Prov 2:20

“Scripture itself plainly testifies to this very thing, saying: "For if they would walk in right paths, they would certainly have found the paths of righteousness smooth." It is plain, I say, that it is we, who make rough with the nasty and hard stones of our desires the right and smooth paths of the Lord; who most foolishly forsake the royal road made stony with the flints of apostles and prophets, and trodden down by the footsteps of all the saints and of the Lord Himself, and seek trackless and thorny places, and, blinded by the allurements of present delights, tear our way with torn legs and our wedding garment rent, through dark paths, overrun with the briars of sins, so as not only to be pierced by the sharp thorns of the brambles but actually laid low by the bites of deadly serpents and scorpions lurking there. For "there are thorns and thistles in wrong ways, but he that feareth the Lord shall keep himself from them."”

“To walk in the good way, etc. The good way, he calls the unity of true faith, about which the Lord says, I am the way (John XIV); and again: No one can come to the Father, except through me (Ibid.). But the paths of the righteous, he names the various examples of the saints. This verse depends on what was said above: Prudence will preserve you; as also that, To be delivered from the strange woman.”

“With למען there commences a new section, coordinating itself with the להצּילך ("to deliver thee") of Pro 2:12, Pro 2:16, unfolding that which wisdom accomplishes as a preserver and guide: 20 So that thou walkest in the good way, And keepest the right paths. 21 For the upright shall inhabit the land, And the innocent shall remain in it. 22 But the godless are cut off out the land, And the faithless are rooted out of it. Wisdom - thus the connection - will keep thee, so that thou shalt not fall under the seductions of man or of woman; keep, in order that thou... למען (from מען = מענה, tendency, purpose) refers to the intention and object of the protecting wisdom. To the two negative designations of design there follows, as the third and last, a positive one. טובים (contrast to רעים, Pro 14:19) is here used in a general ethical sense: the good (Guten, not Gtigen, the kind). שׁמר, with the object of the way, may in another connection also mean to keep oneself from, cavere ab (Psa 17:4); here it means: carefully to keep in it. The promise of Pro 2:21 is the same as in the Mashal Psa 37:9, Psa 37:11, Psa 37:22; cf. Pro 10:30. ארץ is Canaan, or the land which God promised to the patriarchs, and in which He planted Israel, whom He had brought out of Egypt; not the earth, as Mat 5:5, according to the extended, unlimited N.T. circle of vision. יוּתרוּ (Milel) is erroneously explained by Schultens: funiculis bene firmis irroborabunt in terra. The verb יתר, Arab. watar, signifies to yoke (whence יתר, a cord, rope), then intrans. to be stretched out in length, to be hanging over (vid., Fleischer on Job 30:11); whence יתר, residue, Zep 2:9, and after which the lxx here renders ὑπολειφθήσονται, and Jerome permanebunt. In 22b the old translators render יסּחוּ as the fut. of the pass. נסּח, Deu 28:63; but in this case it would be ינּסחוּ. The form יסּחוּ, pointed יסּחוּ, might be the Niph. of סחח, but סחח can neither be taken as one with נסח, of the same meaning, nor with Hitzig is it to be vocalized יסּחוּ (Hoph. of נסח); nor, with Bttcher (1100, p. 453), is יסּחוּ to be regarded as a veritable fut. Niph. יסּחוּ is, as at Pro 15:25; Psa 52:7, active: evellant; and this, with the subj. remaining indefinite (for which J. H. Michaelis refers to Hos 12:9), is equivalent to evellentur. This indefinite "they" or "one" ("man"), Fleischer remarks, can even be used of God, as here and Job 7:3 - a thing which is common in Persian, where e.g., the expression rendered hominem ex pulvere fecerunt is used instead of the fuller form, which would be rendered homo a Deo ex pulvere factus est. בּוגדים bears (as בּגד proves) the primary meaning of concealed, i.e., malicious (treacherous and rapacious, Isa 33:1), and then faithless men. (Note: Similar is the relation in Arab. of labbasa to libâs (לבוּשׁ); it means to make a thing unknown by covering it; whence telbı̂s, deceit, mulebbis, a falsifier.)”