Wednesday Bible Study: A Deep Dig into Proverbs XIV

I was just about to leave chapter 5 when a certain bit of phraseology caught my eye.  It's a bit tricky to translate, as you can see when I put it up in different versions.

In the ESV:

Pro 5:13  I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors. 
Pro 5:14  I am at the brink of utter ruin in the assembled congregation." 

In the KJV: 

Pro 5:13  And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me! 

Pro 5:14  I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly. 

And in Young's literal:

Pro 5:13  And I have not hearkened to the voice of my directors, And to my teachers have not inclined mine ear. 

Pro 5:14  As a little thing I have been all evil, In the midst of an assembly and a company.

So I'm betting you can guess that my questions are with the second of the two verses.  And in the K&D commentary, I got a pretty good explanation:

He found himself in all wickedness, living and moving therein in the midst of the congregation, and thereby giving offence to it, for he took part in the external worship and in the practices of the congregation, branding himself thereby as a hypocrite. 

Here we get the sense of living in sin and pretending as if you aren't.  But John Gill looks at it another way:

Some understand this, not of the evil of sin, but of the evil of punishment; and that the sense is, that there is scarce any calamity, distress, or misery, that a man can be in, but his profaneness and lewdness had brought him into; and he was just upon the brink of hell itself: and so Jarchi paraphrases it, 

"there was but a step between me and hell.'' 

Just for the sake of putting it out there, the (Solomon Ben Isaac) Jarchi that Gill mentions was a 12th century rabbi, amusingly (to me) described as, 

so concise, that it is no easy thing to understand him in several places, without the help of other Jewish interpreters.

So digging further that way is a big no-no; however, this explanation dovetails pretty well into the ESV version- by his lack of Wisdom and understanding, he's ended up in a right mess.

So which way is it?  Well, why not both?  Consider we've found three kinds of unbelievers:  The simple, who doesn't know what's going on around him; the scoffer, who thinks he's always right; and the fool, who believes there IS no God.  The simple is more likely to fall into the second definition- he just didn't listen when he had a chance to learn, and now is paying the price. The scoffer is more likely the K&D version, thinking, "yes, there is a god, and I keep him in a little box and dust him off for display on Sunday".  What about the fool?  Is there a third way of looking at this?  Sure!  Gill goes on to this third hypothesis:

or he committed all the evil he did openly; not only in company with wicked men, which he frequented, but even in the presence and before the people of God; yea, before the civil magistrates, the great sanhedrim, which is sometimes designed by the last word here used: or when he was in the house of God, attending public worship, his eyes were full of adultery, and his heart of impure lusts; and neither place, service, nor people of God, where he was, commanded any awe and reverence in him, nor in the least restrained his unclean thoughts and wanton desires; and which is mentioned as an aggravation of guilt. 

So the fool just doesn't care what the good people see in him or say about him; he just does what he does.

So what do we learn from all this?  One overarching concept is:  Sometimes it seems like it could mean more than one thing for a reason.  And just maybe God keeps it nebulous to show you what path you are, or COULD BE on.  Another idea I see hear connects to how we've learned that there is more hope for the fool, than the scoffer.  Because that one change of idea- from no god to Yes, God- is a simple change compared to the scoffer, who would have to dismantle his whole self-image, come down off his pedestal, and humble himself.  And while an openly evil fool might have a change of heart because of the consequences, the scoffer thinks he is evading the consequences by playing both sides.  And to that, we can only conclude with Galatians 6:7:

7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

And the last lesson:  That no matter which path they take- not paying attention, thinking they have all the answers, or outright rebellion, the end of the path is the same....

"there was but a step between me and hell.''