At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“The wicked is snared by the transgression of his lips: But the just shall come out of trouble”
Proverbs 12:13
There is a line we are all familiar with that certainly sounds like Shakespeare, but it is actually from a poem by Sir Walter Scott:
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive . . .”
And the spirit of this is right in line with our proverb. The wicked are tangled up by their verbal sinning, meaning that we are talking about slander, lies, accusations, and so forth. The pattern is this. The wicked go for the path of least resistance first, and it consistently trips them up later. The just embrace the trouble first, and find that their path is made smooth later. They come out of trouble.
Another way of saying this is that the wicked are short-term thinkers, while the godly take a longer view. Lies are easy, short term. There are times when they seem like the only possible solution. So the wicked lie, but then they have to tell another one, and it soon gets to the point where you have to keep track of every strand of that “tangled weave.” Liars need to have good memories, and even then it is not sufficient. Lies can run faster than we can, and they always catch up.
The just person here is described as being in some sort of trouble because his way of life brings him out of it. His pattern is trouble > peace. The wicked, by way of contrast experience things in the other direction—peace > trouble.
God is not mocked. A man will always reap what he sows. The reason the wicked are willing to plant darnel (the biblical “tares”) instead of wheat is because they think it “buys them time.” A field planted with darnel looks exactly the same as a field planted with wheat. Even when the plants start to grow they look an awful lot alike early on.
