Proverbs 6: 12 - 15

The next four verses of Proverbs 6 are about people who “plot evil with deceit in [their] heart[s].” These people aren’t just lazy, as the type of people spoken of in the last study. Here are the verses:

Proverbs 6: 12 - 15 (NIV)
12 A scoundrel and villain,
who goes about with a corrupt mouth,
13 who winks with his eye,
signals with his feet
and motions with his fingers,
14 who plots evil with deceit in his heart—
he always stirs up dissension.
15 Therefore disaster will overtake him in an instant;
he will suddenly be destroyed—without remedy.

These verses describe a couple of ways of figuring out that a person is of bad moral character… a scoundrel or a villain. Verse 12 says that they go around using foul language and talking about off color things, and the next verse describes them as people who are always sending body language signs of deceitfulness. They signal with their eyes, feet and fingers.

How many people do you know that use these types of “signals” to get across dirty or off-color meanings added to whatever they are saying. Gang members have gotten notorious for this. These type of people, verse 14 says, usually end up stirring up dissension (disagreement, argument, discord). As with so many of the verses we have studied over the past week, this area ends with the fate of destruction and disaster being predicted for people that have chosen this ungodly approach to life.

I think that God wants us to be able to recognize this “type,” because we need to be careful about associating with them so that we aren’t pulled down with them.