The folly of man distorteth his way, and his heart is irritated against Jehovah.
One verse traces a whole chain. A man's folly bends his own path out of shape. Then his heart turns on God, as though the wreck were God's doing. The question it forces is simple: whose fault is the ruin?
Folly wrecks the road a man walks
The first half of the verse is about the shape of a whole life, not one bad day.
Verse 3 shows that a man's foolishness will twist his entire way out of any recognisable shape. He will not blame himself for this, but instead will fret against the Lord, as though the Lord were to blame for his foolishness!
Why folly deepens instead of correcting itself
Folly disables the one thing that could correct it: honest self-judgment.
The foolishness of a man exposes him to evil ways; and all the more, because the more foolish he is, the less self-judgment there is. If he only felt his folly before God, and so looked up for wisdom, how surely God would give it without reproach. If he trusts himself, he twists his way more and more. What is worse still, his heart frets or rages against the Lord. His folly turns godless at last, even to casting the blame on Him who alone is absolutely wise and has never done him harm but good. It is a common case.
An old and very human habit
This is not a rare failing. It shows up in the first recorded conversation after the first sin, where the man answers God by pointing at the gift God had given him.
Notice, too, in Adam's second reply, that he blames God without saying so openly. He ignores the love in which God had given him the woman as a helper suited to him. Notice, too, how heartlessly he tries to shield himself by putting the blame on his partner in wrongdoing. People have little idea, when they join hands in evil, how ready each will be to accuse the others.
The harvest belongs to the sower
The anger feeds on a delay. Seed sown long ago comes up much later, and by then the trouble looks like God's doing.
All that came upon them was the fruit of their own doing. "Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life" (Galatians 6:7-8). We cannot sow a handful of seed without the crop that seed produces coming up. If sorrow and trial come, what is it? It is the fruit of some seed we sowed years and years ago, when we were away from the Lord. If I have returned to Him now, I may be wondering what harvest I am reaping, but I must not forget that I sowed the seed.
Quarrelling with the circumstances
Trouble we brought on ourselves is the hardest kind to accept.
How often this is the case with us! We fail. We take some false step. We get into difficult circumstances as a result. Then, instead of humbly bowing under the hand of God and seeking to walk with Him in humility and brokenness of spirit, we grow restless and rebellious. We quarrel with the circumstances instead of judging ourselves. In self-will we try to escape from them, instead of accepting them as the just and necessary consequence of our own conduct.
The way out is asking, not accusing
Kelly pointed to wisdom given "without reproach." The folly in this verse does not have to be final. There is somewhere to ask for the wisdom we lack.
We may often, in our trials, lack wisdom to act according to His will. If this is the case with any one of us, the apostle says, "Let him ask of God." Our resource is God. We might shrink from turning to people. Their advice might be unsound. They might also begrudge their counsel, reproach us for our ignorance, or betray our confidence. With God we need have no such fears. He gives freely, without reproaching us for our folly and weakness.
Summary
- Folly twists. Foolish choices do not stay contained; they bend a man's entire way out of recognisable shape.
- Folly blinds. The more foolish a man is, the less self-judgment he has — so the thing that would cure him is the thing he loses first.
- Folly accuses. At its worst it turns godless, blaming the only One who is absolutely wise and has never done him anything but good.
- Folly reaps. Seed sown years ago still comes up. Quarrelling with the harvest is easier than owning the sowing.
- Folly can ask. God gives wisdom freely and without reproach. The fretting heart could have asked.