Proverbs 22:3-7

The wise man sees trouble coming and gets out of the way; the simple man walks straight into it and pays for it. God did not give us knowledge of the future — that would only feed our presumption — but He gave us prudence instead, the ability to read the danger and take cover. And the verse climbs to the one danger that matters most: a wise man sees the wrath to come and runs to a hiding place from it while there is time, into "the name of the LORD" which is a strong tower (Proverbs 18:10); the simple man strolls past the open door of mercy, treating the warning as an echo in the hills, until he stumbles over the edge of life into the hands of the living God. Take cover now. The saved are not their own saviours, but the lost are their own destroyers.

The road to everything truly worth having runs downward first — through humility and the fear of God. Not the world's counsel ("push yourself forward, take the small shortcut"), but the low place, which God waters as He waters the valleys while the proud peaks stay dry. Take it as you took the long-life promises earlier in the book: a real tendency of the humble, God-fearing life, not a transaction you can cash in on demand. The paradox is glorious — humility is the truest glory there is, and the most humble Christian is the most triumphant one. The way up is down.

The crooked man's road is booby-trapped — thorns to tear him and snares to catch him, many of them traps he set for others and fell into himself. Nothing stands in a man's way like the indulgence of his own unbridled will. The man who guards his soul stays far from that road entirely; his safety is a close walk with God, well clear of the brambles.

Here is the most quoted parenting verse in the world, and it deserves to be lingered over. "Train" is more than teach — there can be teaching without training, but never training without teaching; training is what gets printed on the soul, the way a young fruit tree is patiently nailed to the wall until its branches grow the right direction. And "the way he should go" is the godly way, the road that leads to life, started early — for a child given no fixed standard is not being trained at all. Begin sooner than you think you can: if the child is too young to be taught to read, he is not too young to be taught to obey. And the one thing that wrecks it all is inconsistency — bringing the child bread with one hand and poison with the other, beckoning him toward heaven with your words while your life quietly leads him the other way; train him with your example or you do not train him at all.

Two honest cautions keep this verse from being misused. First, it is a proverb — a wise general rule about how life tends to work — not an unconditional guarantee that binds God's hand; grace comes by God's gift, not by inheritance, and a faithful parent must still pray and trust, not presume. Second, the harvest may be long delayed: many a child trained in godliness wandered for years and came home only after the praying parent was in the grave — but "the fruit, though late, will not be the less sure." Education is not the same thing as grace; but in God's hand it is one of the means by which grace is given. So train, and pray, and wait. (Some also read "his way" as the way suited to a child's nature and stage — train him in a manner fitted to a child, not a small adult — and that is a fair secondary sense; but the way every child should go is the way of the LORD, and that is the road this verse sets you to build.)

A plain fact of how the world runs: money is power, the rich rule the poor, and the man who borrows becomes, in a real sense, the servant of the man who lends. Rank itself is God's appointment and not wrong — but let it be a rule of order, never of pride or cruelty. The sharper warning is about debt: borrowing forges a chain, and a man has as many masters as he has creditors. Borrowing can be a medicine in a real crisis, but as a habit it is a slow poison and the cure becomes worse than the disease. Do not sell your liberty to gratify your luxury; "owe no man any thing, but to love one another" (Romans 13:8).