The way of the guilty is crooked,
but the conduct of the pure is upright.
It is better to live in a corner of the housetop
than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.
The soul of the wicked desires evil;
his neighbour finds no mercy in his eyes.
When a scoffer is punished, the simple becomes wise;
when a wise man is instructed, he gains knowledge.Proverbs 21:8-11
'Froward' in 8 means 'guilty'. The meaning of the verse is that if you have a clear conscience you will have a clear path. It is a sign that something is radically wrong when a person's path is crooked, and he has to be continually excusing and explaining. On the other hand, a man who walks in the light as God is in the light will be above reproach, and his life will be like an open book which explains itself. 9 gives us one of Proverbs' characteristic flashes of humour (it is repeated in similar terms in 19). The RSV translation is said to be more accurate than AV, and we should read the second part of the verse as 'a house shared with a contentious woman'. Kidner sums it up well when he speaks of choice between 'ignominious solitude and intolerable society'. 'There is a lot to be said for quietness, even in a corner of the house'. There is a serious, even sinister, note in 10, in the word 'desireth', which indicates that the man in question is set upon evil. There are two constituent elements in all sin - the wayward element, flowing from the weakness of man's makeup, which draws forth the compassion of Christ, and also the sinister, spiritual element, which partakes of the demonic. When this latter element takes the ascendancy in man he becomes utterly given over to sin and approaches the point of identification with it. It is this that is indicated here. There is an echo of 19:25 in 11, and we find its New Testament counterpart in 1 Timothy 5:20. Perhaps Paul has this verse in Proverbs in mind when he wrote thus. There is a great realism here: when the man who resists the truth is allowed to go unrebuked, it strengthens his position in the eyes of the ignorant, and this is not something to be acquiesced in by the realistic Christian counsellor.