Verse 11. The warning, as such, is true for all times and countries, but has here a special application. The temptation against which the teacher seeks to guard his disciple is that of joining a band of highway robbers. At no period in its history has Palestine ever risen to the security of a well-ordered police system, and the wild license of the marauder's life attracted, we may well believe, many who were brought up in towns (Judges xi. 3; 1 Sam. xxii. 2), and the bands of robbers who infested every part of the country in the period of the New Testament, and against whom every Roman governor had to wage incessant war, show how deeply rooted the evil was there. The history of many countries (our own, _e.g._, in the popular _Traditions of Robin Hood_ and _Henry V._) presents like phenomena. The robber-life has attractions for the open-hearted and adventurous. No generation, perhaps no class, can afford to despise the warning against it. . . . _Without cause_ may mean _in vain_, and receive its interpretation from the mocking question of the tempter: "Doth Job serve God for nought?" The evil-doers deride their victims as being righteous gratis, or in vain.--_Plumptre._ If sinners have their "come," should not saints much more? Should we not incite, entice, whet, and provoke one another, rouse and stir up each other, to love and good works? (2 Pet. i. 13; Heb. x. 24; Isa. ii. 3; Zech. viii. 21.)--_Trapp._ Verse 12. The force of the verse noteth the allurement of wickedness from the cleanly despatch of it, so that nothing appeareth of the doing of it.--_Jermin._ We will be as Sheol, or Hades, as the great underworld of the dead, all-devouring, merciless. The destruction of those we attack shall be as sudden as that of those who go down quickly into Sheol. (Numb. xvi. 30, 33.)--_Plumptre._ Verse 13. Wickedness has always been a very bragging boaster. These sinners make a brag like that which the devil made to Christ: "All these things will I give thee." Covetousness is a strong chain to draw men on to wickedness.--_Jermin._ Verse 14. The first form of temptation is addressed to the simple lust of greed. The second, with more subtle skill, appeals to something in itself nobler, however easily perverted. The main attraction of the robber-life is its wild communism, the sense of equal hazards and equal hopes. To have "one purse," setting laws of property at nought among themselves, seems almost a set-off against their attacks on the property of others.--_Plumptre._ Verse 15. "God will not take the wicked by the hand." (Job viii. 20.) Why, then, should we?--_Trapp._ The affairs of this life are the highways of the King of Heaven; thou mayest walk in the ways of them, but not with the wicked. It is an argument of a wicked man but to company with the wicked. We judge evil accompanyings to be next to evil deeds.--_Jermin._