A father's warning to his son against associating with outlaws in the Book of Proverbs is as applicable today as it was thousands of years ago

Solomon writing Proverbs by Gustave Doré

Proverbs 1:10-19 -- Warning Against Outlaws

My son, if sinners entice you, do not give in to them.  If they say, "Come along with us; let's lie in wait for someone's blood, let's waylay some harmless soul;  let's swallow them alive, like the grave, and whole, like those who go down to the pit;  we will get all sorts of valuable things and fill our houses with plunder;  throw in your lot with us, and we will share a common purse"--  my son, do not go along with them, do not set foot on their paths;  for their feet rush into sin, they are swift to shed blood.  How useless to spread a net in full view of all the birds!  These men lie in wait for their own blood; they waylay only themselves!  Such is the end of all who go after ill-gotten gain; it takes away the lives of those who get it.

The problem of evil the parent addresses is universal.

Mỹ Lai Massacre

For some readers, the sinner's invitation to violence may seem far removed from their secure, middle-class world.  Indeed, some scholars think the parent's vignette of violence is an exaggerated didactic lesson, "an extreme case" that "cannot be generalized."  But to hear the relevance of this text for the human condition, it is necessary to attend to its literal sense.  The parent who speaks in 1:10-19 is from the upper stratum of Israelite society.  But the problem of evil the parent addresses is universal.  Our own century has known two world wars, a flood of smaller ones, and countless terrorist acts both political and private.  Violence is a human reality.  As M. Scott Peck's analysis of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam has shown, American violence may be a systemic problem.  It invades all social groups.  It implicates even "good people" who are not overtly immoral, because there are no innocent bystanders to societal evil.

The speech is brutally realistic about the possibilities that lie before the son

The parent of 1:10-19 knows that evil is a real option for the son, that anyone can cross the line from good to evil (cf. Gen 8:21).  The parent does not assume that "good families" are inoculated against evil or that godly virtue automatically continues from generation to generation.  The speech is brutally realistic about the possibilities that lie before the son.

It would be suitable of a father to a potential Nazi SS recruit in the 1930s

Hitler Youth members performing the Nazi salute
at a rally at the Lustgarten in Berlin, 1933

This dissuasive speech speaks to many situations.  Shakespeare used it and Wisdom's prophetic warning (1:20-33) to shape his account of the moral education of young Prince Hal (King Henry IV).  It would be suitable as well on the lips of a mother on Chicago's South Side today, or of a father to a potential Nazi SS recruit in the 1930s.  It could have served a mother of an Israelite lad about to join one of the bloody rival gangs in the days of Abimelech (Judg 9:4, 25, 29).  It might serve Christian parents of a bright young son or daughter tempted to join a firm whose profits rest on exploitations of laborers, on destruction of the environment, or on success at the expense of justice and truth.

Source:  Van Leeuwen, Raymond.  “Proverbs.”  In The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 5:17-264.  (Nashville: Abingdon, 1997), page 38.