:10-19 Sixth Paternal Appeal: The Two Ways. This text lays out one of the core teachings of Proverbs: the doctrine of the two ways. It asserts that there lies before everyone a choice between entering the way of wisdom and the way of folly. Which path is taken will determine the outcome of one's life. This appeal has an opening encouragement (v. 10), an exhortation to take the right way (vv. 11-13), a warning against taking the wrong way (vv. 14-17), and a summarizing review of the two ways (vv. 18-19).
4:12 The image of stumbling is thematic for vv. 10-19: hold on to the way of wisdom and you will not stumble (v. 12) and instead will avoid the path of the wicked. Their resolve to make others stumble (v. 16) is reflected in their own stumbling (v. 19).
4:14-17 These verses warn against turning to the way of the wicked (vv. 14-15) by describing how it creates an insatiable and destructive hunger (v. 16). That hunger is perpetuated by what the path offers those who walk along it: the bread of wickedness and the wine of violence, v. 17.
4:18-19 The path of the righteous is the way of wisdom (v. 11). dawn . . . full day. The image here is of ever-increasing brightness, from first light until noon. The path of a person refers to the moral orientation of his or her life (v. 14; cf. 2:8, 13, 15, 20; 3:6; Ps. 25:4). It is this that shines brighter and brighter, i.e., keeps increasing in the way in which it displays God's light (cf. Ps. 19:8; 119:105, 130; Prov. 6:23). This contrasts with the way of the wicked (4:19), which is the way of "evil" (v. 14). The person whose life is oriented toward evil will stumble through life in deep darkness.
