When wisdom has been around for several thousand years or so, it is taken to be a platitude. Both the Old and New Testaments have an undeserved bad reputation among smart people. Smart people have a fear of reading scriptures. They are afraid of getting religious cooties. Religious people skip over all of the natural law and common sense principles contained in the bible out of fear of interfering with their narrow interpretation of the writings.
In the New Testament when Jesus is about to be put to death on the cross, he asked God to forgive his executors saying “They know not what they do.”
Things that are said in the bible have applications beyond being part of the story being told. The Roman soldiers who put Jesus to death were acting as agents of the authority they worked under. All over the globe in countless capacities, people have surrendered their own identities and accept any instructions they get from authorities as the right thing to do. Harming others on behalf of an authority is a common occurrence. Such agents of authority, in truth, know not what they do. The Roman soldiers, killed Jesus, but they would have killed anyone they were directed to kill.
Agents of authority reason today, just as they did when the Roman soldiers killed Jesus. What we have time and time again in the scriptures are examples of reoccuring behaviors and circumstances. What is right in a person’s mind, is often baed on nothing more than orders from an authority figure.