He taketh the wise in their own craftiness: and the counsel of the froward is carried headlong.
Ver. 13. He taketh the wise in their own craftiness] Those wise to do evil, worldly wise, mere Machiavellians; for though the Florentine secretary was not born of some thousands of years after Eliphaz spoke this, yet the devil was well nigh as great a master then as now, and had his crafty cubs, students, and great proficients in that wisdom which St James affirmeth to be from beneath, and not from above (like the wings of the ostrich, it may help a man to outrun others upon earth, but helps not at all towards heaven); and further describeth it to be earthly, sensual, devilish. Earthly, as managing the lusts of the eyes unto the ends of gain; sensual, as managing the lusts of the flesh unto ends of pleasure; and devilish, as managing the pride of life unto ends of power: these subtle sirs, these profound politicians, that dig deep to hide their counsels, not from men only, but (which is impossible) from the Lord, Isaiah 29:15, that think they can work out anything (πανουργια), 1 Corinthians 3:19, and that none can prevent them (as the apostle's word from this text importeth), God takes and makes fools of them; he frustrateth the tokens of these liars, and maketh the diviners mad; he turneth wise men backward, and maketh their knowledge foolish, Isaiah 44:25. "Surely the princes of Zoan are fools, the counsel of the wise counsellors of Pharaoh is become brutish: - they have also seduced Egypt, even they that are the stay of the tribes thereof: the Lord hath mingeled a spirit of perversities in the midst thereof; and they have caused Egypt to err in every work thereof, as a drunken man staggereth in his vomit," Isaiah 19:11; Isaiah 19:13,14. Did ever any man deal so unwisely as Ahithophel, that oracle, 2 Samuel 17:23, curious to provide for his family after his death, and yet careless to preserve himself from eternal death? Was not this a madness even to a miracle? He should first (saith a reverend man) have set himself in order, and then he might have hanged his house with coverings of tapestry, Proverbs 7:16, and with embroidered work of Egypt, Ezekiel 27:7. And if he had bridled his anger when he saddled his ass he would not have broken the lantern of his body, and quenched the light of his life, he would not have put his house in order, and himself into such a desperate and irrecoverable confusion. But what saith Solomon? "His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins," Proverbs 5:22. "The Lord is known by the judgment which he executeth: the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. Higgaion, Selah." Mark and meditate, as one rendereth it, Psalms 9:16 .
And the counsel of the froward is carried headlong] More haste it maketh than good speed, though it be the counsel that is the extract of reason, the result of serious and sad debates (as Cicero defineth it, Lib. 2, de Invent.), because it proceedeth from froward persons, obtorti, contortuplicati, such as have one crafty device twisted within another, like a rope; such as of whom we use to say in a proverb, there never wanteth a new knack in a knave's cap.