Proverbs 12:20

Deceit is in the heart of them that imagine evil.

A denunciation of wicked men

I. A description of their persons.

1. They are evil-doers, but more especially, the practiser, the artificer in evil; one wholly bent upon sin; the body and mind occupied in executing and acting corrupt desires.

2. Nor is every evil aimed at, but evil in a high degree, evil against others--mischief.

3. This man is subtle in his evil. He is a cunning workman, sly, subtle, and close devising and effecting his mischief. Like a witty handicraftsman, he is most silent when he is most upon his inventions. It is a sign of an extreme wicked man, to be an inventor of evil, a plotter and deviser of mischief. As a coney-catcher lives by his wits, so sin and sinners by their wiles. But whence this?

(1) Satan at first transformed himself into an angel of light; then no marvel if his ministers do so.

(2) They seem just, religious, peaceable, and honest men, knowing that the less they be suspected, the more successful their plots are likely to be.

(3) Never was any mischief more mischievous than that which is veiled with good pretences of peace or religion.

II. The condition of these persons. Their deceit returns into the heart that first hatched it, i.e., brings certain woe and unavoidable mischief on themselves, to the breaking of their own hearts. Whence note, that the greatest workers of sin and mischief are greatest workers of their own woe.

1. There is no small heaviness and unquietness in the heart while it is plotting and hammering evil.

2. Whomsoever they deceive, they cannot deceive God, who will make them the greatest deceivers of themselves.

3. How just it is, that what pleasure they conceive in inventing mischief, they should lose it by the fruit of their mischievous inventions.

4. Sin is a sure paymaster, and her wages are death.

5. The sorrow of their sin comes with much and daily addition, and pierces the man’s heart as a sword. Beware of devising mischief against the Church of God, His servants and holy religion. Consider hereunto--

(1) The power of God, which all wicked men together are not able to resist.

(2) The wisdom of God, who hath seven eyes, and all upon the Church for good.

(3) The justice of God, with whom it is righteous that wicked men in devising mischief should provide their own rods.

(4) Evil men lay all their plots on a sandy and slippery foundation, which will bring down all the house and frame on their own heads. Let not good men be disquieted at any such plots, which shall all redound upon their enemies themselves. (T. Taylor.)

Self-deceit

The word rendered “deceit” may be understood as including deceit practised on a man’s self as well as on others, and here it may have the sense of self-deceit. Eminent translators have rendered the word, in its present connection, disappointment; frustrated hope. Those who “imagine evil” dare not avow their designs. Dissimulation and craft are productive of incessant apprehension and anxiety. They necessarily engender self-dissatisfaction and tremor, and that from the very dread of detection, frustration, and consequent evil to themselves, instead of to those against whom they were plotting. (R. Wardlaw.)