10 For wisdom will enter your heart
And knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;
11 Discretion will guard you,
Understanding will watch over you,
12 To deliver you from the way of evil,
From the man who speaks perverse things;
13 From those who leave the paths of uprightness
To walk in the ways of darkness;
14 Who delight in doing evil
And rejoice in the perversity of evil;
15 Whose paths are crooked,
And who are devious in their ways;
16 To deliver you from the strange woman,
From the [b]adulteress who flatters with her words;
17 That leaves the companion of her youth
And forgets the covenant of her God;
18 For her house [c]sinks down to death
And her tracks lead to the [d]dead;
19 None who go to her return again,
Nor do they reach the paths of life.
20 So you will walk in the way of good men
And keep to the paths of the righteous.
21 For the upright will [e]live in the land
And the blameless will remain in it;
22 But the wicked will be cut off from the land
And the treacherous will be uprooted from it.
We tend to think of wisdom and knowledge as “head” things. They are aspects of the mind, the brain, and yet this passage paints a different picture. In other parts of the Bible as well, God tells us to dig deeper, to go beyond the surface. When David was anointed, He made it clear that it wasn’t the outside appearance that mattered, it was (and is) the heart.
So wisdom must go deeper than just head knowledge, it needs to change our heart for it to be of any use. To gain discretion and understanding, you need to think deeply, and not just react to circumstances. Any monkey can react to the stimuli around us, but God made us for more, much more. Wicked men and women who delight and rejoice in evil are only looking at the temporal. There is no thought for the future, for the consequences.
Are we looking ahead, actively avoiding the snares of the enemy, the traps of sin that “so easily entangle us”? Or are we just doing what feels good in the moment? It isn’t easy to delay gratification, but that is the “way of good men”, or more accurately, the way of God himself. It wasn’t easy or nice or comfortable for Jesus to be mocked, beaten, and killed.
But He knew the reward was worth it, worth every lash of the whip, every desperate gasp for air, worth temporary pain. He has taken the punishment for our sins, now what will you do with it. Will you follow in His path, choosing the eternal over the temporary delights of the flesh? Follow the path of the only righteous One, and you will do more than live long in the land. Your inheritance will be life eternal, incorruptible, and full of His glory.