Quick answer
The upright travel a built road, and its route is defined by what it avoids. Staying on it is self-preservation of the deepest kind.
Read both lines
A highway in the ancient world was a built and banked road, raised above the mud. The upright are not bushwhacking through moral wilderness making fresh decisions at every tree; their departure from evil has become infrastructure, a settled route their feet know. The verse relocates where moral safety comes from: not heroics at close range, but the road design that keeps you from passing near temptation at all, the practiced, boring, life-saving habit of simply not going there. Character, in this verse, is civil engineering.
Related: Proverbs 4:14–15 · Proverbs 4:26–27 · Isaiah 35:8
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.