Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Proverbs 5:1
My son, attend unto my wisdom, [and] bow thine ear to my understanding:
Tenth Address. Chap. 5. Pro 5:1-23
The subject of this chapter, of which the seventh commandment might be the title, is one throughout. Against the unholy passion to be shunned ( Pro 5:1-14) is set the holy love to be cherished ( Pro 5:15-23).
1. bow ] Rather, incline, R.V., because the same Heb. word is so rendered Pro 4:20.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The formula of a new counsel, introducing another warning against the besetting sin of youth Pro 2:16.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Pro 5:1-14
My son, attend unto my wisdom.
Caution against sexual sins
The scope of the passage is a warning against seventh-commandment sins, which youth is so prone to, the temptations to which are so violent, the examples of which are so many, and which, where admitted, are so destructive to all the seeds of virtue in the soul. We are warned–
I. That we do not listen to the charms of this sin.
1. How fatal the consequences will be! The terrors of conscience. The torments of hell.
2. How false the charms are! The design is to keep them from choosing the path of life, to prevent them from being religious. In order thereunto, to keep them from pondering the path of life.
II. That we do not approach the borders of sin. The caution is very pressing.
1. We ought to have a very great dread and detestation of the sin.
2. We ought industriously to avoid everything that may be an occasion of this sin, or a step towards it. Those that would keep out of harm must keep out of harms way.
3. We ought to be jealous over ourselves with a godly jealousy, and not be over-confident of the strength of our own resolutions.
4. Whatever has become a snare to us and an occasion of sin, we must part with at any cost (Mat 5:28-30).
III. The arguments enforcing the caution. The mischiefs that attend this sin.
1. It blasts the reputation.
2. It wastes the time.
3. It ruins the estate.
4. It is destructive to the health.
5. It will fill the mind with terror, if ever conscience be awakened.
Solomon here brings in the convinced sinner reproaching himself and aggravating his own folly. He will then most bitterly lament it. (Matthew Henry.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER V
Farther exhortations to acquire wisdom, 1, 2.
The character of a loose woman, and the ruinous consequences
of attachment to such, 3-14.
Exhortations to chastity and moderation, 15-21.
The miserable end of the wicked, 22, 23.
NOTES ON CHAP. V
Verse 1. Attend unto my wisdom] Take the following lessons from my own experience.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
1. This connection of wisdomand understanding is frequent (Pro 2:2;Pro 3:7); the first denotes theuse of wise means for wise ends; the other, the exercise of a properdiscrimination in their discovery.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
My son, attend unto my wisdom,…. Not the wisdom of the world or of the flesh, worldly wisdom and carnal policy; but spiritual and evangelical wisdom; such as one that is greater than Solomon has in him, even Christ; “for in him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”, Col 2:3; and which he teaches and communicates to others, even all proper instructions for conduct in life: the Gospel, and each of the doctrines of it, which are “the wisdom of God in a mystery”, 1Co 2:7: these every child of God, and disciple of Christ, ought carefully and diligently to attend unto;
[and] bow thine ear to my understanding: listen attentively to those things which I have, and give an understanding of, even things divine and spiritual; the understanding of which is of the utmost moment and importance.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Here a fourth rule of life follows the three already given, Pro 4:24, Pro 4:25, Pro 4:26-27:
1 My son, attend unto my wisdom,
And incline thine ear to my prudence,
2 To observe discretion,
And that thy lips preserve knowledge.
3 For the lips of the adulteress distil honey,
And smoother than oil is her mouth;
4 But her end is bitter like wormwood,
Sharper than a two-edged sword.
5 Her feet go down to death,
Her steps cleave to Hades.
6 She is far removed from entering the way of life,
Her steps wander without her observing it.
Wisdom and understanding increase with the age of those who earnestly seek after them. It is the father of the youth who here requests a willing ear to his wisdom of life, gained in the way of many years’ experience and observation. In Pro 5:2 the inf. of the object is continued in the finitum , as in Pro 2:2, Pro 2:8. ( vid., on its etymon under Pro 1:4) are plans, projects, designs, for the most part in a bad sense, intrigues and artifices ( vid., Pro 24:8), but also used of well-considered resolutions toward what is good, and hence of the purposes of God, Jer 23:20. This noble sense of the word , with its plur., is peculiar to the introductory portion (chap. 1-9) of the Book of Proverbs. The plur. means here and at Pro 8:12 (placing itself with and , vid., p. 68) the reflection and deliberation which is the presupposition of well-considered action, and is thus not otherwise than at Pro 19:8, and everywhere so meant, where it has that which is obligatory as its object: the youth is summoned to careful observation and persevering exemplification of the quidquid agas, prudenter agas et respice finem . In 2b the Rebia Mugrash forbids the genitive connection of the two words ; we translate: et ut scientiam labia tua tueantur . Lips which preserve knowledge are such as permit nothing to escape from them (Psa 17:3) which proceeds not from the knowledge of God, and in Him of that which is good and right, and aims at the working out of this knowledge; vid., Khler on Mal 2:7. (from , Arab. shafat , edge, lip, properly that against which one rubs, and that which rubs itself) is fem., but the usage of the language presents the word in two genders (cf. 3a with Pro 26:23). Regarding the pausal for , vid., under Mal 3:1; Mal 2:11. The lips which distil the honey of enticement stand opposite to the lips which distil knowledge; the object of the admonition is to furnish a protection against the honey-lips.
Pro 5:3 denotes the wife who belongs to another, or who does not belong to him to whom she gives herself or who goes after her ( vid., Pro 2:16). She appears here as the betrayer of youth. The poet paints the love and amiableness which she feigns with colours from the Song of Songs, Son 4:11, cf. Son 5:16. denotes the honey flowing of itself from the combs ( ), thus the purest and sweetest; its root-word is not , which means to shake, vibrate, and only mediately (when the object is a fluid) to scatter, sprinkle, but, as Schultens has observed, as verb = Arab. nafat , to bubble, to spring up, nafath , to blow, to spit out, to pour out. Parchon places the word rightly under (while Kimchi places it under after the form ), and explained it by (the words should have been used): the honey which flows from the cells before they are broken (the so-called virgin honey). The mouth, = Arab. hink (from , Arab. hanak , imbuere , e.g., after the manner of Beduins, the mouth of the newly-born infant with date-honey), comes into view here, as at Pro 8:7, etc., as the instrument of speech: smoother than oil (cf. Psa 55:22), it shows itself when it gives forth amiable, gentle, impressive words (Pro 2:16, Pro 6:24); also our “ schmeicheln ” (= to flatter, caress) is equivalent to to make smooth and fair; in the language of weavers it means to smooth the warp.
Pro 5:4-5 In Pro 5:4 the reverse of the sweet and smooth external is placed opposite to the attraction of the seducer, by whose influence the inconsiderate permits himself to be carried away: her end, i.e., the last that is experienced of her, the final consequence of intercourse with her (cf. Pro 23:32), is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. The O.T. language regards bitterness and poison as related both in meaning and in reality; the word (Aq. = wormwood) means in Arab. the curse. is translated by Jerome after the lxx, gladius biceps ; but means double-edged, and (Jdg 3:16) means a doubled-edged sword. Here the plur. will thus poetically strengthen the meaning, like , that which devours, as if it had three or four edges (Fl.). The end in which the disguised seduction terminates is bitter as the bitterest, and cutting as that which cuts the most: self-condemnation and a feeling of divine anger, anguish of heart, and destructive judgment. The feet of the adulteress go downward to death. In Hebr. this descendentes ad mortem is expressed by the genitive of connection; is the genitive, as in , Pro 1:12; elsewhere the author uses , Pro 7:27; Pro 2:18. Death, (so named from the stretching of the corpse after the stiffness of death), denotes the condition of departure from this side as a punishment, with which is associated the idea of divine wrath. In (sinking, abyss, from , R. , , vid., under Isa 5:14), lie the ideas of the grave as a place of corruption, and of the under-world as the place of incorporeal shadow-life. Her steps hold fast to Hades is equivalent to, they strive after Hades and go straight to it; similar to this is the Arab. expression, hdha aldrb yakhdh aly albld : this way leads straight forward to the town (Fl.).
Pro 5:6 If we try to connect the clause beginning with with 5b as its principal sentence: she goes straight to the abyss, so that by no means does she ever tread the way of life (thus e.g., Schultens), or better, with 6b: never more to walk in the way of life, her paths fluctuate hither and thither (as Gr. Venet. and Kamphausen in Bunsen’s Bibelwerk, after Bertheau and Ewald, translate); then in the former case more than in the latter the difference of the subject opposes itself, and in the latter, in addition, the , only disturbing in this negative clause. Also by the arrangement of the words, 6a appears as an independent thought. But with Jewish expositors (Rashi, Aben-Ezra, Ralbag, Malbim, etc.) to interpret , after the Talmud ( b. Mod katan 9a) and Midrash, as an address is impracticable; the warning: do not weigh the path of life, affords no meaning suitable to this connection – for we must, with Cartwright and J. H. Michaelis, regard 6a as the antecedent to 6b: ne forte semitam vitae ad sequendum eligas, te per varios deceptionum meandros abripit ut non noveris, ubi locorum sis ; but then the continuation of the address is to be expected in 6b. No, the subject to is the adulteress, and is an intensified . Thus the lxx, Jerome, Syr., Targ., Luther, Geier, Nolde, and among Jewish interpreters Heidenheim, who first broke with the tradition sanctioned by the Talmud and the Midrash, for he interpreted 6a as a negative clause spoken in the tone of a question. But is not suitable for a question, but for a call. Accordingly, Bttcher explains: viam vitae ne illa complanare studeat ! ( in the meaning complanando operam dare ). But the adulteress as such, and the striving to come to the way of life, stand in contradiction: an effort to return must be meant, which, because the power of sin over her is too great, fails; but the words do not denote that, they affirm the direct contrary, viz., that it does not happen to the adulteress ever to walk in the way of life. As in the warning the independent may be equivalent to cave ne (Job 32:13), so also in the declaration it may be equivalent to absit ut , for (from , after the forms = Arab. banj . = Arab. ‘asj ) means turning away, removal. Thus: Far from taking the course of the way of life (which has life as its goal and reward) – for , to open, to open a road (Psa 78:50), has here the meaning of the open road itself – much rather do her steps wilfully stagger (Jer 14:10) hither and thither, they go without order and without aim, at one time hither, at another time thither, without her observing it; i.e., without her being concerned at this, that she thereby runs into the danger of falling headlong into the yawning abyss. The unconsciousness which the clause esu expresses, has as its object not the falling (Psa 35:8), of which there is here nothing directly said, but just this staggering, vacillation, the danger of which she does not watch against. has Mercha under the with Zinnorith preceding; it is Milra [an oxytone] ( Michlol 111b); the punctuation varies in the accentuations of the form without evident reason: Olsh. 233, p. 285. The old Jewish interpreters (and recently also Malbim) here, as also at Pro 2:16, by the [strange woman] understand heresy ( ), or the philosophy that is hostile to revelation; the ancient Christian interpreters understood by it folly (Origen), or sensuality (Procopius), or heresy (Olympiodorus), or false doctrine (Polychronios). The lxx, which translates, Pro 5:5, by , looks toward this allegorical interpretation. But this is unnecessary, and it is proved to be false from Pro 5:15-20, where the is contrasted with the married wife.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Parental Instructions; Cautions against Sensuality. | |
1 My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding: 2 That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge. 3 For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: 4 But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword. 5 Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell. 6 Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them. 7 Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth. 8 Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house: 9 Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel: 10 Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger; 11 And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, 12 And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; 13 And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me! 14 I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.
Here we have,
I. A solemn preface, to introduce the caution which follows, Pro 5:1; Pro 5:2. Solomon here addresses himself to his son, that is, to all young men, as unto his children, whom he has an affection for and some influence upon. In God’s name, he demands attention; for he writes by divine inspiration, and is a prophet, though he begins not with, Thus saith the Lord. “Attend, and bow thy ear; not only hear what is said, and read what is written, but apply thy mind to it and consider it diligently.” To gain attention he urges, 1. The excellency of his discourse: “It is my wisdom, my understanding; if I undertake to teach thee wisdom I cannot prescribe any thing to be more properly called so; moral philosophy is my philosophy, and that which is to be learned in my school.” 2. The usefulness of it: “Attend to what I say,” (1.) “That thou mayest act wisely–that thou mayest regard discretion.” Solomon’s lectures are not designed to fill our heads with notions, with matters of nice speculation, or doubtful disputation, but to guide us in the government of ourselves, that we may act prudently, so as becomes us and so as will be for our true interest. (2.) “That thou mayest speak wisely–that thy lips may keep knowledge, and thou mayest have it ready at thy tongue’s end” (as we say), “for the benefit of those with whom thou dost converse.” The priest’s lips are said to keep knowledge (Mal. ii. 7); but those that are ready and mighty in the scriptures may not only in their devotions, but in their discourses, be spiritual priests.
II. The caution itself, and that is to abstain from fleshly lusts, from adultery, fornication, and all uncleanness. Some apply this figuratively, and by the adulterous woman here understand idolatry, or false doctrine, which tends to debauch men’s minds and manners, or the sensual appetite, to which it may as fitly as any thing be applied; but the primary scope of it is plainly to warn us against seventh-commandment sins, which youth is so prone to, the temptations to which are so violent, the examples of which are so many, and which, where admitted, are so destructive to all the seeds of virtue in the soul that it is not strange that Solomon’s cautions against it are so very pressing and so often repeated. Solomon here, as a faithful watchman, gives fair warning to all, as they regard their lives and comforts, to dread this sin, for it will certainly be their ruin. Two things we are here warned to take heed of:–
1. That we do not listen to the charms of this sin. It is true the lips of a strange woman drop as a honey-comb (v. 3); the pleasures of fleshly lust are very tempting (like the wine that gives its colour in the cup and moves itself aright); its mouth, the kisses of its mouth, the words of its mouth, are smoother than oil, that the poisonous pill may go down glibly and there may be no suspicion of harm in it. But consider, (1.) How fatal the consequences will be. What fruit will the sinner have of his honey and oil when the end will be, [1.] The terrors of conscience: It is bitter as wormwood, v. 4. What was luscious in the mouth rises in the stomach and turns sour there; it cuts, in the reflection, like a two-edged sword; take it which way you will, it wounds. Solomon could speak by experience, Eccl. vii. 26. [2.] The torments of hell. If some that have been guilty of this sin have repented and been saved, yet the direct tendency of the sin is to destruction of body and soul; the feet of it go down to death, nay, they take hold on hell, to pull it to the sinner, as if the damnations slumbered too long, v. 4. Those that are entangled in this sin should be reminded that there is but a step between them and hell, and that they are ready to drop into it. (2.) Consider how false the charms are. The adulteress flatters and speaks fair, her words are honey and oil, but she will deceive those that hearken to her: Her ways are movable, that thou canst not know them; she often changes her disguise, and puts on a great variety of false colours, because, if she be rightly known, she is certainly hated. Proteus-like, she puts on many shapes, that she may keep in with those whom she has a design upon. And what does she aim at with all this art and management? Nothing but to keep them from pondering the path of life, for she knows that, if they once come to do that, she shall certainly lose them. Those are ignorant of Satan’s devices who do not understand that the great thing he drives at in all his temptations is, [1.] To keep them from choosing the path of life, to prevent them from being religious and from going to heaven, that, being himself shut out from happiness, he may keep them out from it. [2.] In order hereunto, to keep them from pondering the path of life, from considering how reasonable it is that they should walk in that path, and how much it will be for their advantage. Be it observed, to the honour of religion, that it certainly gains its point with all those that will but allow themselves the liberty of a serious thought and will weigh things impartially in an even balance, and that the devil has no way of securing men in his interests but by diverting them with continual amusements of one kind or another from the calm and sober consideration of the things that belong to their peace. And uncleanness is a sin that does as much as any thing blind the understanding, sear the conscience, and keep people from pondering the path of life. Whoredom takes away the heart, Hos. iv. 11.
2. That we do not approach the borders of this sin, Pro 5:7; Pro 5:8.
(1.) This caution is introduced with a solemn preface: “Hear me now therefore, O you children! whoever you are that read or hear these lines, take notice of what I say, and mix faith with it, treasure it up, and depart not from the words of my mouth, as those will do that hearken to the words of the strange woman. Do not only receive what I say, for the present merely, but cleave to it, and let it be ready to thee, and of force with thee, when thou art most violently assaulted by the temptation.”
(2.) The caution itself is very pressing: “Remove thy way far from her; if thy way should happen to lie near her, and thou shouldst have a fair pretence of being led by business within the reach of her charms, yet change thy way, and alter the course of it, rather than expose thyself to danger; come not nigh the door of her house; go on the other side of the street, nay, go through some other street, though it be about.” This intimates, [1.] That we ought to have a very great dread and detestation of the sin. We must fear it as we would a place infected with the plague; we must loathe it as the odour of carrion, that we will not come near. Then we are likely to preserve our purity when we conceive a rooted antipathy to all fleshly lusts. [2.] That we ought industriously to avoid every thing that may be an occasion of this sin or a step towards it. Those that would be kept from harm must keep out of harm’s way. Such tinder there is in the corrupt nature that it is madness, upon any pretence whatsoever, to come near the sparks. If we thrust ourselves into temptation, we mocked God when we prayed, Lead us not into temptation. [3.] That we ought to be jealous over ourselves with a godly jealousy, and not to be so confident of the strength of our own resolutions as to venture upon the brink of sin, with a promise to ourselves that hitherto we will come and no further. [4.] That whatever has become a snare to us and an occasion of sin, though it be as a right eye and a right hand, we must pluck it out, cut it off, and cast it from us, must part with that which is dearest to us rather than hazard our own souls; this is our Saviour’s command, Matt. v. 28-30.
(3.) The arguments which Solomon here uses to enforce this caution are taken from the same topic with those before, the many mischiefs which attend this sin. [1.] It blasts the reputation. “Thou wilt give thy honour unto others (v. 9); thou wilt lose it thyself; thou wilt put into the hand of each of thy neighbours a stone to throw at thee, for they will all, with good reason, cry shame on thee, will despise thee, and trample on thee, as a foolish men.” Whoredom is a sin that makes men contemptible and base, and no man of sense or virtue will care to keep company with one that keeps company with harlots. [2.] It wastes the time, gives the years, the years of youth, the flower of men’s time, unto the cruel, “that base lust of thine, which with the utmost cruelty wars against the soul, that base harlot which pretends an affection for thee, but really hunts for the precious life.” Those years that should be given to the honour of a gracious God are spent in the service of a cruel sin. [3.] It ruins the estate (v. 10): “Strangers will be filled with thy wealth, which thou art but entrusted with as a steward for thy family; and the fruit of thy labours, which should be provision for thy own house, will be in the house of a stranger, that neither has right to it nor will ever thank thee for it.” [4.] It is destructive to the health, and shortens men’s days: Thy flesh and thy body will be consumed by it, v. 11. The lusts of uncleanness not only war against the soul, which the sinner neglects and is in no care about, but they war against the body too, which he is so indulgent of and is in such care to please and pamper, such deceitful, such foolish, such hurtful lusts are they. Those that give themselves to work uncleanness with greediness waste their strength, throw themselves into weakness, and often have their bodies filled with loathsome distempers, by which the number of their months is cut off in the midst and they fall unpitied sacrifices to a cruel lust. [5.] It will fill the mind with horror, if ever conscience be awakened. “Though thou art merry now, sporting thyself in thy own deceivings, yet thou wilt certainly mourn at the last, v. 11. Thou art all this while making work for repentance, and laying up matter for vexation and torment in the reflection, when the sin is set before thee in its own colours.” Sooner or later it will bring sorrow, either when the soul is humbled and brought to repentance or when the flesh and body are consumed, either by sickness, when conscience flies in the sinner’s face, or by the grave; when the body is rotting there, the soul is racking in the torments of hell, where the worm dies not, and “Son, remember,” is the constant peal. Solomon here brings in the convinced sinner reproaching himself, and aggravating his own folly. He will then most bitterly lament it. First, That because he hated to be reformed he therefore hated to be informed, and could not endure either to be taught his duty (How have I hated not only the discipline of being instructed, but the instruction itself, though all true and good!) or to be told of his faults–My heart despised reproof, v. 12. He cannot but own that those who had the charge of him, parents, ministers, had done their part; they had been his teachers; they had instructed him, had given him good counsel and fair warning (v. 13); but to his own shame and confusion does he speak it, and therein justifies God in all the miseries that were brought upon him, he had not obeyed their voice, for indeed he never inclined his ear to those that instructed him, never minded what they said nor admitted the impressions of it. Note, Those who have had a good education and do not live up to it will have a great deal to answer for another day; and those who will not now remember what they were taught, to conform themselves to it, will be made to remember it as an aggravation of their sin, and consequently of their ruin. Secondly, That by the frequent acts of sin the habits of it were so rooted and confirmed that his heart was fully set in him to commit it (v. 14): I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly. When he came into the synagogue, or into the courts of the temple, to worship God with other Israelites, his unclean heart was full of wanton thoughts and desires and his eyes of adultery. Reverence of the place and company, and of the work that was doing, could not restrain him, but he was almost as wicked and vile there as any where. No sin will appear more frightful to an awakened conscience than the profanation of holy things; nor will any aggravation of sin render it more exceedingly sinful than the place we are honoured with in the congregation and assembly, and the advantages we enjoy thereby. Zimri and Cozbi avowed their villany in the sight of Moses and all the congregation (Num. xxv. 6), and heart-adultery is as open to God, and must needs be most offensive to him, when we draw nigh to him in religious exercises. I was in all evil in defiance of the magistrates and judges, and their assemblies; so some understand it. Others refer it to the evil of punishment, not to the evil of sin: “I was made an example, a spectacle to the world. I was under almost all God’s sore judgments in the midst of the congregation of Israel, set up for a mark. I stood up and cried in the congregation,” Job xxx. 28. Let that be avoided which will be thus rued at last.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
THE WISDOM OF
MARRIAGE FIDELITY
(Proverbs 5)
Verses 1 and 2 urge the son to heed the wisdom and understanding he has been taught when or if approached by a strange woman; taking care to act with discretion and to speak consistent with the knowledge or learning he has acquired.
Verse 3 refers to the enticing speech of the strange woman, the seductive adulteress, against whom the son needs to protect himself, Pro 2:16; Pro 6:24; Pro 7:21; Psa 55:21.
Verses 4 and 5 reveal the truth that the so-called pleasures of adultery have an end, an afterwards of bitter and painful consequences that lead even to death and hell. Wormwood, bitter as gall, and the two-edged sword which cuts two ways, are used as symbols to emphasize the sorrow and pain that follow the sin of adultery. It is a sin upon which God has pronounced judgment, Ecc 7:26; Heb 13:4; Pro 11:7; Pro 14:32.
Verse 6 warns further that the seductress frequently changes her allurements to divert the prospective partner’s attention and thus prevent his pondering the evils of the contemplated sin, Pro 4:26.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
ILLUSTRATION OF Pro. 5:19
Here we have started up, and sent leaping over the plain, another of Solomons favourites. What elegant creatures those gazelles are, and how gracefully they bound. We shall meet them all through Syria and Palestine, and the more you see of them the greater will be your admiration. Solomon is not alone in his partiality. Persian and Arab poets abound in reference to them. The fair ones of these fervid sons of song are often compared to the coy gazelle that comes by night and pastures upon their hearts. They are amiable, affectionate, and loving, by universal testimony, and accordingly no sweeter comparison can be found than that of Pro. 5:19.Thomsons Land and the Book.
CRITICAL NOTES.
Pro. 5:2. Discretion, Lit. reflection, prudent consideration.
Pro. 5:3. Drop as an honey-comb, distil honey. Wormwood. In Eastern countries this herb, the absinthum of Greek and Latin botanists, was regarded as a poison. It has a bitter and saline taste.
Pro. 5:6. This verse is rendered in two ways. The forms of the two verbs may be in the second person masculine, and so apply to the tempted youth, or in the third person feminine, and so be understood to refer to the harlot. Most modern commentators take the latter reading. Delitzsch translates: She is far removed from entering the way of life: her steps wander without her observing it. Stuart: That she may not ponder the path of life, her ways are become unsteady, while she regards it not. The rendering in Langes Commentary is, The path of life she never treadeth, her steps stray, she knoweth not whither. The authorised version is, however, supported by Rosenmuller and Michaelis.
Pro. 5:9. Honour, or power, bloom, or freshness.
Pro. 5:11. Mourn, or groan, at the last, lit. at thine end.
Pro. 5:14. Readings here again vary. Miller translates: I soon became like any wicked man. Langes Commentary: A little more, and I had fallen into utter destruction. The renderings of Stuart and Delitzsch are substantially the same as the authorised version.
Pro. 5:16. In order to make the idea in this verse agree with those preceding and following it, Stuart and other commentators insert a negative: Let (not) thy fountains, &c. Langes Commentary considers this needless, and retains the same idea by conceiving the sentence to be an interrogative indicated, not by its form, but by its tone: Shall thy fountains? &c. So also Hitzig. Holden, Noyes, Wordsworth, Miller, &c., read as in the authorised version.
Pro. 5:19. Be ravished, lit. err, used in the next verse in a bad sense, and in chap. Pro. 20:1, and Isa. 28:7, of the staggering gait of the intoxicated. It seems to express a being transported with joy.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPHPro. 5:1-20
BITTER AND SWEET WATERS
I. A wrong relation. The relationship here forbidden is wrong.
1. Because it is a sin against the tempter. The tempter in Eden had his load of iniquity increased by the yielding of the tempted one to his persuasion. He increased his crime when he made another a partaker of his disobedience. Satan, doubtless, becomes worse each time that he persuades another to sin. The gamblers guilt and misery is increased in proportion to his success in bringing others to ruin. The young man in the text increases the guilt of the strange woman by yielding to her enticements. He burdens her with new guilt and intensifies her iniquity, and therefore helps to treasure up for her a greater remorse when her conscience shall awake and arise from the grave of sensuality.
2. Because it is a sin against a mans own body. That which is our own is generally valued by us, and there is nothing material which is ours in a more exclusive sense than our bodily frame. It is nearer to us than any other material possession, and to sin against it is to sin against that which stands in the nearest relation to our personal moral individuality. There are sins done in the body by the mind which are purely mental, from which the body does not suffer; but adultery forces the body into a relation which brings misery and disease upon it, and in due season consumes and destroys it like a devouring flame. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body (1Co. 6:18).
3. Because it is a sin against human nature in general, and national life in particular. Human nature is like the human body, every man is linked to his fellow-men as the several members of the body are parts of one whole. This solidaritythis union of interestsis more obvious when considered in relation to a particular community or nation; and, as no member of the human body can be disfigured without bringing the whole frame into a state of imperfection and loss of dignity, so no man can degrade himself without bringing degradation upon the whole race. The fornicator is a plague-spot upon the body of humanity; and although other sinners bring disfigurement upon the body universal, there is none who defiles it as he does. God has written His mark upon the crust of the earth against this enormous sin (Gen. 19:24-25).
4. Because it makes God, in a sense, to bear the iniquity with the transgressor. The youth who spends the money his father gives him in furthering his own wicked purposes makes his father an unwilling partaker of his crimes, because the money was supplied by him. God made this complaint against sinners in the olden time. The good gifts of the earth which God bestowed upon the Hebrew people were used by them in their debasing idol-worship. God gave them the means of honouring Him, and they used His gifts in dishonouring His name. So God gives to every man power to glorify Him and to bless himself and the world by the formation of right relations. When the power thus given is used in an unlawful manner, Gods own gift is used against Himself. The sinner turns the Divine gift against the Divine Giver; and while in God he lives, and moves, and has his being, he lives and moves but to sin against his Maker. Thus in Scripture language God is made to serve with the sinner, while He is wearied with his iniquities (Isa. 43:22-24).
II. The bitter waters which flow from this wrong relation. (Pro. 5:4.)
1. The loss of honour. (Pro. 5:7.) To some men this is dearer than life. The captain would rather go to the bottom of the sea with his ship than live with a shadow upon his good name and reputation. The man who has lost his honour in the eyes of others has lost his honour in his own eyes, and the loss of self-honour or self-respect is a calamity that is very bitter to the soul. The man who will indulge in unlawful intercourse, will find that he not only loses the respect of others, but he will be unable to respect himself, and this loss is the greatest that a man can sustain on this side of hell. It is a draught which, although there might be pleasure in the drawing, will be very bitter in the drinking.
2. The loss of manhoods vigour and opportunities. He will give his years to the cruel, his strength to the stranger. The loss of youthful strength and energy is the loss of years, the youth becomes old before he is a man. The vessel or the mansion that is charred by fire before it is completed presents a strange contrast. The newness and freshness of the walls or the timbers that have escaped make the destruction of the rest more lamentable. The building has been marred just upon the verge of completion, the ship has been spoiled when she was all but ready for the voyage. It is sad to see an old tree blasted by the lightning, but it is a greater misfortune when the tree is in its prime, when it is laden with fruit about to come to perfection. But these are faint shadows of the sad spectacle which is presented by a youth who has become prematurely old by unlawful indulgence before he has reached his prime. He is unfit to battle with the sea of life at the very time when he ought to be setting out on his voyage. He falls short of fulfilling the demands of God and man at the moment when he ought to be bringing forth abundant fruit. Surely such a consciousness must be as bitter waters to the spirit.
3. The action of conscience and memory in a dying day. And thou mourn at the last, etc. (Pro. 5:11.) The lamp that hangs from the stern of the vessel throws a light upon the wake of the ship and reveals the path that she has travelled. Memory is such a lamp to the human soul. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus we find memory throwing such a light upon the past, and enabling him to look back upon the path which had brought him to his present abode. Conscience sat in judgment upon it and united with memory to make his present cup a bitter one. The bitterness that is always mingled with the life of the profligate becomes doubly bitter at its end. Memory throws her light upon his past, and shows him the strength, and honour, and opportunities of life squandered in licentiousness, and conscience anticipates future retribution and makes him feel the truth of the word of warning, Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge (Heb. 13:4). The bitterness is increased by the reflection that the sin was committed in defiance of counsel to act differently. And thou say, How have I hated instruction and my heart despised reproof (Pro. 5:12). Those who sin against the light of nature only, find a recompense which is terrible, yet which an inspired Apostle declares to be meet (Rom. 1:27). The sins here mentioned are sins against nature, and nature asserts her right to punish her broken law and leave her mark upon the fornicator. But when revelation, and instruction, and good example are added to the light of nature, the cup contains ingredients of tenfold bitterness. Whoso breaketh one edge, a serpent shall bite him (Ecc. 10:8). How much sharper will be the sting if a doublea threefoldhedge is broken through.
III. Sweet waters flowing from a right relationship. The waters are sweet or living
1. From a consciousness that a chaste wife belongs to him alone (Pro. 5:15). The profligate can lay no such claim for the woman of his choice; she is, by her own consent, common to all. The husbandman has a very different feeling concerning his own field, which he alone has a right to till, and the common land which is open to all comers. So the true husband has a feeling towards his wife to which the licentious man is an entire stranger.
2. Because such a life is in harmony with the rights of society. The brooks and rivers of the land cannot be pure if the springs are defiled. The social life of a nation can only be healthy while the purity of the marriage relation is maintained. God has written his doom whenever and wherever this sacred bond has been violated. The consciousness of being a blessing to the world swells the stream of satisfaction which arises from a faithful observance of this relationship.
3. Because a true marriage is a mans completion. The sinless man in Eden felt a want until Eve was given to him, even though God had created him in his own image. How much more does man now feel the need of a helpmeet for him, such as he finds only in a faithful wife.
4. The waters are further sweetened by the reflection that this relationship is used to symbolise that existing between Christ and His Church. Christ is the Head of His Church for her good. The true husband feels that he is the head of the wife for the same end. The relationship becomes doubly blessed when looked at from this point of view.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Pro. 5:1-2. When the Word of God enters the heart, it will banish all pollution from the tongue.Lawson.
Perhaps painful experience (1Ki. 11:1-8, Ecc. 7:26) had given the wise man wisdom and understanding. Therefore let us attend to it with fear and trembling.Bridges.
God allows us to call that knowledge ours which originally is His.
1. Because God give it us, and he that gives a man land allows him to call it his.
2. Because it is given for our good as well as other mens. We are not like the builders of Noahs ark, that could not be preserved in it.Francis Taylor.
Pro. 5:3. The strange woman occurs so often in this book, that it is not probable she is introduced simply to denounce licentiousness. Indeed, she so stands twin picture to wisdom, that we come to a firm belief that she is introduced as the picture of impenitence.Miller.
To hear her one would suppose that she was possessed of the most generous and disinterested spirit. Her tongue is taught by him who betrayed Eve to paint the vilest sin with the most beautiful colours.Lawson.
Pro. 5:4 : The wise counsel of the father puts those things together, in his words, which the folly of sinners putteth far asunder in their thoughts, the beginning and end of lustful wantonness. He that by foresight shall taste the bitter end will never lick the honeycomb. He that by a wise consideration shall feel the sharp edges of the issues of it, will never delight to smooth himself with the flat sides of the sword.Jermin.
Pro. 5:5. Possession of hell is taken by the wicked before they come into it; the devil giveth them that when he by wickedness possesseth their hearts. There is no more to be done than to set up their abode in it.Jermin.
Pro. 5:6. The words, if taken to refer to the woman, describe with a terrible vividness the state of heart and soul which prostitution brings upon its victims; the reckless blindness that will not think, tottering on the abyss, yet loud in its defiant mirth, ignoring the dreadful future.Plumptre.
Pro. 5:7. Let no one think what he will do when he is in danger, and how he will get from her, when once she hath got him to her, but hear now what ye are to do to keep out of danger.Jermin.
Pro. 5:8. The devil will tempt you enough without your own help. To tempt is his business. As you love your life and your own soul, give him no assistance in the work of destruction.Lawson.
He that is farthest from fire is safest from the burning of it; he that is most remote from the way and course of the river is in less danger from the overflowing of it. It argues too much mind to be in the house, for anyone to come near the door of it. It is more safe not to be in danger of perishing, than being in danger not to perish. Chrysostom, speaking of Joseph, saith, It doth not seem so wonderful to me, that the three children in the furnace overcame the fire, as that Joseph, being indeed in a more grievous furnace than that of Babylon, came forth untouched.Jermin.
1. Because of thy proneness to evil. Straw will quickly take fire. Gunpowder is no more apt to take fire than our corrupt nature to be provoked to this sin.
2. Because flight is the best fight here. No struggle comparable to a safe retreat.F. Taylor.
Pro. 5:10. It is said that Demosthenes gave this answer to a harlot who desired to seduce him from the path of virtue, and demanded a hundred talents for her hire: I will not buy repentance so dear.Jermin.
One keenest torment of the damned will be to find that they are working hard in the very pit of the universe; submitting to the sentence (Mat. 25:28), Take, therefore, the talent from him and give it to him that hath ten talents. The adulterer might make himself a bankrupt, and get himself sold for his transgression; but that is a trifle compared with the sweeping surrender that must be made of all by the finally impenitent.Miller.
Pro. 5:12. The climax goes on. Bitterer than slavery (Pro. 5:9); poverty (Pro. 5:10); disease (Pro. 5:11) will be the bitterness of self-reproach, the remorse without hope, that worketh death.Plumptre.
Though in respect of Gods infinite mercy, it be never too late in this life, yet take heed how we stay too long. It is true that the thief on the cross found mercy at the last hour; but it hath been well remarked, It was not the last hour, but the first, of the thiefs knowing God; as soon as he knew Christ he was converted. If, therefore, thou hast long known Christ, and has not repented, do not presume too rashly of mercy at last.Jermin.
There are no infidels in eternity, and but few on a death-bed.Bridges.
Pro. 5:11-12. Dying regrets.
I. The subject of these regrets. It is a man who has disregarded through life the means employed to preserve or reclaim him. What instructors has a man living in a country like this? First, Your connections in life. You may have been a member of a pious family, or had an instructor or a reprover in a brother, friend, or religious neighbour. Second, The Scriptures. Third, Ministers. Fourth, Conscience. Fifth, Irrational creatures. Can you hear the melody of the birds and not be ashamed of your sinful silence? Can you see the heavenly bodies perform unerringly their appointed course and not reflect on your own numberless departures from duty? Sixth, The dispensations of Providence. God has chastened you with sickness. You have stood by dying beds.
II. The period of these regrets. It is a dying hour. It is at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed. Such a period is unavoidable. The last breath will expire, the last Sabbath will elapse, the last sermon will be heard. Such a period cannot be far off. For what is our life? It is a vapour that appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away. It is a flood. It is a flower. It is a tale that is told. It is a dream. Such a period may be very near. Such a period is sometimes prematurely brought on by sin.
III. The nature of these regrets. This mourning is
(1) dreadful. A dying hour has been called an honest hour. The world then recedes from view. The delusions of imagination give way. Criminal excuses vanish. Memory goes back and recalls the guilt of the former life, and conscience sets the most secret sins in the light of Gods countenance.
2. It is useless. Not as to others, but as regards the individuals themselves. We are to describe things according to their natural and common course, and not according to occasional exceptions. And in this case exceptions are unusual. And we are borne out in this assertion
(1) By Scripture. There we find only one called at this hour.
2. By observation. We have often attended persons on what seemed their dying bed; we have heard their prayers and their professions; we have seen their distress and their relief, and, had they died, we should have presumed on their salvation. But we have never known one of these, who, on recovery, lived so as to prove the reality of his conversion! We have often asked ministers concerning the same case, and they have been compelled to make the same awful declaration.Jay.
Pro. 5:14. In a spiritual sense this may be applied to those who hold the truth in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18), and who, although they dwell in the midst of holy men in the Church of God, set their example at defiance by evil lives.Bede.
Pro. 5:15. Desire after forbidden enjoyments naturally springs from dissatisfaction with the blessings already in possession. Where contentment is not found at home it will be sought for, however vainly, abroad. Conjugal love is chief among the earthly gifts in mercy granted by God to His fallen creatures. Whatsoever interrupts the strictest harmony in this delicate relationship, opens the door to temptation. Tender domestic affection is the best defence against the vagrant desires of unlawful passion.Bridges.
Do not steal water from others. Although the strange woman saith, Stolen waters are sweet, yet remember that the dead are there (ch. Pro. 9:17-18). The wife is called a vessel in 1Pe. 3:7. These words also have been expounded by ancient interpreters in a spiritual sense, which may well be present to the readers mind; and they have been applied to the pure waters of Divine wisdom, a sense which is suggested by Jer. 2:13.Wordsworth.
If God had laid all common, certainly
Man would have been th incloser: but since now
God hath impaled us, on the contrary,
Man breaks the fence, and every ground will plough.
O what were man, might he himself misplace!
Sure to be cross he would shift feet and face.
George Herbert.
Spiritual Self-helpfulness.
I. Man has independent spiritual resources. He has a cistern, a well of his own. First: He has independent resources of thought. Every sane man can and does think for himself. Thoughts well up in every soul, voluntarily and involuntarily. Secondly: He has independent resources of experience. No two have exactly the same experience. Thirdly: He has independent powers of usefulness. Every man has a power to do a something which no other canto touch some soul with an effectiveness which no other can. Wonderful is this well withininexhaustible and ever active.
II. Man is bound to use these resources. Drink waters out of thine own cistern; do not live on others. Self-drawingFirst: Honours our own nature. Secondly: Increases our own resources. Self-helpfulness strengthens. The more you draw from this cistern the more comes. Thirdly: Contributes to the good of the universe. The man who gives only what he has borrowed from others adds nothing to the common stock. The subjectFirst: Indicates the kind of service one man can spiritually render another. To priest, rabbi, sectary, I would sayMan does not require your well; he has a cistern within. What he wants is the warm gospel of love to thaw his frozen nature, and to unseal the exhaustless fountain within, to remove all obstructions to its out-flow, and to make it as pure as the crystal. The subjectSecondly: Suggests an effective method to sap the foundation of all priestly assumptions. Let every man become self-helpful, and the influence of those who arrogate a lordship over the faith of others will soon die out. The subjectThirdly: Presents a motive for thankfully adoring the Great Creator for the spiritual constitution He has given us. We have resources not, of course, independent of Him the primal fount of all life and power, but independent of all other creatures. We are not like the parched traveller in the Oriental desert, who, because he cannot discover water, dies of thirst. Spiritually, we can walk through sandy deserts bearing an exhaustless spring within.Dr. David Thomas.
Pro. 5:18. It is not only to feed and clothe her, and refrain from injuring her by word or deed. All this will not discharge a mans duty nor satisfy a womans heart. All the allusions to this relation in Scripture imply an ardent, joyful love. To it, though it lie far beneath heaven, yet to it, as the highest earthly thing, is compared the union of Christ and His redeemed Church. Beware where you go for comfort in distress, and sympathy in happiness. The Lord Himself is the source of all consolation to a soul that seeks Him; yet nature is His, as well as redemption. He has constructed nether springs on earth and supplied them from His own high treasures; and to these He bids a broken or a joyful spirit go for sympathy. To rejoice in the wife of thy youththis is not to put a creature in the place of God. He will take care of His own honour. He has hewn the cistern, and given it to you, and filled it, and when you draw out of it what He has put in, you get from Himself and give Him the glory.Arnot.
Pro. 5:19. In a spiritual sense, this imagery, derived from the limpid fountains and beautiful animals of the natural world, is regarded by the ancient expositors as descriptive of the delicious refreshment and perfect loveliness of Divine truth, and the infinite blessings which it bestows on those faithful souls which are united to it in pure and unsullied love.Wordsworth.
Pro. 5:20. A rare instance in which a canto does not begin with My son, but with Why. The question is intended to be pressed. The commerce with the strange woman is so plainly mad that the rightly educated impenitent cannot possibly answer the wise mans question.Miller.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER 5
TEXT Pro. 5:1-14
1.
My son, attend unto my wisdom;
Incline thine ear to my understanding:
2.
That thou mayest preserve discretion,
And that thy lips may keep knowledge.
3.
For the lips of a strange woman drop honey,
And her mouth is smoother than oil:
4.
But in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
Sharp as a two-edged sword.
5.
Her feet go down to death;
Her steps take hold on Sheol;
6.
So that she findeth not the level path of life:
Her ways are unstable, and she knoweth it not.
7.
Now therefore, my sons, hearken unto me,
And depart not from the words of my mouth.
8.
Remove thy way far from her,
And come not nigh to the door of her house;
9.
Lest thou give honor unto others,
And thy years unto the cruel;
10.
Lest strangers be filled with thy strength,
And thy labors be in the house of an alien,
11.
And thou mourn at thy latter end,
When thy flesh and thy body are consumed,
12.
And say, How have I hated instruction,
And my heart despised reproof;
13.
Neither have I obeyed the voice of my teachers,
Nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!
14.
I was well-nigh in all evil
In the midst of the assembly and congregation.
STUDY QUESTIONS OVER 5:1-14
1.
Why should a father teach his son (Pro. 5:1)?
2.
How does Pro. 5:2 say wisdom will show up?
3.
Comment on the 2 figures used in Pro. 5:3.
4.
How is the end in Pro. 5:4 different from what we read in Pro. 5:3?
5.
Where does the evil womans way go (Pro. 5:5)?
6.
What kind of person is this woman (Pro. 5:6)?
7.
What is the purpose of Pro. 5:7 being where it is?
8.
Why is the instruction in Pro. 5:8 so pertinent?
9.
How deeply does such a person usually get involved (Pro. 5:9)?
10.
How would strangers be filled with his strength (Pro. 5:10)?
11.
What does such living often do to ones body (Pro. 5:11)?
12.
Whose instructions had not been heeded (Pro. 5:12)?
13.
People learn, but sometimes it is too ………….. (Pro. 5:13).
14.
What is the meaning of Pro. 5:14?
PARAPHRASE OF 5:1-14
16.
Listen to me, my son! I know what I am saying; listen! Watch yourself, lest you be indiscreet and betray some vital information. For the lips of a prostitute are as sweet as honey, and smooth flattery is her stock in trade. But afterwards only a bitter conscience is left to you, sharp as a double-edged sword. She leads you down to death and hell. For she does not know the path to life. She staggers down a crooked trail, and doesnt even realize where it leads.
714.
Young men, listen to me, and never forget what Im about to say: Run from her! Dont go near her house, lest you fall to her temptation and lose your honor, and give the remainder of your life to the cruel and merciless; lest strangers obtain your wealth, and you become a slave of foreigners. Lest afterwards you groan in anguish and in shame, when syphilis consumes your body, and you say, Oh, if only I had listended! If only I had not demanded my own way! Oh, why wouldnt I take advice? Why was I so stupid? For now I must face public disgrace.
COMMENTS ON 5:1-14
Pro. 5:1. Lifes experiences and learning bring to a father a degree of wisdom and understanding that he passes onto this children. Here is the same instruction found variously worded in Pro. 1:8; Pro. 2:1-2; Pro. 3:1; Pro. 3:21; Pro. 4:1-2; Pro. 4:10-13; Pro. 4:20-21; Pro. 6:20-21; Pro. 7:1-3; Pro. 7:24.
Pro. 5:2. Discretion is good judgment in conduct and especially in speech. Preserve and keep are interchangable in the two statements of this verse. Great care should be exercised in our speech so that it always reflects discretion and knowledge.
Pro. 5:3. Several lengthy sections of the first chapters of Proverbs are given to warning against immorality. Immorality has proven to be one of peoples greatest pitfalls. Psa. 55:21 also speaks of wicked peoples smooth speech (smooth as butter, softer than oil), False teachers also employ smooth and fair speech to succeed at their perverse ways (Rom. 16:17-18). The warning of our verse about this womans lips and mouth may be relative to her flattering words (see Pro. 2:16; Pro. 6:24), or it may be relative to her kisses (Pro. 7:13).
Pro. 5:4. Sinners fall for the pleasure involved while wisdom (the father in this verse) sees the end. The bitter end of such indulgence (bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword) is to be contrasted with the honey and oil of Pro. 5:3. Solomon said, I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets and whose hands are bands: whoso pleaseth God shall escape from her; but the sinner shall be taken by her (Ecc. 7:26).
Pro. 5:5. A triple parallel: her feet and her steps, go down and take hold on, and death and Sheol. Before we go with somebody, it is the part of wisdom to find where she is going. Sin always leads to death: In the day that thou eatest these of thou shalt surely die (Gen. 2:17); They that practice such things are worthy of death (Rom. 1:32); As through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all have sinned (Rom. 5:12); the end of these things is death (Rom. 6:23); Sin and death (Rom. 8:2); Sin, when it is full grown, bringeth forth death (Jas. 1:15). The body would come to death at which time the spirit would depart to Sheol (Hades). Pro. 7:27 says, Her house is the way to Sheol, Going down to the chambers of death.
Pro. 5:6. Consider Pro. 4:26 in connection with this verse: Make level the path of thy feet, And let all thy ways be established. Our verse says such a woman never knows this way: she is unstable, undependable, and has nothing that she can hold onto. Man likes level ways to travel (they are so much easier than to be going up and going down hills), but such a woman knows nothing of the good road of life. And yet her kind has never neared extinction!
Pro. 5:7. Another return to my sons (plural) instead of the customary my son (singular). The plural is used 3 times in Proverbs: here, Pro. 4:1; Pro. 7:24. Hearken to me, says the father and not to her! Depart from her but not from the words of my mouth.
Pro. 5:8. The best way to keep from getting caught is to stay away from the trap. Quarantines are to keep people isolated from the problem. Eve said they were not even to touch the tree (Gen. 3:3). We are told to come…out from among them, to be separate, not even to touch the unclean thing (2Co. 6:17). The pure Joseph did not even want to be around the seductive Potiphars wife (Gen. 39:10).
Pro. 5:9. Fornication is seldom a one-time matter (unless one repents). Usually (like with alcohol) one gets involved for years, and his good name (honor) is sacrificed. Immorality is cruel in what it does to the guilty, to his mate, and to his family.
Pro. 5:10. Others will have the substance earned through strength and labor. Pro. 6:26 says, On account of a harlot a man is brought to a piece of bread. The Prodigal Son had devoured his inheritance with harlots (Luk. 15:13; Luk. 15:30).
Pro. 5:11. God has seen fit to visit immorality with the plague of various social diseases (venereal diseases such as syphilis, gonorrhea, and lymph granuloma). The father had foreseen the mourning sure to come, but a young man might not consider it because of the sinful pleasure that precede it.
Pro. 5:12. A man suffering his last would have learned, but it would be too late to profit him. His father would probably be dead and gone by the time the prodigal wakened up to reality with a disease-ridden and ruined body, but his fathers words would return to his mind with greater meaning. As he looks back, he sees that he actually hated and despised his fathers instruction. Other instances of such: Pro. 1:25; Pro. 1:29; Pro. 12:1.
Pro. 5:13. Teachers implies that others besides his father had tried to counsel him. Surely his mother would have been one of them (Forsake not the law of thy motherPro. 1:8). He had had good teachers (like many), but he was smarter than his teachershe followed his own ways!
Pro. 5:14. Such was my shamelessness that there was scarcely any wickedness which I did not commit, unrestrained even by the presence of the congregation and assembly. The fact which the ruined youth laments is the extent and audacity of his sins (Pulpit Commentary).
TEST QUESTIONS OVER 5:1-14
1.
Where else in Proverbs is such instruction given (Pro. 5:1)?
2.
What 2 words in Pro. 5:2 are interchangeable in meaning?
3.
Where else besides Pro. 5:3 does the Bible warn about smooth talk put out by evil people?
4.
What in Pro. 5:4 is different from something in Pro. 5:3?
5.
Where else besides Pro. 5:5 does the Bible connect death with sin?
6.
Comment upon Pro. 5:6.
7.
The father bids his son to hearken to him instead of to …………… (Pro. 5:7).
8.
The father bids the son to forsake …………. instead of his instruction (Pro. 5:7).
9.
How is the best way to keep from getting caught in a trap (Pro. 5:8)?
10.
Comment on years in Pro. 5:9.
11.
Comment on honor in Pro. 5:9.
12.
Comment on cruel in Pro. 5:9.
13.
Who wasted his substance with harlots (Pro. 5:10)?
14.
What divine outcry against immorality shows forth in Pro. 5:11?
15.
What mistake did the son make as he reflected on his case (Pro. 5:12)?
16.
Comment on teachers (plural) (Pro. 5:13).
17.
What is Pro. 5:14 talking about?
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
EXHORTATIONS TO CHASTITY, Pro 5:1-14.
In this chapter the royal sage renews his exhortations to acquire wisdom, (Pro 5:1-2😉 and, as there is nothing which is more pernicious in general, and more detrimental to the acquisition of wisdom in particular, than the unlawful indulgence of sexual desires, he earnestly dissuades his pupil therefrom by showing the character of a dissolute woman, and the ruinous consequences of attachment to such. These miserable effects are a loss of honour, time, health, and wealth, and at last a bitter and unavailing repentance, (Pro 5:3-14.) Therefore, for the avoidance of this evil, the teacher commends, like the apostle, (1Co 9:9 and 1Ti 4:3,) the chaste and moderate enjoyments of married life, and even a passionate love for one’s own wife, whom he describes, allegorically, as a domestic fountain, (Pro 5:15-19.) He closes the whole by repenting the warning against the “strange woman,” and exhibiting the fearful consequences of unlawful gratification, (Pro 5:20-23.)
1. Understanding Discernment. Compare Pro 6:20; Pro 7:1.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Need To Listen To Solomon’s Wisdom And Not To Be Enticed By The Words Of The Strange Woman Which Lead To Death And Slavery ( Pro 5:1-14 ).
The constant reference to the need to avoid the enticements of the strange woman suggests that it was a major problem in the time of the writer (see Pro 2:16-19; Pro 5:3-14; Pro 6:24-26; Pro 7:5-27; Pro 9:13-18), and this fits well with the time of Solomon, for we should note that there is no suggestion of cult prostitutes, and that that was a time when affluence abounded, and when young men who came from affluent families were not involved in other distractions such as war and famine. Thus they had to find something to do with their idle time, and what more attractive than the enticements of alluring women?
On the other hand the constant depiction of the strange woman may be in deliberate contrast to woman Wisdom, (this contrast is brought out in Pro 9:1-6 compared with Pro 9:13-18). The idea then being to stress that men should look to wisdom rather than to the enticement of strange women whose words lead astray. Alternately it may be that Solomon made wisdom a woman precisely in order to counteract the problem of ‘strange women’ in his time.
It is significant that in this subsection we have two exhortations to listen to Solomon’s wisdom and words (Pro 5:1-2; Pro 5:7), something which normally comes at the beginning of a discourse. They are, however, important in adding urgency to his initial appeal. In the first case (addressed to ‘my son’) it contrasts Solomon’s wisdom with the honeyed words of the strange woman (Pro 5:3), and in the second (addressed to ‘sons’) it contrasts not departing from his words with the need to remove his way from her and not come near to her house (Pro 5:8).
The subsection may be seen chiastically:
A My son, attend to my wisdom, incline your ear to my understanding, that you may preserve discretion, and that your lips may guard knowledge (Pro 5:1-2).
B For the lips of a strange woman drop honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword (Pro 5:3-4).
C Her feet go down to death, her steps take hold on Sheol, so that she does not find the level path of life, her ways are unstable, and she does not know it (Pro 5:5-6).
D Now therefore, sons, listen to me, and do not depart from the words of my mouth, remove your way far from her, and do not come near the door of her house (Pro 5:7-8).
C Lest you give your honour (or ‘splendour’) to others, and your years (or ‘loftiness, dignity’) to the cruel, lest strangers be filled with your strength, and your labours be in the house of an alien (Pro 5:9-10).
B And you mourn at your latter end, when your flesh and your body are consumed, and say, “How have I hated instruction, and my heart has despised reproof” (Pro 5:11-12).
A Nor have I obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to those who instructed me! I was well-nigh in all evil (in serious trouble), in the midst of the assembly and congregation” (Pro 5:13-14).
Note that in A he calls on his son to incline his ear to understanding, with its consequences, and in the parallel his son is pictured as having not inclined his ear to those who instructed him, with its consequences. In B the strange woman is in the end bitter as wormwood and sharp as a two-edged sword, whilst in the parallel his latter end is to be consumed. In C her ways are unstable and lead to death and the grave, whilst in the parallel her ways lead him into slavery and degradation. Centrally in D (which could be divided into two), he is to listen to Solomon’s words, and not depart from them, whilst in the parallel he is not to heed the strange woman but is to remove himself far from her, not coming near to the door of her house.
Pro 5:1-2
‘My son, attend to my wisdom,
Incline your ear to my understanding,
That you may preserve discretion,
And that your lips may keep knowledge.
We are specifically given the reason for this call to ‘my son’ to hear in order that his lips might retain knowledge. It is because the lips of the strange woman ‘drop honey’ and her mouth is smoother than all. He thus needs God’s wisdom and understanding in order to combat it and ensure that his own lips preserve godly knowledge. Note that as he was called on to attend to Solomon’s words in Pro 4:20, and incline his ear to his sayings, now he is called on to attend to his wisdom, and incline his ear to his understanding. (Note also how words and sayings are paralleled with wisdom and understanding). Holding on to that wisdom and understanding will make him discreet in what he does, and ensure that his own lips, unlike the woman’s, ‘retain true knowledge’ (compare Mal 2:7). This will enable him to overcome temptation. (As someone once wisely said, ‘His word will keep me from sin, or sin will keep me from His word’).
Pro 5:3-4
‘For the lips of a strange woman drop honey,
And her mouth is smoother than oil,
But in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
Sharp as a two-edged sword.’
And this hold on God’s wisdom and understanding as imparting God’s knowledge is necessary because the lips and mouth of a ‘strange woman’ drop honey drip by drip (compare 1Sa 14:26) and are smoother than oil (probably olive oil, a main export of Israel). They can soon persuade the unwary and the untaught, whose lips are not ‘retaining knowledge’, to walk in the way of sin. But to do so is foolish, for in the end she turns out not to be as sweet as honey but as bitter as wormwood. Wormwood is a plant which is regularly paralleled with gall in order to emphasise bitterness. It had a reputation for bitterness. Furthermore she is as sharp as a two-edged sword. The young man unconsciously awaits his death.
The woman is a ‘strange women’ because she is not a woman in his normal cycle of life. She is a stranger, and often a foreigner. She is also ‘strange’ to him because she is an adulteress or prostitute. But for that reason she is all the more enticing. Indeed the young man may well feel that he can enjoy her and then leave her behind. But the warning is given that that will not be as easy as it sounds. Sin has a habit of clinging on to those who participate in it.
Pro 5:5-6
‘Her feet go down to death,
Her steps take hold on Sheol,
So that she does not find the level path of life,
Her ways are unstable, and she does not know it.’
For the woman is treading the way to death, she is going step by step to the grave-world (Sheol). As a consequence she does not find (or ‘watch’) the level path of life. Her eyes are fixed on her own way, not realising where it leads. ‘Her ways are unstable.’ Some would translate, ‘her tracks meander aimlessly’. The point is that she has no fixed direction. She does not take the straight path. She wanders around in by-paths away from the path of life. But she does not know it. She is unaware of where her journey will end. And the assumption is that those who go into her are following the same by-paths. Thus in Pro 2:18-19, where we have a similar picture, ‘none that go in to her return again, nor do they attain to the paths of life.’ They are treading the way of death. Here in chapter 5, however, the stated warning is that they will endure degradation and slavery, and in their latter end their flesh and body will be consumed (Pro 5:11).
Pro 5:7-8
‘Now therefore, my sons, listen to me,
And do not depart from the words of my mouth,
Remove your way far from her,
And do not come near the door of her house,
Solomon is so concerned for the young men who are taking this path that he includes another exhortation to listen to, and follow, the words of his mouth. They are not to depart from them, rather they are to remove their way far from her, and not come to the door of her house. So the choice is stark. Walk in God’s ways, as proclaimed by Solomon, or walk in her ways which she has made to sound so exciting. And his appeal is for them to heed the first and reject the second.
Pro 5:9-10
Lest you give your honour (or ‘splendour’ to others,
And your years (or ‘loftiness, dignity’) to the cruel,
Lest strangers be filled with your strength,
And your labours be in the house of an alien,’
The point is that the young man who allows himself to be enticed by foreign prostitutes will find the cost prohibitive. He will get involved in her circle of friends, and soon find himself fleeced of his possessions, losing all that he possesses, and all that he works for, to her foreign friends, who will be experts at fleecing naive young men, either by gambling with them or by encouraging them into expensive living. At the same time he will degrade himself in the eyes of a strict Israelite society who will look on his behaviour with disgust. Thus he will lose his wealth to foreigners and will lose his honour in Israel. Or instead of ‘losing honour’ the thought may be of ‘giving his splendour to others’, the thought being that he will become so degraded by sexual debauchery and drunkenness that he loses the splendour of his youth.
‘Losing his years to the cruel’ may indicate that he wastes much of his time over the years at the hands of those who delight in bringing young men down, thus using up in debauchery the years in which he could have been enriching himself. Or it could signify that he loses his years by losing his health. Of course he will not see those who fleece him as cruel to begin with. He will see them as good friends. It is only when he has lost his health and his wealth and seeks their help that he will discover how cruel they can be. They will have no time for an impoverished young man. Alternately the word translated ‘year’ may rather be translated as ‘dignity’, with the words speaking of losing dignity. But the same point is in mind. He will be dragged down into poverty and disgrace.
Note how the punishment is seen to fit the crime. What a man sows he reaps. He has gone in to a foreign woman, and thus foreigners will make full use of his strength and he will labour in the house of an alien. This may be because he has to work off his debts by labouring for her foreign friends, or has to work for foreigners in order to subsidise his lifestyle, because no Israelite will give him work. He will thus, without realising it, be becoming more and more enslaved. There may also be behind it the idea that he may become so impoverished that he is forced to become a Habiru (landless person) on a seven year ‘slave’ contract working for foreigners.
It should be noted how easily all this could have occurred in the days of Solomon. At that time Jerusalem was a place to which foreigners of all nations poured. They came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, they came for diplomatic reasons from subservient nations round about, they came from the Egyptian court (he had married a daughter of Pharaoh), and they came to serve his multiple foreign wives. Jerusalem would be full of foreigners. And with them would come high class prostitutes and their retinues. Solomon had no doubt observed wealthy young Israelites caught up in this scenario with high hopes, only to be ruined. They had provided a suitable object lesson for what he wanted to say.
Pro 5:11-12
And you mourn at your latter end,
When your flesh and your body are consumed,
And say, “How have I hated instruction,
And my heart has despised reproof,”
And the end of such a person’s way of life can only be one of mourning and misery, with his health gone, and his flesh and body finally consumed by illness and the effects of debauchery and high living. Then he will come to his senses, but it will be too late. He will recognise what he has done, hating instruction from his parents and other authorities, and despising their reproof. And he will regret it bitterly.
‘How I have hated — and despised.’ Most teenagers can identify to this feeling in respect of their parent’s restraints. At the best they endure them at the worst they hate them. The hatred of them suggests deep-rooted rebellion. In this case his heart was so set on enjoyment that he could not bear to have it refused to him. He had a rebellious and sinful heart and so he despised his parent’s advice and hated their guidance.
Pro 5:13-14
‘Nor have I obeyed the voice of my teachers,
Nor inclined my ear to those who instructed me!
I was well-nigh in all evil,
In the midst of the assembly and congregation.”
He will then have to admit that he has not obeyed the voice of his teachers (not schoolteachers, but possibly elders, those responsible for advising the people and especially the young, and also priests and Levites). He has not followed their wisdom and understanding, and he has not bent his ear to those who sought to instruct him. (This is an object lesson to the one now being called on to do so, rather than a literal description of his words). Thus he will have to admit that the assembly and congregation of Israel (his contemporaries), whether national or local, will see him as having been nearly wholly taken up with all that was evil; adultery, gambling, debauchery and riotous living. They will have no time for him except to condemn him. It is an admission that he recognises that his contemporaries have a poor view of him and will spare him no pity. He had brought it on himself. He had gone beyond the bounds. Now he must face the consequences, whether social or judicial. (There was no specific sanction against one who had gone with prostitutes. It was mainly a question of shame). It is questionable whether we are to see this as describing true repentance. Rather it is describing a remorse that arises too late as he regrets the consequences that he is now facing. If only he had done otherwise, but he had not. Like those of the Rabbis who were anti-Jesus he was in danger of having done the equivalent of having ‘blasphemed against the Holy Spirit’. He had been anti-wisdom and had continually blasphemed against God’s wisdom and by it he had become totally hardened. He was in almost total despair. Solomon wants all this to be an object lesson to the young.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Prologue To The Book ( Pro 1:8 to Pro 9:18 ).
It was common throughout the 3rd to the 1st millenniums BC for collections of wisdom saying to have a prologue preparing for the ‘sayings’ that would follow. Those sayings would then be introduced by a subheading. Proverbs thus follows the usual precedent in having such a prologue in Pro 1:8 to Pro 9:18, followed by general sayings in Pro 10:1 ff headed by a subheading (Pro 10:1). It was also common for such a prologue to be addressed to ‘my son’, or similar, with constant references being made to ‘my son’ throughout the prologue. And this is interestingly a feature of Proverbs 1-9, where it occurs fifteen times. One difference, however, lies in the fact that the ‘son’ was usually named in other wisdom literature, something which does not occur in Proverbs. Indeed, in Proverbs ‘my son’ is sometimes replaced by ‘sons’ (Pro 4:1; Pro 5:7; Pro 7:24; Pro 8:32). It is addressed to whoever will hear and respond.
The Prologue consists of ten discourses, and divides into two. It commences with five discourses, each of which follows a similar pattern, an opening appeal followed by two further subsections, and closing with a contrast between the righteous and the unrighteous, the wise and the foolish. We can compare how there are five ‘books’ to the Torah, and five books of Psalms. Five is the covenant number. Each of the subsections is in the form of a chiasmus.
From chapter 6 onwards the pattern changes. Initially we find a description of three types, whom we could describe as the naive, the foolish, the wicked (Pro 6:1-19), and this is followed by Pro 6:20 to Pro 9:18 which are centred on the contrast between the seductive power of the strange woman, and the uplifting power of woman wisdom, all continually urging the young man to turn from the enticements of the world and choose wisdom.
The prologue may be analysed as follows;
The Five Discourses.
1). Discourse 1. Addressed To ‘My Son’. Those Who Seek To Walk In The Fear Of YHWH Will Listen To The Instruction Of Godly Authority, And Will Avoid The Enticements Of Sinners Motivated By Greed. Wisdom Is Then Depicted As Crying Out To Be Heard, Longing For Response, Promising Inculcation Of Her Own Spirit, And Warning Of The Consequences Of Refusal (Pro 1:8-33).
2). Discourse 2. Addressed To ‘My Son’. The Source Of True Wisdom Is YHWH, And Those Who Truly Seek Wisdom Will Find YHWH Himself, And He Will Then Reveal His Wisdom To Them. This Wisdom That God Gives Them Will Then Deliver Them From All Who Are Evil, Both From Men Who Have Abandoned The Right Way, And From The Enticements Of Immoral Women (Pro 2:1-22).
3). Discourse 3. Addressed To ‘My Son’. The Young Man Is To Trust In YHWH, To Fear YHWH And To Honour YHWH, And In View Of Their Great Value Is To Find YHWH’s Wisdom And Obtain Understanding Which Will Be His Protection And Will Through YHWH’s Chastening Activity Restore Him To Man’s First Estate. In View Of Them He Is To Observe A Series Of Practical Requirements Which Will Result In Blessing For The Wise (Pro 3:1-35).
4). Discourse 4. Addressed to ‘Sons’. Wisdom And Understanding Are To Be Sought And Cherished, For They Produce Spiritual Beauty, and Lead Those Who Respond Unto The Perfect Day (Pro 4:1-19).
5). Discourse 5. Addressed To ‘My Son’ (and later ‘Sons’). He Is To Avoid The Enticements Of The Strange Woman Whose Ways Lead To Death, And Rather Be Faithful To His True Wife (Pro 4:20 to Pro 5:23).
A Description Of Three Contrasting Failures.
6). Discourse 6. The Naive, The Fool And The Scorner Illustrated. The First Addressed To ‘My Son’ Is A Call To Avoid Acting As A Surety For Others, The Second Addressed To ‘You Sluggard’, Is A Call To Shake Off Laziness, And The Third, Unaddressed, Concerns A Worthless Person And A Troublemaker (Pro 6:1-19).
A Contrast Between The Strange Seductive Woman And The Pure Woman Wisdom.
Discourse 7. Addressed To ‘My Son’. He Is Urged To Observe The Commandment And The Torah Of Father And Mother, Avoiding The Enticement Of The Adulterous Woman, And Being Aware Of The Wrath Of The Deceived Husband (Pro 6:20-35).
Discourse 8. Addressed To ‘My Son’. After Appealing To Him To Observe His Words Solomon Vividly Describes The Wiles Of A Prostitute And Warns ‘Sons’ Against Her (Pro 7:1-27).
Discourse 9. The Call of Ms Wisdom As The One Who Seeks Response, Gives Men True Instruction, Ensures Good Government, Enriches Men Physically and Spiritually, Was Present With God During Creation, And Blesses Men And Brings Them Into Life So That They Find God’s Favour (Pro 8:1-36).
Discourse 10. The Appeal Of Woman Wisdom Contrasted With The Allure Of Woman Folly (Pro 9:1-18).
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
The Path of Adultery Leads to Poverty and Destruction Pro 5:1-14 gives us a warning about giving our years of labour to the adulteress. The adulteress also represents the love of this world. Therefore, when we follow our own selfish path of worldliness, we depart from God’s plan for our lives. In doing this, we will one day sit down in sorrow on Judgment Day and mourn, saying, “How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof.” (Pro 5:12); for we will be rewarded on how far we have finished God’s plan for our lives, and not for what we have accomplished for ourselves.
The verses in this passage speak to us in pairs, our couplets, being Pro 5:1-14. Pro 5:1-2 tell us to seek wisdom so that we will speak from a heart of wisdom. Pro 5:3-4 tell us the trap of seduction from a woman’s lips that appear so pleasant and contrasts it with the horrible results of being led into seduction. Pro 5:5-6 tell us this seduction will lead down the path of death and not the path of life. Pro 5:7-8 tell us to stay near the path of wisdom and far from her path. Pro 5:9-10 tell us that our honour, our life, our wealth and our strength will be lost if we follow the path of the strange woman. Pro 5:11-14 give the words of a man consumed with grief.
Outline Here is a proposed outline:
1. Maintain Wisdom as a Priority Pro 5:1-2
2. The Lips of Seduction Pro 5:3-4
3. The Strange Woman Leads a Man to Hell Pro 5:5-6
4. Stay on the Path of Wisdom Pro 5:7-8
5. The Man Gives Her His Honour, Labour, and Wealth Pro 5:9-10
6. The Words of Grief from the Fool Pro 5:11-14
King Solomon and Adultery – No one taught more clearly and precisely on sexual promiscuity and chastity than did King Solomon. He was able to do so because he had fallen into this immorality. He had been down this journey and come back to God. He failure began when he took Pharaoh’s daughter as his wife (1Ki 3:1). It was a custom in those days for kings to marry another king’s daughter in an attempt to bind them together in peace. Solomon was following tradition in attempting to gain peace, when, in fact, he was harming himself and his nation.
He allowed this wife to build her idolatrous temple of worship in Jerusalem and defile the holy city. This appeared to be a small compromise at first. Then Solomon followed tradition by taking other heathen daughters until they drew his heart away from the Lord as he attempted to keep peace in his harem (1Ki 11:4). He never intended on backsliding, but compromise is the first step in departing from God. God would have given Solomon the victory in any battle against other nations, as He did with David his father, but Solomon was led by his fleshly desires and carnal reasoning rather than by the Word of God.
No one has fallen further in this area of sin than did King Solomon. If we will allow God to work in our lives, He will be able to take our greatest failures and turn them into our greatest anointing. How deep was Solomon’s failure in this area. Yet, God used Solomon’s utter failures to speak the message of Proverbs under a mighty anointing, which had touched the lives of mankind for centuries.
Pro 5:1-2 Maintain Wisdom as a Priority – Pro 5:1-2 tells us to seek wisdom so that we will understand what is going on around us and speak from a heart of wisdom.
Pro 5:1 My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding:
Pro 5:1
Pro 5:1 Comments – We are told to focus our attention upon God’s Word. If we do not focus on the Lord, we will focus upon the things of this world. Whatever we focus upon is what will eventually capture our hearts.
Pro 5:2 That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.
Pro 5:3-4
In Solomon’s day, there was nothing sweeter than honey or smoother than oil. There was nothing more bitter than wormwood. Yet the lips of a whore are sweeter and smoother than honey and oil. The sweetness of the lips appeals to our sense of taste. The smoothness of oil appeals to our sense of touch. So, the adulteress is appealing to man’s five sense gates. She is attempting to get in and capture his heart.
The battleground is the mind. It is through the mind that the heart is captured. The spoils of the victor are the wealth of a person whose heart and mind have led him down a path of bondage to sin; for whoever controls his heart gains his wealth. For a man will give his strength and wealth for what he holds dear. This is a daily battle that we must fight as long as we live in this mortal body of ours. Now the strange woman knows that she has to enter a man’s mind and heart through his five sense gates; for she has been learning these rules of warfare from her youth. Thus, she speaks soft words to his ears, she beautifies herself for his eyes, she prepares her lips so that he will desire their taste and touch, and she will apply perfume to appeal to his sense of smell. There is no entrance gate that she will leave unattended. Pro 7:26 will tell us that “she hath cast down many wounded: yea, many strong men have been slain by her.”
Illustration – Note how Job understood this power of temptation. He said, “I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?” (Job 31:1) He made a quality decision in his heart before he encountered temptation that he would not gaze and stare upon a woman. A man cannot stop himself from seeing things and observing people. But a person can make a decision not to focus his attention upon it. A person can turn his eyes away from temptation and focus his thoughts upon something else. This is the decision that Job made. Note that Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount that gazing upon a woman will turn our hearts towards adulterous thoughts. This is what Job was avoiding.
Mat 5:27-28, “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”
Pro 5:3 For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:
Pro 5:3
There was nothing sweeter on earth than honey. Yet, the lips of a woman are sweeter. This refers to the sense of taste. A man can seduce a man with the taste of her lips.
We could paraphrase the statement, “the lips of a strange woman drop as a honey comb” into saying it means a person who is able to sweet-talk someone into doing something.
Pro 5:3 “and her mouth is smoother than oil” – Comments – Just as there are no tangible materials more valuable than gold and nothing sweeter than honey, so is the Word of God more valuable than these (Psa 19:10). Likewise, no earthly substance is more slippery, smoother and lubricating than oil, yet a strange woman’s lips surpasses even this.
Psa 19:10, “More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.”
Pro 5:3 Comments – We see in Pro 5:3 the method of a woman’s seduction over a man. A man is able to rule over others by his strength, but a woman, because she is weak, is only able to rule over a man through seducing him. We find later in the book of Proverbs that her mouth is a like a pit that men fall into. Note:
Pro 22:14, “The mouth of strange women is a deep pit: he that is abhorred of the LORD shall fall therein.”
Pro 23:27, “For a whore is a deep ditch; and a strange woman is a narrow pit.”
Pro 5:3 Scripture References – Note a similar verse.
Son 4:11, “Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.”
Pro 5:4 But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword.
Pro 5:4
Pro 5:4 Comments – Bitterness and sharpness are used symbolically to describe what the spirit of man experiences when his conscience shows to him his sin. The grief and pain in a man’s soul who has been overcome by sin is enormous.
Pro 5:5-6 The Strange Woman Leads a Man to Hell With Her Unpredictable Decisions Pro 5:5-6 tell us this seduction will lead down the path of death and not the path of life, and that it is an unpredictable path to follow.
From Soothing Lips to a Broken Heart – To hear her talk to you sounds soothing and sweet to the soul (Pro 5:3), but when your heart follows hard after her, she desires you no more. You have not predicted such a moveable person (Pro 5:6). How sharp the pain is of a broken heart. It is like a sword piecing you and the taste of that ordeal is bitter (Pro 5:4). During the time that you have tried to please her, she has led you further away from God (Pro 5:5).
Pro 5:5 Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.
Pro 5:6 Pro 5:6
Comments – In Pro 5:6 This verb could be translated as the second masculine singular (i.e., you):
YLT, “The path of life–lest thou ponder, Moved have her paths–thou knowest not.”
Or it could be translated as the third feminine singular (i.e., she):
WEB, “ She gives no thought to the way of life. Her ways are crooked, and she doesn’t know it.”
JPS, “Lest she should walk the even path of life, her ways wander, but she knoweth it not.”
Either translation is valid because these two different meanings have the same structure in the Hebrew text.
The LXX reads as the second masculine singular, as does the KJV:
Brenton, “that thou mayest keep good understanding, and the discretion of my lips gives thee a charge. Give no heed to a worthless woman;”
Pro 5:6 “her ways are moveable” – Comments – This kind of woman, also figuratively of this world, can love you one instant and hate you the next instant.
Illustrations:
1. Judges 6 – Delilah’s love and hate for Samson.
2. Ammon loved Tamar one minute, then hated her the next. ( 2Sa 13:2 ; 2Sa 13:4; 2Sa 13:15)
2Sa 13:4, “And he said unto him, Why art thou, being the king’s son, lean from day to day? wilt thou not tell me? And Amnon said unto him, I love Tamar , my brother Absalom’s sister.”
2Sa 13:15, “Then Amnon hated her exceedingly ; so that the hatred wherewith he hated her was greater than the love wherewith he had loved her. And Amnon said unto her, Arise, be gone.”
Watch a man who is chasing a loud, whorish woman. She leads him about, constantly changing her mood. He cannot figure her out, no matter how hard he tries. She does not want anything permanent. She is restless and wants constant change. She wants to satisfy her flesh and this requires greater and greater depths of sin and indulgences. One relationship with one man cannot satisfy her cravings.
Pro 5:7-8 Stay on the Path of Wisdom, and Far from the Path of the Strange Woman Pro 5:7-8 tell us to stay on the path of wisdom and far from her path. Do not be sidetracked by the lures of our senses. We must follow our hearts where the voice of wisdom is heard.
Pro 5:7 Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.
Pro 5:7
Pro 5:3, “For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:”
Pro 5:8 Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house:
Pro 5:8
Paul gave the church at Corinth a similar warning to “flee fornication”.
1Co 6:18, “ Flee fornication . Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.”
Paul told young Timothy to stand and fight the good fight of faith. But on one issue he is told to flee, and that is when he is around things that inflame youthful lusts.
2Ti 2:22, “ Flee also youthful lusts : but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”
Paul knew that this was an area that believers could quickly be overcome by the sinful nature of the flesh and thus, they did not even need to be near such temptations. Wisdom is telling us not to get into a place where our senses are being aroused. We are not to be deceived into thinking that we are strong enough to overcome temptations.
Pro 5:9-10 The Man who Follow the Strange Woman will Give Her His Honour, Labour, and Wealth Pro 5:9-10 tell us that our honour, our life, our wealth and our strength will be lost if we follow the path of the strange woman and ignore the warnings of wisdom. We are told in other verses in Proverbs that riches, honour, life and health are the blessings of wisdom (Pro 3:16).
Pro 3:16, “Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour.”
The path of death will cause us to lose all of these blessings, spiritual, mental, physical and financial. Solomon looked upon Pharaoh’s daughter and pondered her beauty, but it was a setup, a trap that Solomon thought he could discern and avoid.
Pro 5:9 Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel:
Pro 5:9
Pro 5:10 Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger;
Pro 5:10
Many wrong marriages resulting in divorce have left a man’s hard earned wealth in another’s household. I watched my beloved father, who gave his life to Jesus in his later years, go through two such divorces in which he left most wealth in the houses of his ex-wives.
Pro 5:11-14 The Words of Grief from the Fool Pro 5:11-14 give voice to the words of a man consumed with grief. It is only in the midst of utter despair that a fool will finally admit his errors. In other words, when your body is used up, you grieve and realize how much you have wasted your life and hated the instruction of God. It is only when the fool has no more strength to continue in his foolishness does he stop to consider his condition. Only when judgment becomes unbearable will the fool finally sit down and acknowledge his sin.
God has a way of taking a person through judgment that intensifies until a person repents. At this time, God is more concerned about his eternal soul than his temporal gain. We see a series of increasing judgments in the book of Revelation as God gives the world a final opportunity to repent before the Second Coming of the Lord. However, in chapter 19 of the book of Revelation there are those who do not repent because of the hardness of their hearts.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Heart of Man: The Path of Adultery – This passage of Scripture deals with the first of three paths that sin takes in defiling a person. Sin first enters the heart (Pro 5:1-23), then it corrupts the mind (Pro 6:1-5), and finally, it defiles the body (Pro 6:6-11).
We must keep God’s Word foremost in our lives (Pro 5:1-2) because the path of the adulteress appears pleasant (Pro 5:3), but its end is bitter (Pro 5:4), her ways lead to death (Pro 5:5), and are unpredictable (Pro 5:6). We must stay far from this path (Pro 5:7-8), lest we be snared and ruined (Pro 5:9-14). You can avoid this path by staying close to your wife (Pro 5:15-20) and this is the remedy that God has given us to avoid the fate of the fool. God knows how easily a man is ensnared in the trap of the adulteress and His judgment will follow (Pro 5:21-23).
Outline Here is a proposed outline:
1. The Path of Adultery Leads to Poverty and Destruction Pro 5:1-14
2. The Remedy: A Happy Marriage Pro 5:15-19
3. The Punishment for Adultery Pro 5:20-23
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
God the Father’s Foreknowledge: Calling Us to Our Journey (Preparation for the Journey) Most scholars consider Proverbs 1-9 to be a discourse, or a tribute, to wisdom. This section serves as an introduction to Solomon’s collection of wise, pithy sayings that follows. This introductory material is a preparation for being able to understand the rest of the book. Its underlying emphasis is the divine calling that God gives to every human being. Therefore, we find the statement of wisdom “crying out,” “uttering her voice” and “calling” used repeatedly throughout this section of Proverbs.
In these first nine introductory chapters, wisdom is personified as a person speaking in the feminine gender. Just as an artist sketches an outline of a painting, then splashes colors upon the canvas, until a beautiful painting emerges, so in these chapters of Proverbs does wisdom begin to reveal itself verse by verse (as an artist reveals a picture color by color) until chapter 8, when wisdom is seen as an intimate part of God and His creation. Wisdom is personified as a person speaking because man would be incapable of understanding his experiences in life without divine wisdom being given to him. This impartation is done in the person of the Holy Spirit. Wisdom is personified as a woman because the Hebrew word translated as “wisdom” is in the feminine gender.
These chapters contrast the table of blessings (Pro 9:1-6) with the trap of death (Pro 1:17-19, Pro 9:18). The wise man chooses wisdom’s table of blessings. In contrast, the fool chooses the trap of death, supposing that it is a table of blessing. Studying this introduction is a necessary preparation for finding one’s way through the rest of the book of Proverbs. Thus, a drama immediately unfolds in the introduction, revealing to us how wisdom sets a man free, but the trap of death ensnares its victims in the strongholds of sin. These strongholds do not turn its captives loose until it completes its assignment of death. In contrast, wisdom leads a man into his rightful place of glory and honor above God’s creation (Pro 3:35, Pro 31:30), and into submission to his Creator.
This section of Proverbs is actually a call to follow the path of wisdom, in which wisdom presents his arguments for choosing the path of wisdom over the path of the fool. God calls mankind to righteousness in this present Church age through the convicting power of the Holy Spirit that has been sent upon the earth, who convicts the world of sin righteousness and judgment (Joh 16:7-11); but prior to this age God called mankind to righteousness through wisdom, which testified from Creation (Rom 1:19-23), and from society. We see in these chapters that wisdom is a path that is to be diligently followed. Wisdom is a decision that is made on a daily basis, and these daily decisions will determine our destiny, both in this life and in the life to come. This book of wisdom contrasts the wise man with the fool throughout the book. As we will see in Proverbs, every decision that we make is either a wise decision, or a foolish one. Every decision affects our eternal destiny. This section begins with a call to follow wisdom (Pro 1:7-9), and ends by explaining how every human being decides between destinies, heaven or hell (Pro 9:1-18).
In the path of wisdom, there are many dangers. It is for this reason these nine chapters give us many warnings against the evil man and the adulteress, even before the real journey begins. The path of wisdom is narrow and easily missed. All of us have fallen off this path at one time or another in our lives. This book of Proverbs was written by King Solomon, considered the wisest person that has ever lived. Yet, even he fell off this path of wisdom because he allowed pride to blind his vision and dull his hearing. This gives us an indication of how narrow is this path to follow.
Pride is an attitude of the heart. It is the very reason that Solomon fell into idolatry. It is the root cause of every man’s failure. It comes clothed in many forms, such as false humility and it clothes itself in man-made titles of honour, such as “honorable, his lordship, his excellence, his grace, cardinal, pope, etc.” For example, the Pope in Rome carries the title of “His Holiness”. These nine chapters open and close with Pro 1:7; Pro 9:10, which reveal the secret of avoiding failure, which is caused by pride. We are told that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Pro 1:7 and Pro 9:10). This fear keeps us from falling off the path of wisdom.
This introductory material in Proverbs 1-9 makes up almost one third of the book. Why is this introduction to Proverbs so lengthy relative to the overall length of the book? It is because the preparation for our journey in life is also lengthy. Solomon was taught for many years before he took the throne as king of Israel. Good training takes time and a good education does not come quickly. The degree that a person receives a secular education usually determines the height of his career. In comparison, the degree that a person becomes rooted and grounded in the Word of God will determine the height of that person’s ministry. You must take the time to receive this introductory training in the first nine chapters of Proverbs before you are ready for the journey. The better we are able to understand the introduction of the book of Proverbs, the better we will be able to understand the rest of its teachings.
For hundreds of years in western civilization, a theological education was a part of a well-rounded education. All students learned the classical languages of Hebrew, Greek and Latin in order to study theological literature. The children of Israel were also to give each child a theological education. Solomon received such an education. Therefore, we can see this introduction to Proverbs as the theological training that everyone should go through in preparation for the journey in life.
One further note is worth mentioning about chapters 1-9. Upon reading, we must ask the question as to why this lengthy introduction in Proverbs spends so much time describing and warning the readers about the harlot. Perhaps because this is the one area that trapped and deceived Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived. This is the area that Solomon knows many of the young men he is training for leadership positions in the kingdom will be tempted. In addition, in a figurative sense, such spiritual adultery represents a believer who chooses to love the things of this world above his love for God.
Outline Here is a proposed outline:
1. The Call of Wisdom to Young & Tender Pro 1:7-33
2. Answering Wisdom’s Call (A Hearing Heart) Pro 2:1-22
3. The Blessings of Wisdom Pro 3:1-35
4. Three Paths of Wisdom Pro 4:1-27
5. Three Paths of Destruction Pro 5:1 to Pro 6:11
6. Characteristics of the Evil People Pro 6:12 to Pro 7:27
7. Characteristics of Wisdom Pro 8:1-36
8. Wisdom’s Final Call (Food for the Journey) Pro 9:1-18
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Three Paths to Destruction – Once we receive the call from wisdom in chapter 1, and are shown how to find it in chapter 2, and what blessings come as a result of answering the call of wisdom in chapter 3, and we learn how wisdom transforms our lives in chapter 4, both spirit, soul and body, we are then shown how sin enters our lives and transforms us in chapter Pro 5:1 through Pro 6:11. Sin will first enter our hearts (Pro 5:1-23), then it will corrupt our minds (Pro 6:1-5) and finally, it will defile our bodies (Pro 6:6-11).
Pro 5:1 thru Pro 6:11 can be entitled “The Three Paths to Destruction.” This passage of Scripture gives us warnings about some of the most common paths of destruction that people fall into. Man’s heart can lead him into bondage through the path of the adulteress (Pro 5:1-23). Man’s lack of understanding can bring him into bondage because of his tongue, which is coming into agreement with the wisdom of this world (Pro 6:1-5). Man’s body can bring him into the bondage of poverty through slothfulness (Pro 6:6-11). We are taken behind the scenes to see the fearful end of those who follow these three deceitful paths.
Just as the three paths of wisdom manifest themselves in the lives of those who follow her path, so does the fool show outward manifestations of the path that he is on.
Heart – If a person with a transformed heart (Pro 4:1-9) will manifest a “crown of glory” (Pro 4:9) with an outward peace and anointing, then the corrupted heart of the person who is on the path of adultery (Pro 5:1-23) is manifested by being in bondage to sins (Pro 5:22).
Mind – For those who have a renewed mind (Pro 4:10-19), their lives reflect someone who is able to make wise decisions in which they do not stumble (Pro 4:12; Pro 4:18). But those with a corrupted mind (Pro 6:1-5) will be manifested as a person who cannot make sure decisions, but is constantly agreeing to things to please others (Pro 6:1-2).
Body – Those who allow the Word of God to direct their bodies (Pro 4:20-27) will be manifest as those who live a long and health life (Pro 4:22). In contrast, those who do not yield their bodies to serve the Lord become people who indulge in fleshly passions, which addictions cause a person to become a sluggard (Pro 5:6-11). This is manifested as poverty (Pro 6:11), which will be seen in the life of the sluggard.
As we step back and evaluate the lessons that we have learned thus far, we find a common factor in each of these sections. They all begin with wisdom calling us to take heed to God’s Words. Every one of these sections, the three paths of wisdom as well as the three paths of the fool, all begin with this same charge. This is because when we take time each day to mediate and study God’s Word, we allow our minds and hearts to become established in the truth so that we will not be deceived by all of the noise from the world.
Outline – Note the proposed outline:
1. The Heart – Warnings of the Adulteress Pro 5:1-23
2. The Mind – Warnings of the Loose Tongue Pro 6:1-5
3. The Body – Warnings against Laziness Pro 6:6-11
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Warning against Wantonness
v. 1. My son, attend unto my wisdom, v. 2. that thou mayest regard discretion, v. 3. For the lips of a strange woman, v. 4. but her end, v. 5. Her feet go down to death, v. 6. Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, v. 7. Hear me now, therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth, v. 8. Remove thy way far from her, v. 9. lest thou give thine honor unto others, v. 10. lest strangers be filled with thy wealth, v. 11. and thou mourn at the last, v. 12. and say, How have I hated instruction, v. 13. and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me! v. 14. I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
Pro 5:1-23
8. Eighth admonitory discourse. Warning against adultery, and commendation of marriage. The teacher, in this discourse, recurs to a subject which he has glanced at before in Pro 2:15-19, and which he again treats of in the latter part of the sixth and in the whole of the seventh chapters. This constant recurrence to the same subject, repulsive on account of its associations, shows, however, the importance which it had in the teacher’s estimation as a ground of warning, and that he ranked it among the foremost of the temptations and sins which called the young off from the pursuit of Wisdom, and so led them astray from “the fear of the Lord.” The vividness with which the ruin, bodily and moral, ensuing with absolute certainty on a life of vice, is described is a sufficient proof in itself that the subject before us is not brought forward from or for voluptuous motives, but for the purpose of conveying an impressive warning. Some commentators, e.g. Delitzsch, include the first six verses in the previous discourse; but the unity of the subject requires a different treatment. Zockler’s reason against this arrangement, on the ground that the previous discourse was addressed to “tender youth,” and thus to youth in a state of pupilage, while the one before us refers to more advanced ageto the married manmay be true, but is not the true ground for incorporating them in the present discourse. The unity of the subject requires that they should be taken with the central and didactic part of the discourse, as being in a sense introductory to it. The discourse divides itself into three sections.
(1) The earnest appeal to attention because of the counter-attraction in the blandishments of the harlot, which, however, in the end, are bitter as wormwood and sharp as a two-edged sword (Pro 2:1-6).
(2) The main or didactic section (Pro 2:7-20), embracing
(a) warnings against adulterous intercourse with “the strange woman” (Pro 2:7-14);
(b) the antithetical admonition to use the means of chastity by remaining faithful to, and rejoicing with, the wife of one’s youth (Pro 2:15-20). And
(3) the epilogue, which, in addition to the disastrous temporal consequences which follow on the violation of the sanctity of marriage, mentioned in Pro 2:9-14, represents the sin as one which will be examined by the universal Judge, and which brings with it its own Nemesis or retribution. All sins of impurity, all sins against temperance, soberness, and chastity, are no doubt involved in the warning, and the subject is capable of an allegorical interpretationa mode of treatment in some instances adopted by the LXX. rendering, as that the “strange woman” stands as the representative of impenitence (Miller), or, according to the earlier view of Bede, as the representative of heresy and false doctrine; but the sin which is inveighed against, and which is made the subject of these repeated warnings, is not fornication simply, but adulterythe violation, in its most repulsive form, of the sacred obligations of marriage. The whole discourse is an impressive commentary on the seventh commandment.
Pro 5:1
The admonitory address is very similar to that in Pro 4:20, except that here the teacher says,” Attend to my wisdom, bow down thine ear to my understanding,“ instead of “Attend to my words, and incline thine ear unto my saying.” It is not merely “wisdom” and “understanding” in the abstract, but wisdom which he has appropriated to himself, made his own, and which he knows by experience to be true wisdom. It may therefore have the sense of experience and observation, both of which increase with years. To “bow down the ear” is to listen attentively, and so to fix the mind intently on what is being said. Compare the similar expressions in Psa 31:2 and Pro 2:2; Pro 4:20; 33:12. The same idea is expressed in Mare Antony’s address to his countrymen, “Lend me your ears” (Shakespeare, ‘Julius Caesar,’ act 3. sc. 2).
Pro 5:2
This verse expresses the purposes or results of the preceding admonition. The first is, that thou mayest regard discretion (Hebrew, lishmor m’zimmoth); literally, to guard reflection; i.e. in other words, that thou mayest maintain thoughtfulness, observe counsel, set a proper guard or control over thy thoughts, and so restrain them within proper and legitimate limits, or form such resolutions which, being well considered and prudential, may result in prudent conduct. The word m’zimmoth, however, does not travel beyond the sphere of what is conceived in the mind, and consequently does not mean conduct (as Holden conceives), except in a secondary sense, as that thoughts and plans are the necessary preliminaries to action and conduct. Muffet, in loc; explains, “that thou mayest not conceive in mind any evil or vanity.” The word m’zimmoth is the plural of m’zimmmah, which occurs in Pro 1:4. This word generally means any plan, project, device, either in a good or bad sense. In the latter sense it is applied to intrigue and deceitful conduct, as in Pro 24:8. It is here used in a good sense. Indeed, Delitzsch remarks that the use of the word in a good sense is peculiar to the introductory part of the Proverbs (ch. 1-9.). The Vulgate renders. “That thou mayest guard thy thoughts or reflection (ut custodias cogitationes).“ So the LXX; , “That thou mayest guard good reflection,” the adjective being introduced to note the sense in which the , i.e. act of thinking, properly, is to be understood. The prefix (“to”) before shamar, “to guard,” in lishmor, expresses the purpose, as in Pro 1:5; Pro 2:2, et alia. The second end in view is, that thy lips may keep knowledge; literally, and thy lips shall keep knowledge. Those lips keep or preserve knowledge which literally retain the instruction of Wisdom (Zockler), or which allow nothing to pass them which does not proceed from the knowledge of God (Delitzsch), and which, when they speak, give utterance to sound wisdom. The meaning may be illustrated by Psa 17:3, “I am purposed that my mouth shall not transgress.” The same expression occurs in Mal 2:7, “For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge,” i.e. preserve and give utterance to it. Where “the lips keep knowledge,” there they are protected against the lips of the strange woman, i.e. against her allurements, because they will be fortified with purity. Thy lips; s’phatheyka is the dual of the feminine noun saphah, “a lip.” The teacher designedly uses this word instead of “thy heart” (cf. Pro 3:1), because of the contrast which he has in mind, and which be produces in the next verse. The LXX; Vulgate. and Arabic add, “Attend not to the deceitful woman,” which Houbigant and Schleusner think is required by the context. The addition, however, is without authority (Holden).
Pro 5:3
The teacher enters upon the subject of his warning, and under two familiar figurescommon alike to Oriental and Greek writersdescribes the nature of the “strange woman’s” allurements. For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb. The conjunction “for” (Hebrew ki) here, like the LXX. , states the reason why the preceding exhortation is worthy of attention. Some commentators render “although,” “albeit,” as corresponding with the antithetical “but” in Pro 5:4. The lips; siphthey, the construct case of saphah in Pro 5:2. The organ of speech is here used for the speech itself, like the parallel “mouth.” A strange woman (zarah); i.e. the harlot. The word occurs before in Pro 2:16, and again inch. Pro 5:20; Pro 7:5; Pro 22:14; Pro 23:33. She is extranea, a stranger with respect to the youth whom she would beguile, either as being of foreign extraction, or as being the wife of another man, in which capacity she is so represented in Pro 7:19. In this sense she would be an adulteress. St. Jerome, in Eze 6:1-14; takes her as the representative of the allurements from sound doctrine, and of corrupt worship (Wordsworth). Drop as an honeycomb (nopheth tithoph’ nah); rather, distil honey. The Hebrew nophteth is properly a “dropping,” distillatio, and so the honey flowing from the honeycombs (tsuphim). Kimchi explains it as the honey flowing from the cells before they are broken, and hence it is the pure fine virgin honey. Exactly the same phrase occurs in So Eze 4:11, “Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as an honeycomb (nopheth tithoph’nah).“ The only other places where we meet with the word nopheth are Psa 24:10 (11) (there combined with tsuphim, which helps to determine its meaning) and Pro 24:13; Pro 27:7. The meaning is the same as she “flattereth with her words” of Pro 7:5, in which chapter the teacher gives an example of the alluring words which the strange woman uses (Pro 7:14-20). As honey is sweet and attractive to the taste, so in a higher degree are her words pleasant to the senses. Her mouth is smoother than oil; i.e. her words are most plausible and persuasive. The Hebrew khik is properly “the palate,” though it also included the corresponding lower part of the mouth (Gesenius). It is used as the instrument or organ of speech in Pro 8:7, “For my mouth (khik) shall speak truth;” and in Job 31:30, “I have not suffered my mouth (khik) to sin.” Under the same figure David describes the treachery of his friend in Psa 55:22, “His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords.”
Pro 5:4
The contrast is drawn with great vividness between the professions of the “strange woman” and the disastrous consequences which overtake those who listen to her enticements. She promises enjoyment, pleasure, freedom from danger, but her end is bitter as wormwood. “Her end,” not merely with reference to herself, which may be and is undoubtedly true, but the last of her as experienced by those who have intercourse with herher character as it stands revealed at the last. So it is said of wine, “At the last,” i.e. its final effects, if indulged in to excess, “it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder” (Pro 23:22). Bitter as wormwood. The Hebrew, laanah, “wormwood,” Gesenius derives from the unused root laan, “to curse.” It is the equivalent to the absinthium of the Vulgate. So Aquila, who has . The LXX. improperly renders , “gall.” In other places the word laanah is used as the emblem of bitterness, with the superadded idea of its being poisonous, also according to the Hebrew notion, shared in also by the Greeks, that the plant combined these two qualities. Thus in Deu 29:18 it is associated with rosh, “a poisonful herb” (margin), and the Targum terms it, agreeably with this notion, “deadly wormwood.” The same belief is reproduced in Rev 8:11, “And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and many men died of the waters because they were made bitter” (cf. Jer 9:15; Amo 5:7 : Amo 6:12). The apostle, no doubt, has it in mind when he speaks of any “root of bitterness,” in Heb 12:15. The herb is thus described by Umbreit: “It is a plant toward two feet high, belonging to the genus Artemisia (species Artemisia absinthium), which produces a very firm stalk with many branches, grayish leaves, and small, almost round, pendent blossoms. It has a bitter and saline taste, and seems to have been regarded in the East as also a poison, of which the frequent combination with rosh gives an intimation.” Terence has a strikingly similar passage to the one before us
In melle sunt linguae sitae vestrae atque orations
Lacteque; corda felle sunt lita atque acerbo aceto.”
“Your tongues are placed in honey and your speech is milk; your hearts are besmeared with gall and sharp vinegar” (‘Trucul.,’ 1.11. 75). Sharp as a two-edged sword; literally, as a sword of edges (kherev piphiyyoth), which may mean a sword of extreme sharpness. Her end is as sharp as the sharpest sword. But it seems better to take the term as it is understood in the Authorized Version, which has the support both of the Vulgate, gladius biceps, and the LXX; , i.e. “a two-edged sword.” Compare “a two-edged sword” (kherev piphiyyoth) of Psa 149:6. The meaning is, the last of her is poignancy of remorse, anguish of heart, and death. In these she involves her victims.
Pro 5:5
Pro 5:5 and Pro 5:6 continue the description of the harlot. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell. She leads her victims to ruin. She hastens to death and the grove, and so do all those who listen to her. In all instances where the teacher speaks of the harlot at length he gives the same description of her (cf. Pro 2:18; Pro 7:27; Pro 9:18). An intensifying of the language is observable in the second hemistich. The descending progress to death becomes the laying hold of the grave, the underworld, as if nothing could turn her steps aside. And it is not only death, as the cessation of life, but death as a punishment, that is implied, just as the grave has in it the idea of corruption. (On “hell,” sheol, see Pro 1:12.)
Pro 5:6
Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are movable, that thou canst not know them. This verse should be rather rendered, she walks not in the path of life, her ways fiuctuate, she knows not. It consists of a series of independent proposiyions or statements, all of which are descriptive of the singularly fatuous conduct of “the strange woman.” In the previous verse the teacher has said that her conduct leads to ruin; he here further emphasizes the idea by putting forward the same truth from the opposite, or, as we may say, from the negative point of view, and so completes the picture. “The words,” as Plumptre remarks, “describe with terrible vividness the state of heart and soul which prostitution brings on its victims.” Her course is one o(persistent, wilful, headstrong, blind folly and wickedness. Lest; pen; here “not,” equivalent to (lo). So the LXX; Vulgate, Targum, Syriac. The use of pen, in this sense is, however, unique (Gesenius). Delitzsch and Zockler, following Luther, Geier, Holden, etc; assign to it an emphatic negative force, as, “She is far removed from entering,” or, “she never treadeth.” Others take pen as a dependent prohibitive particle, equivalent to the Latin ne forte, “lest,” as in the Authorized Version, and employed to connect the sentence which it introduces either with the preceding verse (as Schultens) or with the second hemistich, on which it is made dependent (Holden, Wordsworth, Aben Ezra, loc; Michaelis, etc.). Thou shouldest ponder; t’phalles, connected by makkeph with pen, as usual (Lee), is either second person masculine or third person feminine. The latter is required here, the subject of the sentence being “the strange woman,” as appears clearly from the second hemistich, “her ways,” etc. The verb patas (cf. Pro 14:26) here means “to prepare,” i.e. to walk in, or to travel over. Thus Gesenius renders, “She (the adulteress) prepareth not (for herself) the way of life:” i.e. she does not walk in the way of life; cf. the LXX. , Vulgate ambulant (sc. gressus ejus), and other ancient versions, all of which understand the verb in this sense. The meaning of the phrase, pen t’phalles, is, therefore, “she walks not” in the way of lifethe way that has life for its object, and which in itself is full of life and safety. Far from doing this, the teacher goes on to say, her ways are movable; literally, go to and fro, or fluctuate; i.e. they wilfully stagger hither and thither, like the steps of a drunkard, or like the uncertain steps of the blind, for the verb nua is so used in the former sense in Isa 24:20; Isa 29:9; Psa 107:27; and in the latter in Lam 4:14. Her steps are slippery (LXX; ), or wander (Vulgate, vagi); they are without any definite aim; she is always straying in the vagrancy of sin (Wordsworth); cf. Pro 7:12. That thou canst not know them (lo theda); literally, she knows not. The elliptical form of this sentence in the original leaves it open to various interpretations. It seems to refer to the way of life; she knows not the way of life, i.e. she does not regard or perceive the way of life. The verb yada often has this meaning. The meaning may be obtained by supplying mah, equivalent to quicquam, “anything,” as in Pro 9:13, “She knows not anything,” i.e. she knows nothing. The objection to this is that it travels unnecessarily out of the sentence to find the object which ought rather to be supplied from the context. The object may possibly be the staggering of her feet: she staggers hither and thither without her perceiving it (Delitzsch); or it may, lastly, be indefinite: she knows not whittler her steps conduct her (Wordsworth and Zockler).
Pro 5:7-14
The ruinous consequences of indulgence in illicit pleasures.
Pro 5:7
The subject of which the teacher is heating demands the utmost attention of youth. Enough, it might be supposed, had been said to deter from intercourse with the “strange woman.” She has been portrayed in her real colours, plunging recklessly into ruin herself, and carrying her victims with her; deceitful, full of intrigues, neither walking in nor knowing the way of life. But the warning is amplified and made more impressive. There is another side of the picture, the complete bodily and temporal ruin of her victim. The argumentum ad hominem is applied. There is an appeal to personal interest in the details which follow, which ought not to fail in holding youth back. The form of the address which is repeated is very similar to that in Pro 7:24. The plural form, “O ye children” (cf. Pro 4:1 and Pro 7:24), immediately passes into the singular for the reason mentioned before, that, though the address is made to all, yet each individually is to apply it to himself.
Pro 5:8
Remove thy way far from her. In other words, this is the same as St. Paul counsels, “Flee fornication” (1Co 6:14). From her (mealeyah; desuper ea). The term conveys the impression that the youth has come within the compass of her temptations, or that in the highest degree he is liable to them. The Hebrew meal, compounded of min and al, and meaning” from upon,” being used of persons or things which go away from the place in or upon which they had been. And come not nigh the door of her house; i.e. shun the very place where she dwells. “Be so far from coming into her chamber as not to come near the door of her house” (Patrick). She and her house are to be avoided as if they were infected with some mortal disease. The old proverb quoted by Muffet is applicable
“He that would no evil do
Must do nothing that ‘longeth [i.e. belongeth] thereto.”
Pro 5:9
The reasons why the harlot is to be avoided follow in rapid succession. Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel. The word rendered “honour” (Hebrew, hod) is not so much reputation, as the English implies, as “the grace and freshness of youth.” It is so used in Hos 14:6; Dan 10:8. The Vulgate renders “honour,” and the LXX; , “life.” Hod is derived from the Arabic word signifying “to lift one’s self up,” and then “to be eminent, beautiful.” Thy years; i.e. the best and most vigorous, and hence the most useful and valuable, years of life. Unto the cruel (Hebrew, l’ak’zari); literally, to the cruel one; but the adjective akzari is only found in the singular, and may be here used in a collective sense as designating the entourage of the harlot, her associates who prey pitilessly on the youth whom they bring within the range of her fascinations. So Delitzsch. It seems to be so understood by the LXX; which reads , immitentibus; but not so by the Vulgate, which adheres to the singular, crudeli. If we adhere to the gender of the adjective akzari, which is masculine, and to its number, it may designate the husband of the adulteress, who will deal mercilessly towards the paramour of his wife. So Zockler. Again, it may refer, notwithstanding the gender, to the harlot herself (so Vatablus and Holden). who is cruel, who has no love for the youth, and would see him perish without pity. The explanation of Stuart and others, including Ewald, that the “cruel one” is the purchaser of the punished adulterer, is without foundation or warrant, since there is no historical instance on record where the adulterer was reduced to slavery, and the punishment inflicted by the Mosaic code was not slavery, but death (Num 20:10; Deu 22:22), and, as it appears from Eze 16:40 and Joh 8:5, death from stoning. The adjective akzari, like its equivalent akzar, is derived from the verb kazar, “to break,” and occurs again in Pro 11:17; Pro 12:10; Pro 17:11. The moral of the warning is a wasted life.
Pro 5:10
Another temporal consequence of, and deterrent against, a life of profligacy. Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger. The margin reads, “thy strength” for “thy wealth,” but the text properly renders the original koakh, which means “substance,” “wealth,” “riches”the youth’s possessions in money and property (Delitzsch). The primary meaning of the word is “strength” or “might,” as appears from the verb kakhakh, “to exert one’s self,” from which it is derived, but the parallel atsabeyka, “thy toils,” rendered “thy labours,” determines its use in the secondary sense here. Compare the similar passage in Hos 7:9, “Strangers have devoured his strength [koakh, i.e. ‘ his possessions’], and he knoweth it not” (see also Job 6:22). Koakh is the concrete product resulting from the abstract strength or ability when brought into action. Thy labours (atsabeyka); i.e. thy toils, the product of laborious toil, that which you have gotten by the labour of your hands, and earned with the sweat of your brow. Fleischer compares the Italian i miri sudori, and the French mes sueurs. The singular etsev signifies “heavy toilsome labour,” and the plural (atsavim, “labours,” things done with toil, and so the idea passes to the resultant of the labour. Compare the very similar expression in Psa 127:2, lekhem naatsavim, equivalent to “bread obtained by toilsome labour;” Authorized Version, “the bread of sorrows.” The Authorized Version properly supplies the verb “be” against those (e.g. Holden et alli) who join on “thy labours” to the previous verb “be filled,” as an accusative, and render, “and with thy labours in the house of a stranger.” So also the LXX. and the Vulgate, “and thy labours come” (, LXX.) or “be” (sint, Vulgate) “to the house of strangers” ( ) or, “in a strange house” (in aliena domo). In the latter case the Vulgate is wrong, as nok’ri in the phrase beyth nok’ri is always personal (Delitzsch), and should be rendered, as in the Authorized Version, “in the house of a stranger.” The meaning of the verse is that a life of impurity transfers the profligate’s substance, his wealth and possessions, to others, who will be satiated at his expense, and, being strangers, are indifferent to his ruin.
Pro 5:11
The last argument is the mental anguish which ensues when health is ruined and wealth is squandered. And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed. The Hebrew v’nahamta’ is rather “and thou groan.” It is not the plaintive wailing or the subdued grief of heart which is signified, but the loud wail of lamentation, the groaning indicative of intense mental suffering called forth by the remembrance of past folly, and which sees no remedy in the future. The verb naham occurs again in Pro 28:15, where it is used of the roaring of the lion, and the cognate noun naham is met with in Pro 19:12 and Pro 20:2 in the same sense. By Ezekiel it is used of the groaning of the people of Jerusalem when they shall see their sanctuary profaned, their sons and their daughters fall by the sword, and their city destroyed (Eze 24:23). Isaiah (Isa 5:29, Isa 5:30) applies it to the roaring of the sea. The Vulgate reproduces the idea in gemas, equivalent to “and thou groan.” The LXX. rendering, , “and thou shelf repent,” arising from the adoption of a different pointing, nikhamta, from the niph. nikham, “to repent,” for nahamta, to some extent expresses the sense. At the last; literally, at thine end; i.e. when thou art ruined, or, as the teacher explains, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed. The expression, “thy flesh and thy body,” here stands for the whole body, the body in its totality, not the body and the soul, which would be different. Of these two words “the flesh” (basar) rather denotes the flesh in its strict sense as such (cf. Job 31:31; Job 33:21), while “body” (sh’er) is the flesh adhering to the bones. Gesenlus regards them as synonymous terms, stating, however, that sh’er is the more poetical as to use. The word basar is used to denote the whole body in Isa 14:30. It is clear that, by the use of these two terms here, the teacher is following a peculiarity observable elsewhere in the Proverbs, of combining two terms to express, and so to give force to, one idea. The expression describes “the utter destruction of the libertine” (Umbreit). This destruction, as further involving the ruin of the soul, is described in Pro 6:32, “Whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding; he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul (nephesh)” (cf. Pro 7:22, Pro 7:23).
Pro 5:12
Self-reproach accompanies the unavailable groaning. And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof! i.e. how could it ever come to pass that I have acted in such a senseless and inexcusable manner, that I have hated instruction (musar, disciplina, ), the warning voice which dissuaded me from going with the harlot, and in my heart despised, i.e. rejected inwardly, whatever my outward demeanour may have been, the reproof which followed after I had been with her! Despised (naats), as in Pro 1:30; comp. also Pro 15:5, “A fool despiseth his father’s instructions.”
Pro 5:13
And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me. The ruined profligate admits he was not without teachers and advisers, but that he gave no heed to their warnings and reproofs. Have not obeyed the voice (lo-shama’ti b’kol). The same phrase occurs in Gen 27:13; Exo 18:19; Deu 26:14; 2Sa 12:18. The verb shama is primarily “to hear,” and then “to obey,” “to give heed to,” like the Greek .
Pro 5:14
I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly; i.e. such was my shamelessness that there was scarcely any wickedness which I did not commit, unrestrained even by the presence of the congregation and assembly. The fact which the ruined youth laments is the extent and audacity of his sins. It is not that he accuses himself of hypocrisy in religion (Delitzsch), but he adds another clement in his career of vice. He has disregarded the warnings and reproofs of his teachers and friends; but more, the presence of the congregation of God’s people, a silent but not a less impressive protest, had no restraining effect upon him. The words, “the congregation and assembly” (Hebrew, kahal v’edah), seem to be used to heighten the conception, rather than to express two distinct and separate ideas, since we find them both used interchangeably to designate the congregation of the Israelites. The radical conception of kahal (“congregation”) is the same as that of the LXX. and Vulgate ecclesia, viz. the congregation looked upon from the point of its being called together, kahal being derived from kahal, which in hiph. is equivalent to “to call together,” while that of edah is the congregation looked at from the point of its having assembled edah being derived from yaad, in niph. equivalent to “to come together.” The latter will therefore stand for any assembly of people specially convened or coming together for some definite object, like the LXX. and the Vulgate synagoga. The term edah is, however, used in a technical sense as signifying the seventy elders, or senators, who judged the people (see Num 25:7; Num 35:12). Rabbi Salomon so explains haedah as “the congregation,” in Jos 20:6 and Num 27:21. Other explanations, however, have been given of these words. Zockler takes kahal as the convened council of elders acting as judges (Deu 33:4, Deu 33:5), and edah as the concourse (coetus) of the people executing the condemning sentence (Num 15:15; cf. Psa 7:7), and renders, “Well nigh had I fallen into utter destruction in the midst of the assembly and the congregation.” Fleischer, Vatablus, and Bayne take much the same view, looking upon ra (“evil,” Authorized Version) as “punishment,” i.e. the evil which follows as a consequence of sina usage supported by 2Sa 16:18; Exo 5:19; 1Ch 7:23; Psa 10:6rather than as evil per se, i.e. that which is morally bad, as in Exo 32:22. Aben Ezra considers that the perfect is used for the future; “In a little time I shall be involved in all evil;” i.e. punishment, which is looked forward to prospectively. For “almost” (ki–mat, equivalent to “within a little,” “almost,” “nearly”), see Gen 26:10; Psa 73:2; Psa 119:87.
Pro 5:15-19
Commendation of the chaste intercourse of marriage. In this section the teacher passes from admonitory warnings against unchastity to the commendation of conjugal fidelity and pure love. The allegorical exposition of this passage, current at the period of the Revision of the Authorized Version in 1612, as referring to liberality, is not ad rem. Such an idea had no place certainly in the teacher’s mind, nor is it appropriate to the context, the scope of which is, as we have seen, to warn youth against indulgence in illicit pleasures, by pointing out the terrible consequences which follow, and to indicate, on the other hand, in what direction the satisfaction of natural wants is to be obtained, that so, the heart and conscience being kept pure, sin and evil may be avoided.
Pro 5:15
Drink waters out of thine own cistern, etc.; i.e. in the wife of your own choice, or in the legitimate sphere of marriage, seek the satisfaction of your natural impulses. The pure, innocent, and chaste nature of such pleasures is appropriately compared with the pure and wholesome waters of the cistern and the wellspring. The “drinking” carries with it the satisfying of a natural want. Agreeably with oriental and scriptural usage, “the wife” is compared with a “cistern” and “well.” Thus in the Song of Solomon the “bride” is called a spring shut up, a fountain sealed” (So Son 4:12). Sarah is spoken of under exactly the same figure that is used here, viz. the bor, or “cistern,” in Isa 51:1. The figure was not confined to women, however, as we find Judah alluded to as “waters” in Isa 48:1, and Jacob or Israel so appearing in the prophecy of Balaam (Num 24:7). The people are spoken of by David as they that are “of the fountain of Israel” (Psa 68:26). A similar imagery is employed in the New Testament of the wife. The apostles St. Paul and St. Peter both speak of her as “the vessel ( )” (see 1Th 4:4 and 1Pe 3:7). The forms of the original, b’or and b’er, standing respectively for “cistern” and “well,” indicate a common derivation from baar, “to dig.” But bor is an artificially constructed reservoir or cistern, equivalent to the Vulgate cisterna, and LXX. , while b’er is the natural spring of water, equivalent to the Vulgate putens. So Aben Ezra, who says, on Le Ezr 2:36, “Bor is that which catches the rain, while b’er is that from within which the water wells up.” This explanation, however, does not entirely cover the terms as used here. The “waters” may be the pure water conveyed into the cistern, and not simply the water which is caught in its descent born heaven. The parallel term, “running waters” (Hebrew, noz’lim), describes the flowing limpid stream fit, like the other, for drinking purposes. A similar use of the terms is made in the So Ezr 4:15, “a well of living waters and streams (v’noz’lim) from Lebanon.” It may be remarked that the allusion to the wife, under the figures employed, enhances her value. It indicates the high estimation in which she is to be held, since the “cistern” or “well” was one of the most valuable possessions and adjuncts of an Eastern house. The teaching of the passage, in its bearing on the subject of marriage, coincides with that which is subsequently put forward by St. Paul, in 1Co 7:9.
Pro 5:16
Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets. The figurative language is still continued, and under the terms “fountains” and “rivers of waters,” are to be understood children, the legitimate issue of lawful marriage. So Aben Ezra and the majority of modern commentators, Schultens, Doderlein, Holden, Muenscher, Noyes, Wardlaw, etc. The meaning appears to be, “Let thy marriage be blessed with many children, who may go forth abroad for the public good.” Other interpretations have been adopted. Thus:
(1) Delitzsch takes the words fountans and “rivers of waters” as used figuratively for the procreative power, and renders, “Shall thy streams flow abroad, and water brooks in the streets?” and interprets, “Let generative power act freely and unrestrainedly within the marriage relation.”
(2) Schultens and Dathe, followed by Holden, regard the verse as expressing a conclusion on the preceding, “Then shall thy springs be dispersed abroad, even rivers of waters in the streets.” The objection to this is that it necessitates the insertion of the copulative vav () before the verb, yaphutzu, “be dispersed.”
(3) Zockler and Hitzig read the verse interrogatively, “Shall thy streams flow abroad as water brooks in the streets?” on the analogy of Pro 6:30 and Psa 56:7.
(4) The reading of the LXX; adopted by Origen, Clemens Alexandrinus, places a negative before the verb, , i.e. “Let not thy waters flow beyond thy fountain;” i.e. “confine thyself to thy wife.” Fountains. The Hebrew ma’yanim, plural of mayan, derived from ayin (“a fountain”) with the formative men, is rather a stream or rillwater flowing on the surface of the ground. It is used, however, of a fountain itself in Gen 7:11; Gen 8:2. Rivers of waters (Hebrew, pal’gey-mayim); rather, water courses, or water brooks (cf. Job 38:25). The peleg represents the various streams into which the mayan, “fountain,” divides itself at its source or in its course. We find the same expression, pal’gey-mayim, used of tears in Psa 119:136; Lam 3:48. It occurs again in our book in Pro 21:1, “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord as the rivers of waters.“ On “abroad” (Hebrew, khutz), and “in the streets” (r’khovoth), see Pro 1:20.
Pro 5:17
Let them be only thine own, and not strangers’ with thee. By confining yourself to chaste intercourse with your lawful wife, be assured that your offspring is your own. Promiscuous and unlawful intercourse throws doubt upon the paternity of children. Thy children may be thine, they may belong to another. The natural pride which is felt in a legitimate offspring is the motive put forward to commend the husband to confine himself exclusively to his wife. Grotius on this verse remarks, “Ibi sere ubi prolem metas””Sow there where you may reap an offspring.” Them; i.e. the children referred to figuratively in the preceding verse, from which the subject of this verse is supplied. The repetition of the pronoun which occurs in the original, “let them belong to thee, to thee,” is emphatic, and exclusive of others. The latter clause of the verse, “and not strangers’ with thee,” covers the whole ground. The idea of their being strangers’ is repulsive, and so gives further point to the exhortation.
Pro 5:18
Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. The employment of the ordinary term “wife” in the second hemistich shows in what sense the figure which is used has to be understood. The terms “fountain” and “wife” denote the same person. The wife is here called “thy fountain” (Hebrew, m’kor’ka), just as she has been previously “thine own cistern” (b’or) and “thine own well” (b’er) in Pro 5:15. The Hebrew makor, “fountain,” is derived from the root kur, “to dig.” The figure seems to determine that the blessing here spoken of consists in the with being a fruitful mother of children; and hence the phrase means, “Let thy with be blessed,” i.e. rendered happy in being the mother of thy children. This is quite consistent with the Hebrew mode of thought. Every Israelitish wife regarded herself, and was regarded by ethers as “blessed,” if she bore children, and unhappy if the reverse were the case. Blessed; Hebrew, baruk (Vulgate, benedicta), is the kal participle passive of barak, “to bless.” Instead of this, the LXX. reads , “Let thy fountain be thine own”a variation which in no sense conveys the meaning of the original. And rejoice with; rather, rejoice in, the wife being regarded as the sphere within which the husband is to find his pleasure and joy. Umbreit explains, “Let thy wife be extolled.” The same construction of the imperative s’makh, from samakh,“ to be glad, or joyful,” with min, occurs in Jdg 9:19; Zep 3:14, etc. The Authorized rendering is, however, favoured by the Vulgate, laetare cum, and the LXX; Compare the exhortation in Ecc 9:9, “Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest.” The wife of thy youth (Hebrew, ishshah n’ureyka) may mean either
(1) the wife to whom thou hast given the fair bloom of thy youth (Umbreit);
(2) the wife chosen in thy youth (Delitzsch); or
(3) thy youthful wife. The former seems the more probable meaning. Compare the expression, “companion of thy youth,” in Pro 2:17.
Pro 5:19
Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe. The words in italics do not occur in the original. The expression, “the loving hind and pleasant roe,” is, therefore, to be attached to the preceding verse, as carrying on the sense and as descriptive of the grace and fascinating charms of the young wife. As combining these attributes, she is to be the object of thy love and devotion,the one in whom thine affections are to find the fulfilment of their desires.Love and grace are her possessions. The loving hind (Hebrew, ayyeleth ahavim); literally, the hind of loves, which may be understood, as in the Authorized Version, as pointing to the fondness of this animal for its young, or as descriptive of its beauty and the extreme gracefulness of its form. In this sense the phrase may be rendered, “the lovely hind.” The ayyeleth, or ayyalah, feminine of ayyal, “stag,” or “hart,” was in all probability the gazelle, Pleasant roe (Hebrew, yhaalath khen); literally, the ibex of grace. The particular expression only occurs here in the Bible. The yaalath is the feminine of yaal, “the ibex” or “mountain goat” according to Bochart, or the “chamois” according to Gesenius. It does not appear that it is so much “the pleasantness” or amiability of this animal which is here alluded to as its gracefulness of form. As terms of endearment, the words entered largely into the erotic poetry of the East. Thus in the So Pro 4:5 the bride likens her beloved to “a roe or young hart” (cf. also So Pro 4:17 and Pro 8:14). while numerous examples might be quoted from the Arabian and Persian poets. They were also employed sometimes as names for women. Compare the superscription of Psa 22:1-31, Ayyeleth hash-shakar, “Upon the hind of the dawn.” Let her breasts satisfy thee at all times. The love of the wife is to refresh and fully satisfy the husband. The word dadeyah, “her breasts,” only occurs here and in Eze 23:3, Eze 23:8, Eze 23:21, and is equivalent to dodeyah, “her love.” The marginal reading, “water thee,” serves to bring out the literal meaning of the y’ravvuka, derived from ravah, in kal, “to drink largely,” “to be satisfied with drink,” but misses the emphatic force of the piel, “to be fully satisfied or satiated.” This is expressed very forcibly in the Vulgate rendering, “Let her breasts inebriate thee (indebrient te),” which represents the strong influence which the attractions of the wife are to maintain. The LXX; on the other hand, avoiding the rather sensual colouring of the language, substitutes, “May she thine own lead thee, and be with thee always.” And be thou ravished always with her love; i.e. let it intoxicate thee. The teacher, by a bold figure, describes the entire fascination which the husband is to allow the wife to exercise over him. The verb shagah is “to reel under the influence of wine,” and is so used in the succeeding Eze 23:20 and Eze 23:23, and Pro 20:1 and Isa 28:7. The primary meaning, “to err from the way,” scarcely applies here, and does not express the idea of the teacher, which is to describe “an intensity of love connected with the feeling of superabundant happiness” (Delitzsch). The Vulgate, In amore ejus delectare jugiter, “In her love delight thyself continually,” and the LXX; “For in her love thou shalt be daily engaged,” are mere paraphrases.
Pro 5:20, Pro 5:21
The adulterer to be restrained by the fact of God‘s omniscience and the Divine punishment. Pro 5:20 and Pro 5:21 should apparently be taken together. The teaching assumes a higher tone, and rises from the lower law which regulates fidelity to the wife, based upon personal attractions, to the higher law, which brings the husband’s conduct into relation with the duty he owes to Jehovah. Not merely is his conduct to be regulated by love and affection alone, but it is to be fashioned by the reflection or consciousness that the Supreme Being presides over all, and takes cognizance of human action. Without losing sight that the marriage contract has its own peculiar obligations, the fact is insisted upon that all a man’s ways are open to the eyes of the Lord.
Pro 5:20
And why; i.e. what inducement is there, what reason can be given, for conjugal infidelity, except the lewd and immoral promptings of the lower nature, except sensuality in its lowest form? Ravished. The verb shagah recurs, but in a lower sense, as indicating “the foolish delirium of the libertine hastening after the harlot” (Zockler). With a strange woman (Hebrew, b’zarah); i.e. with a harlot. On zarah, see Pro 2:16 and Pro 7:5. The be () localizes the sources of the intoxication. Embrace (Hebrew, t’khab-bek). On this verb, see Pro 4:8. The bosom of a stranger (Hebrew, kheh nok’riyyah). A parallel expression having the same force as its counterpart. The more usual form of khek is kheyk, and means “the bosom” of a person. In Pro 16:33 it is used of the lap, and in Pro 17:23 and Pro 21:14 for the bosom or folds of a garment.
Pro 5:21
For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord. The obvious meaning here is that as “the eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good” (Pro 15:3), there is no possibility of any act of immorality escaping God’s notice. The consciousness of this fact is to be the restraining motive, inasmuch as he who sees will also punish every transgression. The great truth acknowledged here is the omniscience of God, a truth which is borne witness to in almost identical language in Job: “For his eyes are upon the ways of man, and he seeth all his goings” (Job 34:21; cf. Job 24:23 and Job 31:4). So Hanani the seer says to Asa King of Judah, “For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth” (2Ch 16:9); and Jehovah says, in Jeremiah, “For mine eyes are upon all their ways, they are not hid from my face, neither is their iniquity hid from mine eyes” (Jer 16:17; cf. Jer 32:29); and again, in Hosea, “They are before my face” (Hos 7:2), and the same truth is re-echoed in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in all probability gathered from our passage, “All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Heb 4:13). The ways of man; i.e. the conduct of any individual man or woman; ish, “man,” being used generically. Are before the eyes of the Lord; i.e. are an object on which Jehovah fixes his gaze and scrutiny. And he pondereth all his goings. The word “he pondereth” is in the original m’phalles, the piel participle of philles, piel of the unused kal, palas, and appears to be properly rendered in the Authorized Version. This verb, however, has various meanings:
(1) to make level, or prepare, as in Pro 4:26 and Pro 5:6;
(2) to weigh, or consider accurately, in which sense it is used here.
So Gesenius, Lee, Buxtorf, and Davidson. Jehovah not only sees, but weighs all that a man does, wheresoever he be, and will apportion rewards and punishments according to a man’s actions (Patrick). The German commentators, Delitzsch and Zockler, however, look upon the word as indicating the overruling providence of God, just as the former part of the verse refers to his omniscience, and render, “he marketh out,” in the sense that the Lord makes it possible for a man to walk in the way of uprightness and purity. There is nothing inherently objectionable in this view, since experience shows that the world is regulated by the Divine government, but it loses sight to some extent of the truth upon which the teacher appears to be insisting, which is that evil actions are visited with Divine retribution.
Pro 5:22, Pro 5:23
The fearful end of the adulterer. From the universal statement of God’s omniscience and the Divine judgment, the teacher passes to the fate of the profligate. His end is inevitable ruin and misery. The deep moral lesson conveyed is that sin carries with it its own Nemesis. Adultery and impurity, like all sin of which they are forms, are retributive. The career of the adulterer is a career begun, continued, and ended in folly (comp. Pro 1:31, Pro 1:32; Pro 2:5; Pro 18:7; Pro 29:6; and Psa 9:15).
Pro 5:22
His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself; i.e. his manifold sins shall overtake and arrest him. The imagery is borrowed from the snare of the fowler. The emphatic form of the original, “His sins shall overtake him, the impious man,” point conclusively to the adulterer. It is “his” sins that shall overtake him, not those of another, and they shall fall upon his own head; and further, his character is depicted in the condemning clause, “the impious man;” for such he is. Shall take. The verb lakad is literally “to take or catch animals in a snare or net,” properly “to strike with a net.” The wicked man becomes entangled and caught in his own sins; he is struck down and captured by them, just as the prey is struck by the snare of the fowler. The verb is, of course, used metaphorically, as in Job 5:13. The wicked (Hebrew, eth-harasa); in the original introduced as explanatory of the object, “him.” And he shall be holden with the cords of his sins. The Authorized Version follows the LXX. and Vulgate in rendering “his sins,” instead of the original “his sin” (khattatho). It is not so much every sin of man which shall hold him, though this is true, as the particular sin treated of in the address, viz. adultery, which shall do this. The expression, “the cords of his sin” (Hebrew, khavley khattatho), means the cords which his sin weaves around him. Nothing else will be requisite to bind and hold him fast for punishment (cf. “cords of vanity,” in Isa 5:18).
Pro 5:23
He shall die without instruction. The phrase, “without instruction,” is in the original b’eyu musar, literally, “in there not being instruction.” The obvious meaning is, because he gave no heed to instruction. So Aben Ezra and Gersom. The Authorized Version is at least ambiguous, and seems to imply that the adulterer has been without instruction, without any to reprove or counsel him. But such is not the case. He has been admonished of the evil consequences of his sin, but to these warnings he has turned a deaf ear, and the teacher says therefore he shall die. The Vulgate supports this explanation, quia non habuit disciplinam “because he did not entertain or use instruction.” In the LXX. the idea is enlarged, “He shall die together with these who have no instruction ( ).” The be () in b’eyn is causal, and equivalent to propter, as in Gen 18:28; Jer 17:3. A similar statement is found in Job 4:21, “They die even without wisdom,” i.e. because they have disregarded the lessons of wisdom; and Job 36:12, “They shall die without knowledge.” And in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray; better, as Delitzsch, “He shall stagger to ruin.” The verb shagah is used as in Job 36:19 and Job 36:20, but with a deeper and more dread significance. A climax is reached in the manner in which the end of the adulterer is portrayed. His end is without a gleam of hope or satisfaction. With an understanding darkened and rendered callous by unrestrained indulgence in lust, and by folly which has reached its utmost limits and cannot, as it were, be surpassed, in that it has persistently and wilfully set aside and scorned wisdom and true happiness, the adulterer, like the drunkard, who is oblivious of the danger before him, shall stagger to ruin.
HOMILETICS
Pro 5:15
Home joys
I. THE HOME IS A DIVINE INSTITUTION OF THE FIRST IMPORTANCE FOR THE WELFARE OF MANKIND. Here and throughout the Bible the sanctity of the home is insisted on as something to be guarded inviolably. It is evident that this beautiful institution is in harmony with our nature. To live according to nature is not to indulge ill-regulated passions, to follow chance impulses, to subordinate reason and conscience to instinct and appetite. It is to live so as to secure the harmonious working of our whole nature and of the general body of mankind. Thus regarded, family life is natural; it falls in best with the requirements of the race, it ministers best to its advancement. Polygamy is always degrading. As men rise in the moral scale they cast it off. The home is the foundation of the state. Where home life is most corrupt social and political institutions are in greatest danger. The homes of England are the surest guardians of her internal order and peace. May no corrupt casuistry ever dare to lay its foul finger on these holy shrines! The worst fruits of atheism and of the confessional are seen in specious pretexts for committing that horrible sacrilege.
II. IN ORDER TO PROTECT THE HOME GOD HAS MADE IT TO BE A FOUNTAIN OF PURE AND WHOLESOME JOYS. They who break through the restraints of home life in the feverish thirst for illicit delights little know what joys they are losing. The poison fruits of a pandemonium let a blight fall on the sweet, fresh beauty of what might have been a very garden of Eden. For the restraints which look to libertines so irksome are just the very conditions of the most lasting, most satisfying, most; wholesome of human joys. The strong love of husband and wife, the parents’ pleasure in their children, the innumerable little interests of the home circle, and all that is typified by the “fireside,” are delights unknown to men who profess to make the pursuit of pleasure their aim in life.
“The first sure symptom of a mind in health
Is rest of heart and pleasure felt at home.”
III. TO BE PRESERVED IN THEIR INTEGRITY, THE HOME JOYS MUST BE CAREFULLY GUARDED AND REVERENTLY CHERISHED. The serpent is in the garden; beware of its wiles. Temptations seek to break up the confidence and peace of the family circle. Not only must gross infidelity be shunned as a deadly sin, but all approaches to a breach of domestic sanctity must be dreaded. Levity, as well as immorality, may go far to spoil the waters of the purest fountain of delight. Mere indifference may wreck the home joys. These joys must be cherished. Courtship should not end with the wedding day. Husbands and wives should beware of neglecting mutual respect and consideration under the influence of familiarity. Why should a man be more rude to his wife than to any other woman? Surely marriage is not designed to destroy courtesy. There should be an element of reverence in wedded love. Mutual sympathyeach taking interest in the occupations and cares of the other; mutual confidencethe avoidance of secrets between husband and wife on the mistaken flea of sparing pain; and mutual forbearance, are requisites for the preservation of the sweetness of the fountains of home joy.
Pro 5:21
Under the eyes of God
I. WE ARE ALWAYS UNDER THE WATCHFUL EYES OF GOD. God is no epicurean Divinity, retreating far above mundane affairs in celestial seclusion. He is not indifferent to what goes on in this little world. He is watchful and observant. This fact may not affect us much while we think of it in the general. But we should observe that God’s watchfulness is directed to all particular, individual objects. He looks at each of us, at the smallest of our concerns. It is the property of an infinite mind thus to reach down to the infinitely small, as well as to rise to the infinitely great. Consider, then, that God searches us through and through. There is no dark cranny of the soul into which his keen penetrating light does not fall, no locked secret which does not open up freely to his magisterial warrant. We may hide the thought of God from our own minds, but we cannot hide ourselves from the sight of God. Now, what God notices chiefly in us is our conductour “ways,” “goings.” Mere profession counts for nothing with the All-seeing. Opinions, feelings, resolutions, are of secondary moment. God takes inquisition chiefly of what we do, whither our life is tending, what are the actions of the inner as welt as of the outer man. But let us remember that God does all this in no mere prying curiosity, in no cruel desire to “find us out” and convict us of wrong. He does it of right, for he is our Judge; he does it with holy ends, for he is holy; he does it in love, for he is our Father.
II. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE DIVINE OVERSIGHT SHOULD POWERFULLY AFFECT ALL OUR CONDUCT.
1. It should make us true. What is the use of paltry devices for the deception of men when the only question of consequence concerning the treatment of our conduct isHow will God regard it? What folly to wear a mask if he sees behind it! The gaze of God should shame and burn all lies out of the soul.
2. It should make us dread to do wrong. An Eastern legend tells how one stole a jewel called “the eye of God,” but though he fled far with his treasure and hid in dark caverns, he was tortured by the piercing light that it threw out till, unable to endure the horror of it, he gave himself up to justice. We all have the eye of God on our ways. Let us beware that we never go where we should not wish him to see us.
3. It should lead to confession of sin. If God knows all, is it not best to make a clean breast of it, and humble ourselves before him? We cannot hide or cloke our sins from God. It is foolish to attempt to do so. But let us be thankful that we cannot. While we try to hide them they only scorch our own bosom. If we confess them, “he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.”
4. It should induce confidence in God. It is sometimes a relief to know that the worst is out. God knows all. Yet he endures us, yet he loves us still. He who thus watches looks upon us as a mother regards her child, grieving for what is wrong, but tenderly seeking to save and protect us from all harm. Why should we fear the gaze of God? His sleepless eye is our great security (see 2Ch 16:9).
5. It should incline us to faithful service. We should learn to be ashamed of the eye service of men pleasers, and seek to win the approval of our rightful Lord. He is no hard tyrant. When we try to please him, though ever so imperfectly, he is pleased, and will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” May it be our aim to live, as Milton resolved to do when considering his life on his twenty-third birthday
“As ever in my great Taskmaster’s eye.”
Pro 5:22
Cords of sin
I. THE SINNER IS IN BONDAGE. Such a condition is not expected when a man freely gives the reins to his passions, and weakly yields himself to temptation. On the contrary, he supposes that he is enjoying a larger liberty than they possess who are constrained to walk in the narrow path of righteousness. Moreover, even when this shocking condition is reached, he is slow to admit its existence. He will not confess his bondage; perhaps he scarcely feels it. Thus the Jews were indignant in rejecting any such notion when our Lord offered deliverance from the slavery of sin (Joh 8:33). But this only proves the bondage to be the greater. The worst degradation of slavery is that it so benumbs the feelings and crushes the manliness of its victims, that some of them do not notice the yoke that would gall the shoulders of all men who truly appreciated their condition. The reality of the bondage is soon proved, however, whenever a slave tries to escape. Then the chains of sin are felt to be too strong for the sinner to break. He cries, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom 7:24).
II. THE CORDS THAT BIND THE SINNER ARE SPUN OUT OF HIS OWN SINS. Satan does not need to build any massive prison walls, or to call upon Vulcan to forge fetters for his captives. He has but to leave them to themselves, and their own misdeeds will shut them in, as the rank new growth of a tropical forest encloses the rotting trunks of the older trees, from the seed of which it sprang.
1. This results from the force of habit. All conduct tends to become permanent. The way wears into ruts. Men become entangled in their own past.
2. This is confirmed by wilful disregard of saving influences. If the sinner repented and called for deliverance, he might be saved from the fearful bondage of his sins. But proudly choosing to continue on his own course, he has consented to the tightening of the cords that bind him.
III. CHRIST ALONE CAN LIBERATE FROM THE BONDAGE OF SIN. Left to itself, the slavery will be fatal. The sinner will never be free to live to any good purpose. He will not be able to escape in the day of doom; his own sins will tie him to his fate. In the end they will strangle him. Inasmuch as the cords are spun out of his own conduct, they are part of himself, and he cannot untie their knots or cut their strands. They are stronger than the cords with which Delilah bound Samson, while the helpless, guilty sinner is weaker than the shorn Nazarite. But it is to men in this forlorn condition that the gospel of Christ is proclaimed, with its glorious promise of liberty to the captives (Isa 61:1). Christ brings liberating truth (Joh 8:32), redeeming grace, and the saving power of a mighty love,those attractive “cords of a man” (Hos 11:4) which are even stronger than the binding cords of sin.
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON
Pro 5:1-14
Meretricious pleasures and their results
I. GENERAL ADMONITION. (Pro 5:1-3.) Similar prefaces to warnings against unchastity are found in Pro 6:20, etc.; Pro 7:1, etc. The same forms of iteration for the sake of urgency are observed. A fresh expression is, “That thy lips may keep insight.” That is, let the lessons of wisdom be oft conned over; to keep them on the lips is to “get them by heart.” “Consideration” (Pro 7:2), circumspection, forethought, are peculiarly needed in facing a temptation which wears a fascinating form, and which must be viewed in results, if its pernicious quality is to be understood.
II. THE FASCINATION OF THE HARLOT. (Pro 7:3; comp. Pro 2:16.) Her lips are honeyed with compliments and flattery (comp. So Pro 4:11). Her voice is smoother than oil. A temptation has no power unless it is directed to some weakness in the subject of it, as the spark goes out in the absence of tinder. The harlot’s power to seduce lies mainly in that weakest of weaknesses, vanityat least, in many cases. It is a power in general over the senses and the imagination. And it is the part of the teacher to disabuse these of their illusions. In the word “meretricious” (from the Latin word for “harlot”), applied to spurious art, we have a witness in language to the hollowness of her attractions.
III. THE RESULTS OF VICIOUS PLEASURES. (Pro 7:4-6.) They are described in images full of expression.
1. As bitter like wormwood, which has a bitter, salt taste, and is regarded in the East in the light of poison. Or “like Dead Sea fruits, which tempt the taste, and turn to ashes on the lips.”
2. As of acute pain, under the image of a sword, smooth on the surface, with a keen double edge to wound.
3. As fatal. The harlot beckons her guests as it were down the deathful way, to sheol, to Hades, the kingdom of the dead.
4. They have no good result. Pro 7:6, correctly rendered, says, “She measures not the path of life; her tracks are roving, she knows not whither.” The picture of a life which can give no account of itself, cannot justify itself to reason, and comes to a brutish end.
IV. THE REMOTER CONSEQUENCES OF VICE. (Pro 7:7-13.) A gloomy vista opens, in prospect of which the warning is urgently renewed (Pro 7:7, Pro 7:8).
1. The exposure of the detected adulterer. (Pro 7:9.) He exchanges honour and repute for public shame, loses his life at the hands of the outraged husband, or becomes his slave (comp. Pro 6:34).
2. The loss of property. (Pro 7:10.) The punishment of adultery under the Law was stoning (Le Pro 20:10; Deu 22:22, sqq.). Possibly this might be commuted into the forfeiture of goods and enslavement to the injured husband.
3. Remorse. (Pro 7:11-14.) Last and worst of all inflictions, from the Divine hand, immediately. In the last stage of consumption the victim of lust groans forth his unavailing sorrow. Remorse, the fearful counterpart of self-respect, is the mind turning upon itself, internal discord replacing the harmony God made. The sufferer accuses himself of hatred to light, contempt of rebuke, of disobedience to voices that were authoritative, of deafness to warning. No external condemnation is ever passed on a man which his own conscience has not previously ratified. Remorse is the last witness to Wisdom and her claims. To complete the picture, the miserable man is represented as reflecting that he all but felt into the doom of the public condemnation and the public execution (Pro 7:14).J.
Pro 5:15-21
Fidelity and bliss in marriage
The counterpart of the foregoing warning against vice, placing connubial joys in the brightest light, of poetic fancy.
I. IMAGES OF WIFEHOOD. The wife is described:
1. As a spring, and as a cistern. Property in a spring or well was highly, even sacredly, esteemed. Hence a peculiar force in the comparison. The wife is the husband’s peculiar delight and property; the source of pleasures of every kind and degree; the fruitful origin of the family (comp. Isa 51:1; So 4:12).
2. As “wife of one‘s youth.“ (Cf. Deu 24:5; Ecc 9:9.) One to whom the flower of youth and manhood has been devoted. The parallel description is “companion of youth” (Pro 2:17). Her image, in this case, is associated with the sunniest scenes of experience.
3. As a “lovely hind, or charming gazelle.“ A favourite Oriental comparison, and embodied in the names Tabitha and Dorcas, which denote “gazelle.” There are numberless uses of the figure in Arabian and Persian poets. The beautiful liquid eye, delicate head, graceful carriage of the creature, all point the simile. Nothing can surpass, as a husband’s description of a true wife, Wordsworth’s exquisite stanza beginning
“She was a phantom of delight,
When first she gleam’d upon my sight;
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature’s daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.”
II. IMAGES OF THE HUSBAND‘S BLISS.
1. It is like taking draughts from a fresh and ever-running stream. There is “continual comfort in a face, the lineaments of gospel books.”
2. It is a peculiar, a private possession. Pro 5:16 should be rendered interrogatively; it conveys the contrast of the profaned treasures of the unchaste woman’s love, and thus fits with Pro 5:17. The language of lovers finds a true zest in the word, “My own!” Life becomes brutish where this feeling does not exist.
3. Yet it attracts sympathy, admiration, and good will. Pro 5:18 is the blessing wished by the speaker or by any looker on. Wedding feasts bring out these feelings; and the happiness and prosperity of married pairs are as little exposed to the tooth of envy as any earthly good.
4. It is satisfying; for what repose can be more sweet and secure than that on the bosom of the faithful spouse? It is enrapturing, without being enfeebling, unlike those false pleasures, “violent delights with violent endings, that in their triumph die” (Pro 5:19).
III. CONCLUDING EXHORTATION (Pro 5:20), founded on the contrast just given.
1. The true rapture (the Hebrew word shagah, “reel” as in intoxication, repeated) should deter from the false and vicious.
2. To prefer the bosom of the adulteress to that of the true wife is a mark of the most vitiated taste, the most perverted understanding.J.
Pro 5:21
God the all-seeing Judge
“Before Jehovah’s eyes are man’s paths, and all his tracks he surveys.”
I. CYNICAL PROVERBS CONCERNING SECRECY ARE CONDEMNED. Such as “What the eye sees not, the heart does not grieve over;” “A slice from a cut cake is never missed;” “Never mind so long as you are not found out.”
II. NOTHING IS REALLY SECRET OR UNKNOWN. We are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. The whisper, the inarticulate thought, will come back one day in thunder.J.
Pro 5:22, Pro 5:23
Vice suicidal
I. WICKEDNESS (LIKE GOODNESS) HAS UNDESIGNED RESULTS. The good comes back to nestle in the bosom of the giver and the doer. We never do right without invoking a blessing on our own heads. Evil, on the other hand, designed and executed, is like a snare set for one’s self, a net in the meshes of which the crafty is entangled, self-overreached.
II. WICKEDNESS AND IGNORANCE ARE IN CLOSE CONNECTION. “He shall die for want of instruction”the correct rendering of Pro 5:23. Socrates taught that vice was ignorance, virtue identical with knowledge. This, however, ignores the pervesity of the will. The Bible ever traces wickedness to wilful and inexcusable ignorance.
III. WICKEDNESS IS A KIND OF MADNESS. “Through the greatness of his folly he shall reel about.” The word shagah once more. The man becomes drunk and frenzied with passion, and, a certain point passed, staggers to his end unwitting, careless, or desperate.J.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON
Pro 5:1-20
Victims of vice
One particular vice is here denounced; it is necessary to warn the young against its snares and sorrows. What is here said, however, of this sin is applicable, in most if not all respects, to any kind of unholy indulgence; it is an earnest and faithful warning against the sin and shame of a vicious life.
I. ITS SINFULNESS. The woman who is a sinner is a “strange” woman (Pro 5:3). The temptress is all too common amongst us, but she is strange in the sight of God. She is an alien, foreign altogether to his purpose, a sad and wide departure from his thought. And all vice is strange to him; it is a departure from his thought and from his will; it is sin in his sight; it is offensive to him; he “cannot look on” such iniquity without abhorrence and condemnation. He who is tempted may well say, with the pure minded and godly Joseph, “How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?”
II. ITS SHAME. It is a shame to a man to allow himself to be deceived by a vain, shallow-minded woman (Pro 5:3, Pro 5:4); it is a shame to a man to permit a mere selfish temptress to beguile him, to prevent him from entertaining the true and wise thought in his mind, to hinder him by her artifices from reflecting on what is the path of life and what the way of death (Pro 5:6); it is a shame to a man to surrender his manly virtue to one so utterly undeserving of his honour (Pro 5:7-9). He who yields to the solicitations of the temptress, to the impulses of a vicious nature, is forfeiting his honour, is resigning his true manhood, is a son of shame.
III. ITS FOLLY. (Pro 5:15-20.) How senseless is sin! how stupid is vice! It. embraces a guilty and short-lived pleasure only to reject a pure and lasting joy. Why should men resort to shameful lust when they can be blest with lawful and honorable love? Why sink in debauchery when they can walk along those goodly heights of moderation and of pleasures on which God’s blessing may be invoked? Whatever the sense may be (whether of seeing, hearing, etc.), it is the pure pleasure which is not only high and manly, but is also unaccompanied by hitter and accusing thoughts, and is lasting as life itself. Why turn to devour the garbage when “angels’ food” is on the table? Vice is the very depth of folly.
IV. ITS PENALTY. This is threefold.
1. Impoverishment (Pro 5:10). Vice soon scatters a man’s fortune. A few years, or even weeks, will suffice for dissipation to run through a good estate. Men “waste their substance in riotous living.”
2. Remorse (Pro 5:11-14). How bitter to the sent the pangs of self-accusation! There is no poisoned dart that wounds the body as the arrow of unavailing remorse pierces the soul.
3. Death (Pro 5:5, “Her feet go down to death; her steps lay hold on hell”). Death physical and death spiritual are the issue of immorality. The grave is dug, the gates of the City of Sorrow are open, for the lascivious, the drunken, the immoral.C.
Pro 5:11 (first clause)
Mourning at the last
What multitudes of men and women have there been who, on beds of pain, or in homes of poverty, or under strong spiritual apprehension, have “mourned at the last”! After tasting and “enjoying the pleasures of sin for a season,” they have found that iniquity must meet its doom, and they have “mourned at the last.” Sin makes fair promises, but breaks its word. It owns that there is a debt due for guilty pleasure, but it hints that it will not send in the bill for many years;perhaps never: but that account has to be settled, and they who persist in sinful indulgence will find, when it is too late, that they have to “mourn at the last.” This is true of
I. SLOTHFULNESS. Very pleasant to be idling when others are busy, to be following the bent of our own fancy, dallying with the passing hours, amusing ourselves the whole day long, the whole year through; but there is retribution for wasted hours, for misspent youth, for negligent and idle manhood, to be endured further on; there is self-reproach, condemnation of the good and wise, an ill-regulated mind, straitened means if not poverty,mourning at the last.
II. INTEMPERANCE. Very tempting may be the jovial feast, very fascinating the sparkling cup, Very inviting the hilarity of the festive circle; but there is the end of it all to be taken into account, not only tomorrow’s pain or lassitude, but the forfeiture of esteem, the weakening of the soul’s capacity for pure enjoyment, the depravation of the taste, the encircling round the spirit of those cruel fetters which “at the last” hold it in cruel bondage.
III. LASCIVIOUSNESS. (See previous homily.)
IV. WORLDLINESS. There is a strong temptation presented to men to throw themselves into, so as to be absorbed by, the affairs of time and sensebusiness, politics, literature, art, one or other of the various amusements which entertain and gratify. This inordinate, excessive, unqualified devotion to any earthly pursuit, while it is to be distinguished from abandonment to forbidden pleasure, is yet wrong and ruinous. It is wrong, for it leaves out of reckoning the supreme obligationthat which we owe to him in whom we live and move and have our being, and who has redeemed us with his own blood. It is ruinous, for it leaves us
(1) without the heritage we were meant to have, and may have, in God, in Jesus Christ and his blessed service and salvation;
(2) unprepared for the other and larger life which is so near to us, and to which we approach by every step we take. However pleasant be the pursuits we engage in or the prizes we win, we shall wake one day from our dream with shame and fear; we shall “mourn at the last.”C.
Pro 5:21
Man in God’s view
This verse is added as a powerful reason why the worst sins should be avoided. A man under temptation may well address himself thus
“Nor let my weaker passions dare
Consent to sin; for God is there.”
I. THE VARIED ENERGIES AND ACTIONS OF MAN. Many are “the ways of man;” “all his goings” cannot easily be told. There is
(1) his innermost thought starring in his mind;
(2) then his feeling or desire in some direction;
(3) then his resolution, the decision of his will;
(4) then his planning and arranging;
(5) then his consultation and cooperation with others;
(6) then his execution.
Or we may consider the variety of his actions by regarding them as
(1) beginning and ending with himself;
(2) affecting his immediate circle, his own family;
(3) reaching and influencing his neighbours;
(4) acting upon those who will come after him.
The forms of human activity are indefinitely numerousso complex is his nature, so various are his relations to his kind and the world in which he lives.
II. GOD‘S NOTICE OF ALL OUR DOINGS. “The ways of a man are before the eyes of the Lord.” Every thought is thought, every feeling felt, every resolve made, every plan formed, every word spoken, every deed done, under his all-observing eye. “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight, but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Heb 4:13; see 2Ch 16:9; Job 31:4; Psa 139:2-12; and Pro 15:3). The eyes of the Lord not only cover the earth and the heavens, but they look everywhere within; through the thick curtains of the night his own hand has spread, and through the thickest folds our hand can draw, and through the walls of our human frame into the inner chambers and darkest recesses of our souls.
III. GOD‘S MEASURE OF OUR DOINGS. “He pondereth all his goings.” God weighs all that he sees in the scales of his Divine wisdom and righteousness. He marks every thought, word, deed; and he estimates their worth, their excellency or their guilt. Never any way taken, any course entered upon, but all the motives which led to its choice and execution are before the mind of God, and are accepted or are blamed by him. And this being so, there must be
IV. GOD‘S REMEMBRANCE OF OUR PAST AS WELL AS HIS OBSERVATION OF OUR PRESENT LIFE. For the Omniscient One cannot forget; and it may be that, in some way unknown to us, but quite in accordance with some ascertained facts, all our past actions are spread out before his sight in some part of his universe. Certainly the effects of all we have done abide, either in our own character and life or in those of other men. Our ways, past and present, are before him; he is estimating the moral character, for good or ill, of all our goings.
Therefore:
1. In view of all our guilt, let us seek his mercy in Christ Jesus. For it is a truth consistent with the foregoing, that, if there be repentance and faith, all our sins shall “be cast into the depths of the sea” (Amo 7:1-17 :19). God will “hide his face from our sins. and blot out our iniquities” (Psa 51:9).
2. In view of God’s observation and judgment, let us strive to please him. If we yield our hearts to himself and our lives to his service, if we accept eternal life at his hands through Jesus Christ, and then seek to be and to do what is right in his sight, we shall do that which he will look upon with Divine approval, with fatherly delight (Gal 4:1; Heb 11:5; Heb 13:16; 1Pe 2:20, etc.).C.
Pro 5:22, Pro 5:23
The end of an evil course
There are two fearful evils in which Impenitent sin is sure to end, two classes of penalty which the wrong doer must make up his mind to pay. He has to submit to
I. AS INWARD TYRANNY OF THE MOST CRUEL CHARACTER. (Pro 5:22.) We may never have seen the wild animal captured by the hunter, making violent efforts to escape its tolls, failing, desperately renewing the attempt with fierce and frantic struggles, until at length it yielded itself to its fate in sullen despair. But we have witnessed something far more romantic than that. We have watched some human soul caught in the meshes of vice, or entangled in the bonds of sin, struggling to be free, failing in its endeavour, renewing the attempt with determined eagerness, and failing again, until at length it yields to the foe, vanquished, ruined, lost! “His own iniquities have taken the wicked himself, he is holden in the cords of his sins.”
1. Sin hides its tyranny from view; its cords are so carried that they are not seen; nay, they are so wound around the soul that at first they are not felt, and the victim has no notion that he is being enslaved.
2. Gradually and stealthily it fastens its fetters on the soul; e.g. intemperance, impurity, untruthfulness, selfishness, worldliness.
3. It finally obtains a hold from which the soul cannot shake itself free; the man is “holden;” sin has him in its firm grip; he is a captive, a spiritual slave. Beside this terrible tyranny, the persistent wrong doer has to endure
II. AFTER CONSEQUENCES YET MORE CALAMITOUS. (Pro 5:23.) These are:
1. Death in the midst of folly. “He shall die without instruction,” unenlightened by eternal truth, in the darkness of error and sin; he will die, “hoping nothing, believing nothing, and fearing nothing”nothing which a man should die in the hope of, nothing which a man should live to believe and die in the faith of, nothing which a man should fear, living or dying. He shall die without peace to smooth his dying pillow, without hope to light up his closing eyes.
2. Exclusion from future blessedness through his folly. “In the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.”
While the simplest wisdom would have led him to seek and find entrance into the City of God, in the greatness of his folly he wanders off to the gates of the City of Sorrow.
1. If the path of folly has been entered upon and is now being trodden, return at once without delay. Further on, perchance a very little further on, it may be too late-the cords of sin may be too strong for the soul to snap. Arise at once, in the strength of the strong Deliverer, and regain the freedom which is being lost.
2. Enter in earliest days the path of spiritual freedom. Bear the blessed yoke of the Son of God, that every other yoke may be broken. Enrol in his ranks whoso “service is perfect freedom.”C.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
Pro 5:1. My son attend, &c. There being nothing to which youth is so prone as to give up themselves to their fleshly desires, and nothing so pernicious to them as to converse with harlots, the wise man renews his cautions against impure lusts, as destructive of true wisdom; and with repeated entreaties begs attention to so weighty an argument, which here he prosecutes more largely, and presses not only with singular elegance, but powerful reasoning. The principal things to be learned in this chapter are, not to believe every thing to be good for us which pleases the flesh for the present; but in the beginning of any pleasure to look to the end of it; to avoid the company of harlots; to use due care in the choice of a wife; to love her very tenderly; and to restrain ourselves from inordinate affections by the consideration of God’s omnipresence. See Bishop Patrick.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
8. Warning against intercourse with wanton women, and against the ruinous consequences of licentiousness
Pro 5:1-23
1My son, give heed to my wisdom,
to my prudence incline thine ear,
2so that thou maintain discretion,
and thy lips preserve knowledge.
3For the lips of the strange woman distil honey,
and smoother than oil is her mouth:
4but at last she is bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a two-edged sword.
5Her feet go down to death,
her steps lay hold upon the lower world;
6the path of life she never treadeth,
her steps stray, she knoweth not whither.
7And now, ye children, hearken to me,
and depart not from the words of my mouth!
8Turn away thy path from her,
and draw not near to the door of her house!
9that thou mayest not give to others thine honor,
and thy years to a cruel one;
10that strangers may not sate themselves with thy strength,
and (the fruit of) thy labor (abide) in a strangers house,
11and thou must groan at last
when thy body and thy flesh are consumed,
12and say, Why then did I hate correction
and my heart despised reproof?
13and I did not hearken to the voice of my teachers,
did not incline mine ear to those that instructed me?
14Well nigh had I fallen into utter destruction
in the midst of the assembly and the congregation!
15Drink waters from thine own cistern,
and flowing streams from thine own well spring!
16Shall thy streams flow abroad
as water brooks in the streets ?
17Let them be thine alone,
and none belong to strangers with thee.
18Let thy fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of thy youth,
19the lovely hind, the graceful gazelle;
let her bosom charm thee always;
in her love delight thyself evermore.
20Why, my son, wouldst thou be fascinated with a stranger,
and embrace the bosom of a wanton woman?
21For before the eyes of Jehovah are the ways of man,
and all his paths He marketh out.
22His own sins overtake him, the evil doer,
and by the cords of his sin is he held fast.
23He will die for lack of correction,
and in the greatness of his folly will he perish.
GRAMMATICAL AND CRITICAL
Pro 5:1.[The shortened Imperative is even more than the paragogic entitled to the first place in its clause; here follows its object, Btt., 960, c. ex. (comp. critical note on Pro 4:20).A.]
Pro 5:2.. The construction in the Hebrew is the same as in Pro 2:8; the Infinitive with , is followed by the finite verb. [, a masc. verbal form with a fern, subject,comp. note on Pro 4:10. For emphasis or euphony the assimilation of the is sometimes dispensed with. Btt, 1100,3.A.]
Pro 5:14.[, a Perf. with the signification of a pluperf. subj.; a very little and I should have fallen. Comp. Btt., 947, d.A.]
Pro 5:18 [Btt., 964, 6, makes an example of the desponsive use of the Jussive, and therefore makes it more than the expression of a wish (see Exeg. notes); it becomes an anticipation or promise.A.]
Pro 5:22.[, a unique example of the attachment of , a more common suffix of the Perf., to the lengthened form of the third plur masc. of the Imperf. See Btt., 881, ,1042, 5,1047, ex., correcting Ewald, 250 b, who makes the epenthetic. See also Green, 105, c.A.]
EXEGETICAL
1. In opposition to the opinion of those who refer Pro 5:1-6 to the discourse of the father in Pro 4:4 sq., consult above, p. 71. J. A. Bengel appears even to have regarded the entire fifth chapter as a continuation of that discourse, for he remarks on Pro 5:1, Inasmuch as Davids careful directions to Solomon bear upon unchastity, it seems likely that David and Bathsheba were concerned lest Solomon might also pursue a course like that in which the parents sinned together (see Beitrge zu J. A. Bengels Schrifterklrung, mitgetheilt von Dr. Osk. Waechter, Leips., 1865, p. 26). But the son addressed in the preceding chapter was conceived of as a tender child; the one now addressed is a young man already married, see Pro 5:15-19. For, as in the similar admonitions of the 6th and 7th chapters, it is not simple illicit intercourse, but such an intercourse within marriage relations, adulterous intercourse with lewd women, that constitutes the object of the admonitory representations of the teacher of wisdom.Furthermore, as Bertheau rightly observes, the passage before us, in its substance and its form, variously reminds us of chap. 2, especially in respect to its form, by its long propositions extended through several verses (3 sq., 8 sq., 15 sq.). As the three main divisions of the discourse are of not quite equal length, we may with Hitzig distinguish the introductory paragraph, Pro 5:1-6; the central and chief didactic section, Pro 5:7-20; which again falls into two divisions, Pro 5:7-20; and the epilogue, Pro 5:21-23.
2. Pro 5:1-6. My son, give heed to my wisdom, etc.Quite similar are the demands which introduce the two subsequent warnings against unchastity.Pro 6:20; Pro 7:1.So that thou maintain discretionliterally reflection, , which elsewhere is usually employed in a bad sense, of base deceitful proposals, but here denotes the wise prudential consideration, the circumspect demeanor of the wise; comp. the singular in Pro 1:4.And thy lips preserve knowledge.The lipsnot precisely the heart, Pro 3:1are to preserve knowledge so far forth as it is of moment to retain literally the instructions of wisdom and often to repeat them.
Pro 5:3. For the lips of the strange woman distil honey.The stranger is the harlot, as in Pro 3:16. Her lips drop honey (, comp. Psa 19:11) because of the sweetness not of her kisses but of her words. Comp. the quite similar representation, Song Son 4:11, and as a sample of the wanton womans words that are sweet as honey, Pro 7:14 sq.Smoother, than oil is her mouth.The palate () as an instrument of discourse occurs also Pro 8:7; Job 6:30; Job 31:30. The smoothness of discourse as a symbol of the flattering and seductive, Pro 2:16; Pro 6:24.
Pro 5:4. But at last she is bitterliterally her last is bitter (comp. Pro 23:32), i.e., that which finally reveals itself as her true nature, and as the ruinous consequence of intercourse with her.As wormwood (, for which the LXX inaccurately gives , gall), a well known emblem of bitterness, as in Deu 29:18; Jer 9:15; Amo 5:7; Amo 6:12. It is a plant toward two feet high, belonging to the Genus Artemisia (Spec. Artemisia absinthium), which produces a very firm stalk with many branches, grayish leaves, and small, almost round, pendent blossoms. It has a bitter and saline taste, and seems to have been regarded in the East as also a poison, of which the frequent combination with gives an intimation (Umbreit; comp. Celsius, Hierobot. I. 480; Oken, Naturgesch. III: 763 sq.).As a two-edged swordliterally as a sword of mouths, a sword with more than one mouth ( comp. Psa 149:6; Jdg 3:16). [The multiplicative plural is sometimes used thus even of objects that occur in pairs; comp. Btt., 702, 3A.] The fact that the surface of the sword is also smooth is in this antithesis to the second clause of Pro 5:3 properly disregarded, Hitzig.
Pro 5:5-6 explain and confirm more fully the statement of Pro 5:4.Upon the lower world her steps lay holdi.e., they hasten straight and surely to the kingdom of the dead, the place of those dying unblessed. [The author cannot be understood as meaning that is always and only the place of those dying unblessed. The passage cited, Pro 1:12, is inconsistent with this,so is the first passage in the O. T. where the word occurs, Gen 37:35,so is the last passage, Hab 2:5,so are many intervening passages, especially such as Psa 16:10; Ecc 9:10. If the word here has this intensive meaning, it must appear from the connection. See, therefore, in Pro 5:6, which plainly has amoral import. Comp, Fuersts Handw.A.] Comp. Pro 2:18 ; Pro 7:27,and on , Hades, the lower world, Pro 1:12.The path of life she never treadeth.The verb , here just as in Pro 14:26, means to measure off (not to consider, as Bertheau maintains), to travel over. The particle , ne forte, stands here, as in Job 32:13, independent of any preceding proposition, and in accordance with its etymology signifies substantially God forbid that, etc., or there is no danger that, etc., Hitzig; it is therefore equivalent to surely not, nevermore. Aben Ezra, Cocceius, C. B. Michaelis and others regard as second pers. masc.; viam vitas ne forte expendas, vagantur orbit ejus [lest perchance thou shouldst ponder the way of life, her paths wander; which is very nearly the language of the E. V.]. But the second clause shows that the wanton woman must be the subject of the verb. Bertheaus translation is however also too hard and forced, according to Which the first clause is dependent upon the second, but it is to be regarded as a negative final clause prefixed; that she may not ponder (!) the path of life, her paths have become devious, etc. [This is the view adopted by Holden, Stuart, Wordsworth, and De Wette; Kamph. has the same conception of the relation of the clauses, but prefers the verb cinschlagen, adopt or enterA.] The LXX, Vulg. and other ancient versions already contain the more correct interpretation, regarding as here essentially equivalent to ; only that the emphatic intensifying of the negation should not be overlooked.[Fuerst (Handw.) is also decidedly of this opinion; he renders dass ja nicht=so that by no means; he explains the idiom as representing a necessary consequence as an object contemplated.A.]Her steps stray, she knoweth not whither. is here doubtless not intended as an inceptive (they fall to staggering), nor in general does it design to express a staggering of the tracks or paths, a figure in itself inappropriate. It probably signifies rather a roving, an uncertain departure from the way (vcgi gressus, Vulg.); and the which is connected with it is not to be explained by she marks it not, without her perceiving it, unawares (as it is usually taken, after the analogy of Job 9:5; Psa 35:8) [so by Noyes, Stuart, Muensch. while the E. V. follows the old error of making the verb a second person.A.], but by she knows not whither, as an accusative of direction subordinated to the foregoing idea (Hitzig, De Wette).
2. Pro 5:7-14. And now, ye children, hearken to me. draws an inference from what precedes, and introduces the following admonition; comp. Pro 7:24. The words of my mouth are the specific words contained in Pro 5:8 sq.
Pro 5:9. That thou mayest not give thine honor to othersi.e., as an adulterer who is apprehended and exposed to public disgrace.And thy years to a cruel onei.e. to the injured husband, who will punish the paramour of his faithless wife with merciless severity, perchance sell him as a slave, or even take his life, [This explanation is grammatically better than that (of Holden, e.g.) which makes the cruel one the adulteress, and more direct than that (of Stuart and others) which makes him the purchaser of the punished adulterer.A.]. Comp. Pro 6:34, and below, Pro 5:14.
Pro 5:10. That strangers may not sate themselves with thy strength. might, strength, is here undoubtedly equivalent to property, possessions, as the parallel , thy toils, i.e., what thou hast laboriously acquired, the fruit of thy bitter sweat (Vulg. laboris tui), plainly indicates. The idea is here plainly this, that the foolish paramour will be plundered through the avaricious demands of the adulterous woman (comp. Pro 6:26), and that thus his possessions will gradually pass over into other hands (Sir 9:6). A different explanation is given by Ewald, Bertheau, Elster (in general also by Umbreit); that the proper penalty for adultery was according to Lev 20:10; Deu 22:22 sq.; Joh 8:5, stoning; in case, however, the injured husband had been somewhat appeased, the death penalty was on the ground of a private agreement changed into that of a personal ownership, the entrance into the disgracefully humiliating condition of servitude, and that allusion is here made to this last contingency. But while thesuperficial meaning of Pro 5:9-10 could be reconciled with this assumption, yet there is nothing whatsoever known of any such custom, of transmuting the death prescribed in the law for the adulterer by a compromise into his sale as a slave; and as the entire assumption is besides complicated with considerable subjective difficulties (see Hitzig on this passage), the above explanation is to be preferred as the simpler and more obvious.
Pro 5:11. And thou must needs groan at lastliterally at thine end, i.e., when thou hast done, when all is over with thee. used of the loud groaning of the poor and distressed also in Eze 24:23; comp. Pro 19:12; Pro 20:2; Pro 28:15, where the same word describes the roaring of the lion. The LXX ( ) appear to have read a gloss containing a true explanation, but needlessly weakening the genuine sense of the word.When thy body and flesh are consumed. , i.e., plainly thy whole body; the two synonymes, the first of which describes the flesh with the frame, and the second the flesh in the strictest sense, without the bones, are designed to emphasize the idea of the body in its totality, and that with the intention of marking the utter destruction of the libertine (Umbreit).
Pro 5:12. Why did I then hate correction?Literally, How did I then hate correction? i.e., in what an inexcusable way? How could I then so hate correction?
Pro 5:14. A little more, and I had fallen into utter destructioni.e., how narrowly did I escape a fall into the extremest ruin, literally, into entireness of misery, into completeness of destruction ! As the second clause shows, the allusion is to the danger of condemnation before the assembled congregation, and of execution by stoning; see above on Pro 5:10.Assembly and congregationHebrew and stand in the relation of the convened council of the elders acting as judges (Deu 33:4-5), and the concourse of the people executing the condemning sentence (Num 15:35; comp. Psa 7:7). For is in general always a convened assembly, convocatio; on the contrary is a multitude of the people gathering without any special call, coetus sive multitudo.
4. Pro 5:15-20. To the detailed warning set forth in Pro 5:8-14 there is now added a corresponding positive antithesis, a not less appropriate admonition to conjugal fidelity and purity.Drink waters out of thine own cistern, etc., i.e., seek the satisfaction of loves desire simply and alone with thine own wife. The wife is appropriately compared with a fountain not merely inasmuch as offspring are born of her, but also since she satisfies the desire of the man. In connection with this we must call to mind, in order to feel the full power of the figure, how in antiquity and especially in the East the possession of a spring was regarded a great and even sacred thing. Thus the mother Sarah is compared to a well spring, Isa 51:1, and Judah, the patriarch, is spoken of as waters, Isa 48:1; as also Israel, Num 24:7; Psa 68:26 (Umbreit). Compare also Song Son 4:12.And flowing streams from thine own well springWith , i.e., properly cistern, an artificially prepared reservoir, there is associated in the second clause , fountain, i.e., a natural spring of water conducted to a particular fountain or well spring. Only such a natural fountain-head (comp. Gen 26:15-20) can pour forth , i.e., purling waters; living, fresh, cool water for drinking (Song Son 4:15; Jer 18:14).
Pro 5:16. Shall thy streams flow abroad as water brooks in the streets?To supply (Gesenius, Umbreit) or (Ewald, Bertheau, Elster [Stuart], etc.) is needless, if the verse be conceived of as interrogative, which, like Pro 6:30; Psa 56:7 sq., is indicated as such only by the interrogative tone. So with unquestionable correctness Hitzig. A purely affirmative conception of the sentence, according to which it is viewed as representing the blessing of children born of this lawful conjugal love under the figure of a stream overflowing and widely extending (Schultens, Dderlein, Von Hofmann, Schriftbew., II. 2, 375 [Holden, Noyes, Muenscher, Wordsw.], etc.) would seriously break the connection with Pro 5:17. As to the subject, i.e., the description of a wife who has proved false to her husband and runs after other men, comp. especially Pro 7:12.
Pro 5:18. Let thy fountain be blessed. attaches itself formally to the jussive of the preceding verse (Hitzig), and so adds to the wish that conjugal fidelity may prevail between the married pair, the further wish that prosperity and blessing may attend their union. doubtless used of substantial blessings, i.e., of the prosperity and joy which the husband is to prepare for his wife, as an instrument in the favoring hand of God. This, which is Hitzigs view, the connection with the second clause recommends above that of Umbreit, which explains as here meaning extolled, and also above that of Bertheau, which contemplates children as the blessing of marriage.And rejoice with the wife of thy youth.Comp. Deu 24:5; Ecc 9:9. Wife of thy youth, i.e., wife to whom thou hast given the fair bloom of thy youth (Umbreit). Compare the expression companion of youth in 2.17. In a needlessly artificial way Ewald and Bertheau have regarded the entire eighteenth verse as a final clause depending on the second member of Pro 5:17 : that thy fountain may be blessed, and thou mayest have joy, etc. Hitzig rightly observes that to give this meaning we should have expected instead of , and likewise instead of , and that in general Pro 5:18 does not clearly appear to be a final clause. [Stuart makes the second clause final, depending on the first, which is also unnecessarily involved.]
Pro 5:19. The lovely hind, the graceful gazelle.Fitly chosen images to illustrate the graceful, lively, fascinating nature of a young wife; comp. the name gazelle (, T and its equivalent as a womans proper name; Act 9:36; also Song Son 2:9; Son 2:17; Son 8:14. Umbreit refers to numerous parallels from Arabic and Persian poets, which show the popularity of this figure in Oriental literature. [These pretty animals are amiable, affectionate and loving by universal testimonyand no sweeter comparison can be found. Thomson, The Land and the Book, I., 252A.]Let her bosom charm thee always.Instead of , her breasts, the Versio Veneta reads her love ( ), which reading Hitzig prefers (ihre Minne). A needless alteration and weakening of the meaning, in accordance with Song Son 1:2; Pro 7:18, as rendered by the LXX. Comp. rather the remarks below on Pro 5:20.In her love delight thyself evermore. elsewhere used of the staggering gait of the intoxicated (Pro 20:1; Isa 28:7), here by a bold trope used of the ecstatic joy of a lover. That the same word is employed in the next verse for the description of the foolish delirium of the libertine hastening after the harlot, and again in Pro 5:23 of the exhausted prostration of the morally and physically ruined transgressor,and is therefore used in each instance with a somewhat modified meaning, indicates plainly a definite purpose. The threefold use of is intended to constitute a climax, to illustrate the sad consequences of sins of unchastity.
Pro 5:20. Emphatic sequel to the foregoing, concisely and vigorously summing up the admonitory and warning contents of Pro 5:8-19. And embrace the bosom of a wanton woman. This expression ( ) testifies to the correctness of the reading in Pro 5:19.
5. Pro 5:21-23. Epilogue for the monitory presentation of the truth that no one is in condition to conceal his adultery, be it ever so secretly practiced,that on the contrary God sees this with every other transgression, and punishes it with the merited destruction of the sinner.For before Jehovahs eyes are the ways of man, and all his paths He marketh.( here also not to ponder, but to mark out, see note on Pro 5:6.) An important proof text not merely for Gods omniscience, but also for His special providence and concursus [coperation in human conduct]. Comp. Job 34:21; Job 24:23; Job 31:4, etc.
Pro 5:22. His sins overtake him, the evil doer. The double designation of the object, by the suffix in and then by the expression the evil doer, added far emphasis, gives a peculiar force. Comp. Pro 14:13; Eze 16:3; Jer 9:25.By the cords of his sin. Comp. Isa 5:18, and in general, for the sentiment of the whole verse, Pro 1:31-32; Pro 11:5; Pro 18:7; Pro 29:6; Psa 7:15; Psa 40:12; Joh 8:34; 2Pe 2:19.
Pro 5:23. For lack of correction. This is undoubtedly the explanation of , and not without correction (Umbreit). The is not circumstantial, but causal (instrumental), as in the 2d member.As to the meaning of see above, remarks on Pro 5:19.
DOCTRINAL, ETHICAL, AND HOMILETIC
That our chapter holds up in opposition to all unregulated gratification of the sexual impulses, the blessing of conjugal fidelity and chastity, requires no detailed proof. It is a chapter on a pious marriage relation, appropriately attached to the preceding, on the right training, of children; for pious and strict discipline of children is impossible, where the sacred bonds of marriage are disregarded, violated and trampled under foot. In conformity with the thoroughly practical nature of the doctrine of wisdom (the Hhokmah), the author, as Pro 5:15-20 show, completely overthrows all the demands and suggestions of a sensual desire that has broken over all the sacred bounds prescribed by God, and so, as it were, has become wild and insane, by exhibiting the satisfaction of the sexual impulse in marriage as justified and in conformity with the divine rule. An important hint for a practical estimate of the contents of this chapter, from which evidently there may be drawn not merely material and arguments for a thorough treatment of the Christian doctrine with respect to the sixth commandment in general, but specially for the exhibition of the true evangelical idea of marriage, in contrast with the extravagant asceticism of Romish theology, and also of many sects both of ancient and modern times (Montanists, Eustathians, Cathari, Gichtelites, etc.). In this connection 1 Corinthians 7 must also, naturally, be brought into the account, especially the 5th verse of this chapter, which exhibits the fundamental idea of Pro 5:15-20 of our section, reduced to the briefest and most concise form that is possible; with the addition of the needful corrective, and the explanation that is appropriate in connection with the always and evermore of Pro 5:19, which might possibly be misunderstood.
As a homily, therefore, on the entire chapter: On the right keeping of the 6th commandment, a) through the avoidance of all unchastity; b) through the maintenance of a faithful (Pro 5:15-20) and devout (Pro 5:21-23) demeanor in the sacred marriage relation.Melanchthon: The sum of the matter is: Love truly thine own wife, and be content with her alone, as this law of marriage was at once ordained, in Paradise (Genesis 2): they shall be one flesh, i.e., one male and one female united inseparably. For then also, even if human nature had remained incorrupt, God would have wished men to comprehend purity, and to maintain the exercise of obedience by observing this order, viz., by avoiding all wandering desires. Comp. Augustine: Marriage before the fall was ordained for duty, after the fall for a remedy.
Pro 5:1-4. Egard:A harlot is the devils decoy, and becomes to many a tree of death unto death. The fleshly and the spiritual harlot most fill hell (Pro 7:27). The devil comes first with sweetness and friendliness, to betray man, afterward however with bitterness, to destroy the soul.[Pro 5:3. Trapp: There is no such pleasure as to have overcome an offered pleasure; neither is there any greater conquest than that that is gotten over a mans corruptions.]Starke: Beware of the spiritual anti-christian harlot, who tempts the whole world to idolatry, and to forsaking the true God (1Jn 5:21).There are in general many allegorical interpretations in the old writers, in which the strange, lascivious woman is either partially or outright assumed (as, e.g., more recently in the Berleb. Bible) to be the designation of the false church, of antichrist, of worldly wisdom, etc. [See also Wordsw. in loc. and also on Pro 5:19, together with his citations from Bede, etc.A.]. For Evangelical preaching, naturally, only a treatment that is partially allegorical, can be regarded admissible, and in the end expedient; such a treatment as consists in a generalization of the specific prohibition of unchastity into a warning against spiritual licentiousness or idolatry in general.
Pro 5:15-23. Starke: An admonition to hold to ones own wife only; 1) the admonition (Pro 5:15-17); 2) the motives: a) the blessing on such conjugal fidelity (Pro 5:18-19); b) the dishonor (Pro 5:20-21) and c) the ruinous result of conjugal unfaithfulness (Pro 5:22-23).[Pro 5:15. Arnot: God condescends to bring His own institute forward in rivalry with the deceitful pleasures of sin. All the accessories of the family are the Fathers gift, and He expects us to observe and value them.H. Smith (quoted by Bridges): First choose thy love; then love thy choice.]Egard: A married life full of true love, joy and peace, is a paradise on earth; on the other hand, a marriage full of hate, unfaithfulness and strife is a real hell.Von Gerlach: The loveliness and enjoyment of a happy domestic relation as the earthly motive, the holy ordinance of matrimony watched over by God with omniscient strictness, as the higher motive to chastity.Calwar Handbuch: Be true to thine own wife; therein is happiness ! Sin against her, and thou becomest through thine own fault wretched![Pro 5:21. Trapp: A man that is about any evil should stand in awe of himself; how much more of God!Arnot: Secrecy is the study and hope of the wicked. A sinners chief labor is to hide his sin; and his labor is all lost. Sin becomes the instrument of punishing sinnersretribution in the system of nature, set in motion by the act of sin].
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
We have in this Chapter, and in a similar strain, to the former chapter, an exhortation to the study of Wisdom: and both the blessed effects of that study and the sad consequences of the neglect of it, are strikingly set forth.
Pro 5:1-6 My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding: That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge. For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell. Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.
It forms a delightful feature through the whole of this book of God; that the instructions given in it are all with a view to make the soul wise unto salvation, through the faith that is in Jesus Christ. For as the one great object to which the wise man directs the Whole attention is wisdom, or Christ under the character of wisdom; so the precepts he enjoins are all with an eye to him. I hope the Reader will not have overlooked this distinguishing character in the whole book. It is as if Solomon had said: If, my son, thou attend to wisdom, and art sweetly taught of Jesus, then will all those blessed effects follow, which mark the life of the faithful. Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come. 1Ti 4:8
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
The Strange Woman
Pro 5
The reason which is assigned justifies the urgency of the counsel. There are unwritten rights between man and man. The wise man by his very wisdom acquires the right to instruct the unwise, and the strong man by his very strength has the right to defend the oppressed. It is not a matter of mere sentiment in either case, but of positive and imperative right. This is the secret of true commonwealth and brotherhood. A reflection mournful beyond all others is that any form of riches except experience is eagerly accepted. Offer gold, and it is seized with avidity; offer a seat of honour or influence, and at once it is appreciated: but offer the wisdom of experience, and more than golden treasure of deeply-proved inquiry into practical life, and it is declined with indifference or contempt. God’s harvests are accepted, but God’s doctrines are rejected. We take wine and oil, but repel the offer of wisdom. How is such madness to be accounted for? This half-wisdom is indeed madness, for it shows sufficient sagacity to know good from evil, but insufficient decision to resist the things that would hurt the soul. Were we altogether foolish we might well be pitied, but we are ingenious in evil, brilliant in immorality, sagacious in escaping moral discipline. The light that is in us is darkness!
“For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: but her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell. Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them. Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth. Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house: lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel: lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger; and thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, and say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me! I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly” ( Pro 5:3-14 ).
Here is the ruin wrought not by nature, but by the perversion of nature. Here, indeed, is the problem which vexes and defies the wisdom and benevolence of the world. Man and woman were made for each other, yet what ruin is wrought by the false relations into which they are thrown. All the other evils of society are insignificant compared with the perdition created by illicit intercourse. Such a subject repels its students, for it is full of all abominableness and shame. Yet surely the Christian teacher should not be silent. Our young men are being destroyed by thousands, yet we must not speak frankly to them, because the subject is loathsome! Its very loathsomeness should compel Christian teachers to break silence. Of course the painful subject may be so unwisely handled as to become a source of mischief, but its mismanagement is no argument against honest attempts to save young lives from ruin. In the text it is the “woman” who tempts! Certainly the letter excludes every other interpretation. On the other hand, every man when he is tempted is drawn away of his own lusts and enticed. Even gunpowder is harmless when thrown upon water. The fire that burns in man creates the very “woman” who is first dishonoured and then accounted “strange.” Let us be just in assessing the blame. First and heaviest it must fall upon man. He is too prone, like Adam, to throw the blame upon woman, and thus he proves himself to be a coward as well as a criminal. Even lawful passions are to be held in check. The fiercest of them may be subdued by the power of Christ. It is unwise to make light of the fierceness of some passions; to do so is to lose the confidence of those whom we would seek to save, because they will suppose that we know nothing of the nature of the fire which we think can be blown out by a breath of wind. Never forget that the wind may fan the very flame it is meant to extinguish. Nature avenges every outrage committed upon her ordinances; in dizziness, in mental incertitude, in putrescent flesh, in loss of memory and will, she writes her judgment upon the evildoer. No man can dishonour nature and yet live at peace with her. The wages of sin is death. “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy word.”
Here I will avail myself of the language of another:
Enter with me, in imagination, the strange woman’s house where God grant you may never enter in any other way. There are five wards Pleasure, Satiety, Discovery, Disease, and Death.
Ward of Pleasure.
Ward of Satiety. Here reigns a bewildering twilight through which can hardly be discerned the wearied inmates, yet sluggish upon their couches. Overflushed with dance, sated with wine and fruit, a fitful drowsiness vexes them. They wake, to crave; they taste, to loathe; they sleep, to dream; they wake again from unquiet visions. They long for the sharp taste of pleasure, so grateful yesterday. Again they sink, repining, to sleep; by starts, they rouse at an ominous dream; by starts, they hear strange cries! The fruit burns and torments; the wine shoots sharp pains through their pulse. Strange wonder fills them. They remember the recent joy, as a reveller in the morning thinks of his midnight madness. The glowing garden and the banquet now seem all stripped and gloomy. They meditate return; pensively they long for their native spot! At sleepless moments mighty resolutions form, substantial as a dream. Memory grows dark. Hope will not shine. The past is not pleasant; the present is wearisome; and the future gloomy.
The Ward of Discovery. In the third ward no deception remains. The floors are bare; the naked walls drip filth; the air is poisonous with sickly fumes, and echoes with mirth concealing hideous misery. None supposes that he has been happy. The past seems like a dream to the miser, who gathers gold spilled like rain upon the road, and wakes, clutching his bed, and crying, “Where is it?” On your right hand, as you enter, close by the door is a group of fierce felons in deep drink with drugged liquor. With red and swollen faces, or white and thin, or scarred with ghastly corruption; with scowling brows, baneful eyes, bloated lips, and demoniac grins; in person all uncleanly, in morals all debauched, in peace bankrupt the desperate wretches wrangle one with the other, swearing bitter oaths, and heaping reproaches each upon each! Around the room you see miserable creatures, unapparelled, or dressed in rags, sobbing and moaning. That one who gazes out at the window, calling for her mother and weeping, was right tenderly and purely bred. She has been baptized twice, once to God, and once to the devil. She sought this place in the very vestments of God’s house. “Call not on thy mother! she is a saint in heaven, and cannot hear thee!” Yet all night long she dreams of home and childhood, and wakes to sigh and weep; and between her sobs she cries, “Mother! mother!”
Yonder is a youth, once a servant at God’s altar. His hair hangs tangled and torn; his eyes are bloodshot; his face is livid; his fist is clenched. All the day he wanders up and down, cursing, sometimes himself and sometimes the wretch that brought him hither; and when he sleeps he dreams of hell; and then he wakes to feel all he dreamed. This is the ward of reality. All know why the first rooms looked so gay they were enchanted! It was enchanted wine they drank, and enchanted fruit they ate; now they know the pain of fatal food in every limb!
Ward of Disease. Ye that look wistfully at the pleasant front of this terrific house, come with me now, and look long into the terror of this ward; for here are the seeds of sin in their full harvest form! We are in a lazar-room: its air oppresses every sense; its sights confound our thoughts; its sounds pierce our ear; its stench repels us; it is full of diseases. Here a shuddering wretch is clawing at his breast, to tear away that worm which gnaws his heart. By him is another, whose limbs are dropping from his ghastly trunk. Next swelters another in reeking filth; his eyes rolling in bony sockets, every breath a pang, and every pang a groan. But yonder, on a pile of rags, lies one whose yells of frantic agony appal every ear. Clutching his rags with spasmodic grasp, his swollen tongue lolling from a blackened mouth, his bloodshot eyes glaring and rolling, he shrieks oaths; now blaspheming God, and now imploring him. He hoots and shouts, and shakes his grisly head from side to side, cursing or praying; now calling death, and then, as if driving away fiends, yelling, “Avaunt! avaunt!”
Another has been ridden by pain until he can no longer shriek; but lies foaming and grinding his teeth, and clenches his bony hands until the nails pierce the palm though there is no blood there to issue out trembling all the time with the shudders and chills of utter agony. The happiest wretch in all this ward is an idiot dropsical, distorted, and moping; all day he wags his head, and chatters, and laughs, and bites his nails; then he will sit for hours motionless, with open jaw, and glassy eye fixed on vacancy. In this ward are huddled all the diseases of Pleasure. This is the torture-room of the strange woman’s house, and it excels the inquisition. The wheel, the rack, the bed of knives, the roasting fire, the brazen room slowly heated, the slivers driven under the nails, the hot pincers, what are these to the agonies of the last days of licentious vice? Hundreds of rotting wretches would change their couch of torment in the strange woman’s house for the gloomiest terror of the inquisition, and profit by the change. Nature herself becomes the tormentor. Nature, long trespassed on and abused, at length casts down the wretch; searches every vein, makes a road of every nerve for the scorching feet of pain to travel on, pulls at every muscle, breaks in the breast, builds fires in the brain, eats out the skin, and casts living coals of torment on the heart. What are hot pincers to the envenomed claws of disease? What is it to be put into a pit of snakes and slimy toads, and feel their cold coil or piercing fang, to the creeping of a whole body of vipers where every nerve is a viper, and every vein a viper, and every muscle a serpent; and the whole body, in all its parts, coils and twists upon itself in unimaginable anguish? I tell you, there is no inquisition so bad as that which the doctor looks upon! Young man! I can show you in this ward worse pangs than ever a savage produced at the stake! than ever a tyrant wrung out by engines of torment! than ever an inquisitor devised! Every year, in every town, die wretches scalded and scorched with agony. Were the sum of all the pain that comes with the last stages of vice collected, it would rend the very heavens with its outcry; would shake the earth; would even blanch the cheek of Infatuation! Ye that are listening in the garden of this strange woman, among her cheating flowers; ye that are dancing in her halls in the first ward, come hither; look upon her fourth ward its vomited blood, its sores and fiery blotches, its prurient sweat, its dissolving ichor, and rotten bones! Stop, young man! You turn your head from this ghastly room; and yet, stop and stop soon, or thou shalt lie here! mark the solemn signals of thy passage! Thou hast had already enough of warnings in thy cheek, in thy bosom, in thy pangs of premonition!
But ah! every one of you who are dancing with the covered paces of death, in the strange woman’s first hall, let me break your spell; for now I shall open the doors of the last ward. Look! Listen! Witness your own end unless you take quickly a warning!
Ward of Death. No longer does the incarnate wretch pretend to conceal her cruelty. She thrusts ay! as if they were dirt she shovels out the wretches. Some fall headlong through the rotten floor, a long fall to a fiery bottom. The floor trembles to deep thunders which roll below. Here and there jets of flame spout up, and give a lurid light to the murky hall. Some would fain escape; and flying across the treacherous floor, which man never safely passed, they go, through pitfalls and treacherous traps, with hideous outcries and astounding yells, to perdition! Fiends laugh! The infernal laugh, the cry of agony, the thunder of damnation, shake the very roof and echo from wall to wall.
Oh that the young might see the end of vice before they see the beginning! I know that you shrink from this picture; but your safety requires that you should look long into the ward of Death, that fear may supply strength to your virtue. See the blood oozing from the wall, the fiery hands which pluck the wretches down, the light of hell gleaming through, and hear its roar as of a distant ocean chafed with storms. Will you sprinkle the wall with your blood? will you feed those flames with your flesh? will you add your voice to those thundering wails? will you go down a prey through the fiery floor of the chamber of death? Believe then the word of God: “Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death;… avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away!”
I have described the strange woman’s house in strong language, and it needed it. If your taste shrinks from the description, so does mine. Hell, and all the ways of hell, when we pierce the cheating disguises and see the truth, are terrible and trying to behold; and if men would not walk there, neither would we pursue their steps, to sound the alarm and gather back whom we can.
“For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goings. His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins. He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray” ( Pro 5:21-23 ).
These are the grand reasons why men should take heed to their ways. Will you allow God, yea, compel God, to look upon impurity? Should no respect be paid to the divine observer? He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity with the least degree of allowance or approbation; why, then, force it upon his attention, and smite him in the eyes as with a sharp weapon? The end of evil is disastrous to the evildoer himself. He binds himself with cords he cannot rend. He makes a fool of himself, and a slave, in the very act of grasping his prizes and quaffing his delights. The bad man shuts his eyes, and supposes he has escaped hell, simply because he cannot see it. How great a fool may man become! Yet this fact, universally allowed, would seem to go for nothing as a moral appeal. The heart drags the whole nature down to death. Knowledge alone cannot save the soul. Herein is the miracle of grace! Here is the triumph of omnipotence! Come, my Lord, my God, my Saviour, and take charge of me. Never leave me to myself. Thou alone bringest light, and without thee all is darkness. Thou knowest the meaning of temptation; how persistent, how subtle, how sudden, how tremendous! Why should it be so? Is not everything a tribute to the mystery and grandeur of human life? Woman ruins man or saves him. She is sorceress or saviour. God of heaven, pity young men and save them. Death lies so close to life. We are thy workmanship, and thy grace is sufficient for us. Let our very weakness be itself a prayer!
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
XX
THE INSTRUCTION OF WISDOM (CONTINUED)
Pro 4:1-7:27
The addresses found in Pro 4:1-9:18 are fatherly admonitions. The main thought, or theme, of Pro 4:1-9 is, “Wisdom the principal thing.” There is an interesting bid of autobiography in this section. Solomon gives here the relation he sustained to his father and mother, and also the parental source of his instruction. It is the picture of parents with the children gathered about them for instruction. On this Wordsworth has beautifully said, “Wisdom doth live with children round her knees.”
“Sons” in verse I, means the pupils of the teacher who commends wisdom to them as his children, by the example of his own early education. Verse 3 suggests that Solomon was a true son, i.e., he was true in filial reverence and obedience; that he stood alone in the choice of God for the messianic line, and therefore he was first in the estimation of his father. Compare 1Ch 29:1 and note the bearing of this statement on the authorship of this part of the book. The things here promised to those who possess wisdom are found in Pro 4:6 ; Pro 4:8-9 and are preservation, promotion, and honor. The parallelism in these verses is synonymous, the second line in each repeating in different words the meaning of the first. The theme of Pro 4:10-19 is, “The ways of wisdom and folly,” or the ways of righteousness and wickedness contrasted. Pro 4:12 refers to the widening of the steps, an Oriental figure, for the bold and free movements of one in prosperity, versus the straightening of one in adversity, the straightening of them which represents the strained and timid actions of one in adversity. Compare Pro 4:12 and Psa 18:36 . Pro 4:17 , taken literally, means that evil men procure their bread and wine by wickedness and violence or, taken figuratively, means that wickedness and violence are to them as meat and drink. Compare Job 15:16 ; Job 34:7 ; Joh 4:34 .
There is a special contrast in Pro 4:18-19 between the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked; one is light and the other is darkness. The parallelism here is integral, or progressive.
The theme of 4:20-27 is, “Keeping the heart and the life and looking straight ahead.” The key verse of this passage is Pro 4:23 : Keep thy heart with all diligence; For out of it are the issues of life; which reminds us of Mat 15:19 : “For out of the heart cometh evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witnesses, railings.”
“Thou shalt not commit adultery” or the seventh commandment, would be a good title for Pro 5 , and there are two parts of this chapter, viz: The unholy passion to be shunned (Pro 5:1-14 ) in contrast with the holy love to be cherished (Pro 5:15-23 ). There are some most striking figures of speech in Pro 5:3-4 , and Pro 5:15-21 of this chapter. In Pro 5:3-4 , we have pictured the seductions of the harlot and the bitter end of those who are caught by her wiles; in Pro 5:15-21 we have pictured the folly of free love over against the love for the one woman, with a fatherly exhortation to faithfulness in the marriage relation.
The picture of the latter end of an unfaithful life is seen in Pro 5:9-14 ; Pro 5:22-23 . Then come regrets, heartaches, slavery to sin, and final destruction.
The various evils against which there is found warning in Pro 6 are as follows: (1) surety (Pro 6:1-5 ); (2) the sluggard (Pro 6:6-11 ); (3) the worthless man (Pro 6:12-19 ); (4) the evil woman (Pro 6:20-35 ).
On Pro 6:1-5 Perowne says,
The frequent mention of suretyship in this book, and the strong terms of warning and reprobation in which it is invariably spoken of, accord well with what we should suppose to be the condition of society in the reign of Solomon. In earlier and simpler times it was enough for the Law to forbid usury of interest for a loan of money to be exacted by one Israelite from another; and raiment given as a pledge or security for a debt was to be returned before night-fall to be the owner’s covering in his sleep (Exo 22:25-27 ; Lev 25:35-38 ). With the development, however, of commerce and the growth of luxury under Solomon, money-lending transactions, whether for speculation in trade, or for personal gratification, had come to be among the grave dangers that beset the path of youth. Accordingly, though the writer of Ecclessiasticus contents himself with laying down restrictions to the exercise of suretyship, and even goes the length of telling us that “An honest man is surety for his neighbor” (Sirach 8:13; Sirach 29:14-20), our writer here, with a truer insight, has no quarter for it, but condemns it unsparingly on every mention of it (Pro 7:1-5 ; Pro 11:15 ; Pro 17:18 ; Pro 22:26-27 ; Pro 27:13 ). Even the generous impulse of youth to incur risk at the call of friendship must yield to the dictates, cold and calculating though they seem, of bitter experience.
There is a warning here, as elsewhere in this book, against all kinds of suretyship. (Compare Pro 11:15 ; Pro 17:18 ; Pro 20:16 ; Pro 22:26-27 ; Pro 27:13 ). The method of escape here seems to be that the surety is to use all diligence to get a release from his obligation before it comes due, otherwise there would be no mercy for him. He would have to pay it.
There are advice and warning to the sluggard in Pro 6:6-11 . He is advised to go to the ant and learn of her ways so he might take the wise course. He is warned of his coming poverty if he gives over to the sluggard’s habits of sleeping when he should be at his work early and late. This reminds us of another well-known proverb: Early to bed and early to rise, Makes one healthy, wealthy, and wise.
In Pro 6:12-19 we have a description of the worthless man, his end and what God abominates in him. He is here described as having a perverse mouth, winking with his eyes, speaking (or shuffling) with his feet, making signs with his fingers, devising evil, and sowing discord. His end is sudden destruction and that without remedy. There are seven things which God abominates in him, Pro 6:16-19 , as follows: There are six things which Jehovah hateth; Yea, seven which are an abomination unto him: Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, And hands that shed innocent blood; A heart that deviseth wicked purposes, Feet that are swift in running to mischief, A false witness that uttereth lies, And he that soweth discord among brethren.
The section on the evil woman (Pro 6:20-35 ) is introduced by an appeal to the holy memories and sanctions of the family in order to give weight to an earnest warning against the sin which destroys the purity and saps the foundations of family life. There is a reference here, most likely, to the passage found in Deu 6:4-9 , which was construed literally by the Jews and therefore gave rise to the formal exhibition of the law in their phylacteries (see “phylactery” in Bible dictionary). Of course, the meaning here, just as in the Deuteronomy passage, is that they should use all diligence in teaching and keeping the law.
The tricks of the evil woman are described in this section (Pro 6:24-35 ), the effect of her life upon her dupes is given, the sin of adultery is compared with stealing and the wound upon the husband is also described. Her tricks are flattery, artificial beauty and, like Jezebel trying to captivate Jehu, she paints her eyelids (2Ki 9:30 ). The effect of her life upon her dupes is want in temporal life and loss of manhood, which is here called “precious life.” Like a man with fire in his bosom or coals of fire under his feet, the man who commits adultery shall not be unpunished. Stealing to satisfy hunger is regarded as a light offense, compared to this awful sin which always inflicts an incurable wound upon the husband. This they now call “The Eternal Triangle,” but it seems more correct to call it “The Infemal Triangle.” No greater offense can be committed against God and the home than the sin dealt with in this paragraph.
The subject of Pro 7 is the same as that of the preceding section, “The Evil Woman,” and is introduced by an earnest call to obedient attention which is followed by a graphic description of the tempter and her victims, as a drama enacted before the eyes.
The description of this woman here fits modern instances, and there are the most solemn warnings here against this sin. This description of her wiles and the final results of such a course are so clear that there is hardly any need for comment. A simple, attentive reading of this chapter is sufficient on each point suggested.
QUESTIONS
1. What is the style and tone of the addresses found in Pro 4:1-9:18 ?
2. What is the main thought, or theme, of Pro 4:1-9 ?
3. What is interesting bit of autobiography in this section, and what the words of Wordsworth in point?
4. What is the meaning of “eons” in Pro 4:1 , what is the meaning of Pro 4:3 , and what does wisdom here promise to them that possess her?
5. What is the theme of Pro 4:10-19 ?
6. What is the force of the figure in Pro 4:12 , what is the interpretation of Pro 4:17 , and what is the special contrast of Pro 4:18-19 ?
7. What is the theme of Pro 4:20-27 , and what is the key verse of this passage?
8. What commandment might be the title of Pro 5 , and what are the two sections of this chapter with their respective themes?
9. What are some of the most striking figures of speech in this chapter, and what is the picture here given of old age when such an evil course of life is pursued?
10. What are the various evils against which there is found warning in Pro 6 ?
11. What biblical times does the passage, Pro 6:1-5 , portray, what is the warning here against security debts, and, according to this passage, when once involved, how to escape?
12. What is the advice and warning to the sluggard in Pro 6:6-11 ?
13. What is the description of the worthless man, what is his end and what does God abominate in him?
14. How is the section on the evil woman (Pro 6:20-35 ) introduced and what is the reference in Pro 6:20-22 ?
15. What are the tricks of the evil woman described in this section (Pro 6:24-35 ), what is the effect of her life upon her dupes, how does the sin of adultery compare with stealing and how is the wound upon the husband here described?
16. What is the subject of Pro 7 and how is it introduced?
17. How does the description of this woman here fit modern instances and what are the most solemn warnings of this chapter against this sins? (Pro 8:1-9 -18).
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Pro 5:1 My son, attend unto my wisdom, [and] bow thine ear to my understanding:
Ver. 1. My son, attend unto my wisdom. ] Aristotle a could say that young men are but cross and crooked hearers of moral philosophy, and have much need to be stirred up to diligent attendance. Fornication is by many of them held a peccadillo; and Aristotle spareth not to confess the disability of moral wisdom to rectify the intemperance of nature; which also he made good in his practice, for he used a common strumpet to satisfy his lust.
a Ethic., lib. vii. cap. 3,4.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Proverbs Chapter 5
The call of the son is to attend to “my wisdom,” before “a strange woman” is depicted vividly. Corruption demands and receives a yet deeper guard than violence.
“My son, attend to my wisdom, incline thine ear to mine understanding, that thou mayest keep reflection, and thy lips may preserve knowledge. For the lips of a strange woman drop honey, and her mouth [is] smoother than oil: but her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on Sheol. Lest she should ponder the path of life, her ways are unstable, she knoweth [it] not. And now, children, hearken to me, and depart not from the words of my mouth. Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house; lest thou give thine honour to others, and thy years to the cruel; lest strangers be filled with thy wealth, and thy labours [go] to the house of an alien; and thou mourn in thine end, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed; and thou say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; and I have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to those that instructed me! I was well nigh in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.” vv. 1-14.
Evil men were bad, a strange woman worse still. A higher wisdom is used, and an exercised understanding, that there may be discretion and knowledge so to apply the principle on the largest scale. The beast is lawless and shall perish utterly; but Babylon is even more loathsome, as to the Lord, so to all who seek His mind. There is nothing in nature so lovely as affection; but how ruinous and defiling, where the fear of God does not guide it! He it is that puts and keeps us in our relationships which are the ground of our duties. But a strange woman is such because she ignores and forsakes them, and seeks to entice others. Fair words of flattery may be the beginning, sweet to the flesh; but her end is bitterness extreme, and frequently deep wounds. Nor is it loss of present happiness only, but the end of those things is death; and after death comes the judgment. Satan employs her to hinder all reflection, and to shut out all light from above. The strange woman abuses the quick perception of her sex to baffle moral discernment by such changes as none else can know. Thus will works without check, and conscience is more and more numbed by self-indulgence.
And what is the counsel here given? Prompt and thorough steering clear. “And now, children, hearken to me, and depart not from the words of my mouth. Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house.” So must every one act who would preserve moral purity. The path of life is far from her and her house. Christ alone gives life eternal and guides it; His word is for one in such a world as this, Follow Me. Is the warning not heeded? More follows to lay bare the paths of death. For there is a righteous government, whatever the complication in this life. Selfishness reaps its sad recompense. None can yield to it with impunity. Beware then of self-indulgence, “lest thou give thine honour to others, and thy years to the cruel; lest strangers be filled with thy wealth, and thy labours go to the house of an alien; and thou mourn in thine end, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed; and thou say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; and I have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to those that instructed me! I was well nigh in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.” Bitter self-reproach is the end of the honey and oil which captivated at the beginning; and no wonder, after a career of sin and shame. It is a retrospect of guilty self-pleasing, the headiness that valued no authority, yielding neither respect nor obedience. “What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.” Nor is it the least painful reflection that all the evil committed was “in the midst of the congregation and assembly.” This was no doubt that of Israel wherein all then revealed was by Jehovah. There was hypocrisy therefore covering the sins. How much more is the similar wickedness, when and where the fullest light of God is enjoyed!
In contrast with the fleshly lusts which war against the soul, and even here have no result but shame, Jehovah set up the holy relations of marriage in the sinless paradise of Eden. What a safeguard for man when an outcast through his own sin! What folly and ungodliness the dream of a Plato, which would dispense with the reality of one’s own wife, one’s own husband, one’s own children in his ideal republic! Certainly there was no wisdom, nor understanding, in such a scheme. It is vagrancy of the most debasing kind. How gracious of Him to warn and guard weak passionate man from his own ruinous will!
“Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well. Should thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of water in the broadways? Let them be only thine own, and not for strangers with thee. Let thy fountain be blessed; rejoice in the wife of thy youth. A lovely hind and a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; with her love be ravished continually. And why shouldest thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger? For the ways of man are before Jehovah’s eyes, and he pondereth all his paths. His own iniquities shall take the wicked, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sin. He shall die for lack of discipline; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.” vv. 15-23.
Two things become man that fears God. There is the outgoing of heart that loves his neighbour, or, as we Christians add, that loves our enemies in the spirit of the gospel. There is also the centring of the affections within the family. This last the father here would impress on his son. Here therefore the due place of the wife comes before us. It is the human relationship that survives from the beginning when sin was not; it is quite as essential now that the offence abounds. Wandering affections are selfish, carry their own shame, and have a permanent sting. As Jehovah instituted the sacred enclosure of the family round the parents, so He sanctions and enjoins warm affections in the head toward his counterpart. It is the most intimate bond of society at large as of the home circle. Heathenism, as we know, conceived its deities jealous of human happiness; it is easily understood; for as the Apostle tells us, they were but demons, fallen spiritual creatures that sought to drag the human race into their sin and misery, and to keep their victims from the love that delights in reconciling and saving them. There is but one that is good, even God; and He has now fully shown His best good, His grace, in His only-begotten Son for eternity as well as the life that now is. But even before divine love thus shone out, the unmistakable goodness of Jehovah appears in these home precepts. “Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well”; and all that follows is in keeping.
If verse 16 be rendered rightly in the Vatican Septuagint, it means, “Let not waters out of thy fountain be spilt by thee, but let thy waters go into the broadways.” The Alexandrian text goes with the Vulgate and the Authorized English Bible in omitting the negatives, yielding the sense that the children will reflect the parents according to the atmosphere they all breathed. The R.V. prefers the form of query, rather confirming the concentration of the verse preceding, and not adding the dispersion abroad intimated in the ordinary versions. It may not be easy to decide, but the R.V. has the effect of greater homogeneity, and more naturally falls in with verse 17, “Let them be only thine own, and not for strangers with thee.”
Then the passage becomes more narrowed to the partners of life. And very impressive it is that he who erred publicly in adding so many wives and concubines should be the one inspired to commend a single object of wedded love. “Let thy fountain be blessed; and rejoice in the wife of thy youth.” The words supplied by translators to introduce verse 19 are not only uncalled for, but enfeebling to the sense. To be cheerful abroad and morose at home, is to be thankless and unholy. “Let marriage,” exhorts the Apostle, “be honourable in all things.” As the A.V. stands, the words read as a stamp of warrant. It is really a call to hold the tie in honour, and this in every respect; and the warning follows there in accordance with verse 20 here.
Nor are the verses that succeed (21-23) to be disconnected. It is wholesome to remember that Jehovah not only honours His own institution for man, but watches over every transgression against it. Very grave is the admonition on His part in verse 21, too surely descriptive is the sketch in 22, 23 of the sinful folly that goes astray in this. It has been pointed out that the word “shall go astray” is the same word translated “ravished” in a good sense in verse 19 and in a bad sense in verse 20. This last prepares for what verse 23 requires, especially when we compare it with Pro 26:11 , “a fool repeateth his folly.” It is a departure, ever going on from bad to worse.
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
My son. See note on Pro 1:8.
understanding =. discernment.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 5
Now my son, attend unto my wisdom, bow your ear to my understanding: That you may regard discretion, and that your lips may keep knowledge ( Pro 5:1 , Pro 5:2 ).
And now he’s going to warn his son again about the strange woman.
For the lips of a strange woman drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: But her end is bitter as wormwood ( Pro 5:3-4 ),
Now, though her lips drop like a honeycomb, all the sweetness and sugar and all, yet the end is bitter. Bitter as wormwood. And though her mouth is smoother than oil, in the end it’s like
a two-edged sword ( Pro 5:4 ).
It’ll cut you to pieces.
Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell ( Pro 5:5 ).
Actually, he’s talking here, of course, a prostitute, an adulterous woman, strange woman.
Lest you should ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that you cannot know them. Hear me now therefore, O ye children, do not depart from the words of my mouth. Remove your way far from her, do not come near the door of her house: Lest you give your honor to others, and your years unto the cruel: Lest strangers be filled with your wealth; and your labors be in the house of a stranger; And you mourn in the end, when your flesh and body are consumed ( Pro 5:6-11 ),
When you have contracted some venereal disease.
And you say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof ( Pro 5:12 );
How can I do such a stupid thing? Why did I do that? And save yourself all the remorse of your own folly.
And you have not obeyed the voice of your teachers, nor inclined your ear to those that instructed! ( Pro 5:13 )
You cry out, “Why didn’t I obey the voice of my teachers? Why didn’t I listen to those that were instructing me?”
I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly. Now drink waters out of your own cistern, and running waters out of your own well ( Pro 5:14-15 ).
In other words, enjoy the marital relationship with your own wife. Drink the waters of your own cistern, of your own well. Don’t go looking for strange water.
Lest thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and the rivers of water in the streets ( Pro 5:16 ).
Lest you just chase after anything that goes down the street. Keep yourself actually pure.
And with your own wife, and not with a stranger. Let your fountain of life be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of your youth. Let her be as a loving hind, as a pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love ( Pro 5:17-19 ).
The Bible speaks so much of the beauty of the love and the love relationship within marriage. God has ordained marriage. In the beginning when God made them male and female. He said, “For this cause shall a man leave his mother and father, and cleave to his wife: and they two shall become one flesh. Therefore, that which God has joined together, let no man put asunder” ( Mat 19:5-6 ). Now when God created us and He created our bodies, in a true understanding of the scriptural teaching, the real you is not your body. The real you is spirit that dwells in your body. But as my spirit is dwelling in my body, my body does have certain appetites, certain drives, certain needs. There are certain hormones and chemicals and all that work in my body. And these working through the glands, sends signals to my brain, and they keep my body in balance.
If I run around the church, I am burning up a lot of oxygen. And as the oxygen burns up, as the oxygen is being carried by the blood to the various cells of my body that they might burn, the muscles and so forth, that they might burn this oxygen. The byproduct of the burnt oxygen is carbon dioxide. And as this carbon dioxide begins to fill up in my bloodstream, as it gets to a certain level, it sends a message to my brain and it says, “There’s too much carbon dioxide in the blood. You need to get rid of it and the cells are needing some fresh oxygen supply.” And my brain responds to these chemical messages that are coming to it as the body is monitoring its own chemical structures. And so the brain sends the message to the lungs to start pumping. It sends a message to the heart, “Get to working. Start really pumping it through.” And to the lungs, “Get to really pumping also.” And so I start to pant and my heartbeat increases. And thus, I am exhaling the carbon dioxide, the waste materials, and I’m inhaling the fresh oxygen to give fresh shots through my whole system. And this is known as the homeostasis; it keeps my body in balance.
Now if the moisture level gets low in my body, again, a message is sent to my brain, “You’re needing more moisture.” And it sends a message to my throat. It gets dry. Man, I got to have a drink of water, you know. I’ve been out perspiring and my moisture level gets down to a dangerous level. And so the chemicals, they respond and I get thirsty.
Now God has built in these systems and they’re marvelous. If He didn’t build in these little systems, when you ran around and all, you just fall over and you could actually die. With all of that extra carbon dioxide in your blood and without the oxygen you need, you’d pass out soon. You wouldn’t be able to run very far. You’d run so far, and then you’d just pass out. But God has put these balances and these drives there. The air drive, and the thirst drive, and then, of course, your cells need other types of energy supplies and so you get hungry. Now this is somewhere where the system has gone haywire, I am sure, but I am sure that I don’t need to eat as much as I do. But yet I have to eat. That’s all a part of the whole system to keep it going.
Now God wanted the earth to be populated by man. And so God created the reproduction organs in the body. And God created strong sexual drives, strong sexual urges. And He made the experience very exciting, very pleasurable in order that children might be born. Otherwise, the human species probably would have disappeared from the world years ago, as man would have found it more pleasurable to go fishing. So it is a God-created drive. The purpose is primarily the populating of the earth. And God has ordained that these drives be satisfied and be fulfilled within the bonds of a marriage covenant, where two persons of opposite sex make a covenant before God that they will love, honor, cherish one another until death separates them. Because God also knows that the children that are born of this relationship need to have the security, the stability of a strong, happy, loving home, lest society disintegrates.
So the whole thing has been planned of God. It’s a part of God’s process. In its place it is not evil. It’s absolutely beautiful and desirable. God has created it in order that it might become a deepest expression of the oneness that does exist between a husband and a wife, where the two become one flesh, joined together, one flesh. And even God has taken this beautiful experience and spiritualized it in likening it unto that relation that exists in the deepest love and the oneness between Christ and His church.
Now, move it out of the environment in which and for which God has created it, and that which was created to be beautiful and meaningful and glorious becomes sinful. Missing the mark. Twisting the use. And it becomes wrong. And it now is laden with feelings of guilt; it has all of its counter issues that come forth from it. It becomes counterproductive.
So God speaks and here, of course, Solomon speaks to his son and he is exhorting him about this beautiful gift that he has from God, fountains of life. Don’t go spilling them on the street with just anybody. But enjoy the wife of your youth. “Be ravished always with her love.”
And why will you, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger? ( Pro 5:20 )
And now the clincher comes:
For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he ponders all of his goings ( Pro 5:21 ).
God is watching you. You don’t do it in secret. It isn’t something that is done in under a cover of darkness. “The ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and God ponders all of his goings.” Now why is he going there?
His own iniquities will take the wicked himself, and he will be held with the cords of his own sins. He will die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray ( Pro 5:22-23 ).
Just good, clean advice given by the father to his son. It’s just good, plain advice for all of us.
Shall we pray.
Father, we pray that we might learn to prize wisdom. May we seek it as a treasure. May we, O God, hate evil. May we not tolerate or give a place for it in our lives. But may we flee in order that we might walk, Lord, in Your way, in the way of truth, of righteousness. And so help us, Lord, to give heed to the instructions, to Your laws, to Your commandments. In Jesus’ name. Amen. “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Pro 5:1-2
Pro 5:1-2
Jamieson’s short summary of this chapter is: “Here is a warning against the seductive arts of wicked women, enforced by considering the blessings and advantages of chastity, and the miserable end of the wicked,
Walls subdivided the chapter as follows:
(1) the teacher’s appeal for strict attention (Pro 5:1-2),
(2) a description of the loose woman (Pro 5:3-6),
(3) an injunction to avoid her (Pro 5:7-8),
(4) a warning of that which befalls her victims (Pro 5:9-14), a call to cherish holy love in marriage (Pro 5:15-19), a reminder that adultery is a sin against God (Pro 5:20-23).
THE TEACHER’S APPEAL FOR STRICT ATTENTION
Pro 5:1-2
“My son, attend unto my wisdom;
Incline thine ear to my understanding:
That thou mayest preserve discretion,
And that thy lips may keep knowledge.”
This solemn plea for strict attention indicates the importance of the severe warning against adultery that is about to be given, a subject briefly mentioned in 2:15-19. “The writer, in addition, will return to this subject again in the latter part of Proverbs 6 and in all of Proverbs 7.
The emphasis given this subject in Proverbs is significant. “If a young man would take to heart the warnings and prohibitions in Proverbs and add those qualities mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount, he would be a perfect man. In Proverbs, the sins of the flesh, gluttony, wine-bibbing and fornication are presented in graphic detail with clear and specific warnings against them. There is a possibility that Solomon, the author of these warnings, gave them such overwhelming emphasis because these were the very sins that ruined him.
Pro 5:1. Lifes experiences and learning bring to a father a degree of wisdom and understanding that he passes onto this children. Here is the same instruction found variously worded in Pro 1:8; Pro 2:1-2; Pro 3:1; Pro 3:21; Pro 4:1-2; Pro 4:10-13; Pro 4:20-21; Pro 6:20-21; Pro 7:1-3; Pro 7:24.
Pro 5:2. Discretion is good judgment in conduct and especially in speech. Preserve and keep are interchangable in the two statements of this verse. Great care should be exercised in our speech so that it always reflects discretion and knowledge.
STUDY QUESTIONS – Pro 5:1-2
1. Why should a father teach his son (Pro 5:1)?
2. How does Pro 5:2 say wisdom will show up?
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
This is a parental exhortation against impurity. It is expressed in words of great delicacy and beauty, but it is none the less urgent and searching. It recognizes one of the most subtle and natural temptations likely to assail the life of the young, and sets it in the light of true wisdom, which begins in the fear of Jehovah and expresses itself in perpetual recognition of Him. The allurement of the strange woman is vividly described, but it is put into immediate contrast with the issue of yielding thereto. It is a change from honey to wormwood, from the smoothness of oil to the sharpness of a sword, from the path of life to the highway of death. The woman’s abode is to be shunned, lest the remorse of those who disobey become the portion of the soul. The paralysis caused by impurity is suggested in the advice that the ideal joys of the marriage relation must be hopelessly marred by all sinful indulgence.
Here, as everywhere, wisdom consists in recognizing that human life is ever under the observation, and within the government, of Jehovah. That government insures the taking of the wicked by the cords which they weave out of their own sins. Impurity of conduct may seem to be of silken texture in its enticement. It becomes a hard and unyielding cable when it binds the life in slavery.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
Quicksands! Keep Off!
Pro 5:1-14
It is a matter for great thankfulness that the Bible, which is Gods book rather than mans, deals so strongly and wisely with one great evil, which has manifested itself in every age and in every state of society. It speaks boldly and plainly; and all who will meditate on its teaching with a prayerful heart, will be saved from many a painful snare. If we fall it will only be due to our having refused to heed the voice that speaks to us from paragraphs like these.
The one great caution that we must all observe is in the control of our thoughts. The soul must never lie open to the tide of suggestive thoughts that break along its beach. As of old the watchman kept the gate of the medieval city so soon as darkness fell, so must the purity of God keep watch and ward at eye-gate, ear-gate, and touch-gate, lest some emissary of evil gain entrance and betray the citadel. Let Christ be the custodian of thy soul, whether thou be man or woman, old or young, and let Him impart to thee His own divine and human purity.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Proverbs 5
Additional instruction is given in Proverbs 5 concerning the strange woman warned against in Chapter 2. It is a solemn subject if this dangerously seductive woman pictures false religion with its snares and allurements. Even in its simple, primary meaning, this admonition is of great importance. If any are entrapped, it is not for lack of warning, but for willful neglect of instruction.
5:1-2
Throughout the book of Proverbs, the need for more than casual attention to the words of wisdom is enforced. To hear with no intention of obeying, is not what is contemplated; but rather to bow the ear in order to regard discretion and keep knowledge. The servant that knew his lords will and did not do it was to be beaten with many stripes (Luk 12:47). When God stoops to make His will known, it should be considered a privilege to obey, not merely a duty.
5:3-6
Fair and plausible are the words of the stranger-temptress; dark and terrible the ending of association with her. She practices her awful avocation today as well, and thousands become her victims. Like the harlot-church described in the book of Revelation, she seduces and deceives. She turns the heart away from the simplicity of the paths of truth and leads it to death and Hell. She has many devices to delude the unwary; her ways are devious so their evil direction will not be known. Nothing is more attractive to those who refuse Wisdoms words than the specious pleas of this deceptive system. The only safety is in clinging to the words of God.
5:7-14
To learn by painful experience, if the Word of God is not followed, is a bitter and solemn thing. God is not mocked; what is sown must be reaped. The unsteady hand, the confused brain, the bleared eye, premature age, and weakened powers, regretful days and nights of folly that can never be forgotten: these are a few of the physical results of failing to heed the advice of wisdom. In the spiritual realm parallel results may be: lack of discernment, weakened spiritual sensitivities, undependable behavior, wasted time, and loss at the judgment seat of Christ. These are some of the sad results of refusing the path of separation from apostate religion in this day of Christs rejection.
Throughout this collection of Proverbs, the strange woman is looked on as an intruder from the outside. She is not seen as a daughter of Israel who has strayed from the path of virtue. The law declared there was to be no harlot among the women of the chosen people. The temptresses entered from the surrounding countries to seduce the young men of the separated nation. Therefore the strange woman was not strange in the sense of peculiar; she was a stranger who plied her tawdry arts to deceive those who should be holy to the Lord. But the moral state of Israel had become so low that even the daughters of the people of God had fallen into the degradation of the heathen (Pro 2:17). They had forsaken the guide of their youth, and forgotten the agreement they had made with God. So they were viewed as outsiders, having no place in the congregation of the Lord.
5:15-19
These verses picture sanctified wedded love in contrast to the godless ways presented in the previous verses. For us, marriage represents the mystical union between Christ and the church. Every Christian home should be a little picture of the relationship of our glorified Head with the members of His body. How holy then is that earthly association which speaks of such exalted heavenly mysteries. Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge (Heb 13:4). How much precious teaching in the New Testament, particularly in the Epistles, flows from this truth. Husbands and wives are urged to dwell together according to knowledge so their prayers will not be hindered (1Pe 3:1-7). What a test this is! When husband and wife can kneel and pray together with joy and confidence, the home will be what God desires; but there is something radically wrong when their actions hinder this communion with each other and the Lord.
5:21
This fact is just what the soul needs to realize the solemnity of being in this world for God. His eyes are on all our ways. Nothing escapes that holy gaze. All is naked and open before Him. He weighs and ponders every thought and word and action. Nothing is too insignificant for His notice; nothing too great for His attention. At the judgment seat of Christ He will make known His estimate of it all. In that day how many of us would give worlds, if we possessed them, to have been more faithful on earth!
5:22-23
Certain retribution will follow the disobedient. The very sins he delights in are the links of the chain that will bind him forever. Having refused instruction in life, he will die without it; he will be left to go astray in the folly his soul loved. Dying in his sins, he goes out into the darkness, where the light he refused will never shine on him again!
Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets
CHAPTER 5
1. Shun the strange woman and sinful passion (Pro 5:1-14)
2. The life of chastity (Pro 5:15-23)
Pro 5:1-14. It is a warning against literal fornication and the accompanying spiritual fornication, turning away from the worship of Jehovah and worshipping idols. The dreadful results of sinful lust are vividly described. How many a young man has found out the truth as given in these words in his licentious life.
And thou mourn at thy latter end
When thy flesh and thy body are consumed.
Solomon received these repeated warnings, yet after great prosperity and honor came to him, and his glory spread in every direction like many a rich and successful man of today, these warnings were not heeded and he had to experience in his own life the truths of these words he had penned by the Spirit of God.
Pro 5:15-23. Here we have a sweet exhortation and picture of marital fidelity and a picture of true love in family life. How the Christian family should manifest something greater than this is revealed in Eph 5:1-33.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
attend: Pro 2:1, Pro 4:1, Pro 4:20, Mat 3:9, Mar 4:23, Rev 2:7, Rev 2:11, Rev 2:17, Rev 2:29, Rev 3:6, Rev 3:13, Rev 3:22
bow: Pro 22:17, Jam 1:19
Reciprocal: Gen 49:2 – hearken Job 33:33 – hearken Pro 1:8 – hear Pro 8:33 – Hear Pro 23:12 – General 1Th 2:11 – as
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Pro 5:1-2. My son, attend unto my wisdom There being nothing, says Bishop Patrick, to which youth is so prone as to give up themselves to satisfy their fleshly desires, and nothing proving so pernicious to them; the wise man gives a new caution against those impure lusts which he had taken notice of before: (Pro 2:16-19,) as great obstructions to wisdom; and, with repeated entreaties, begs attention to so weighty an argument: which here he prosecutes more largely, and presses not only with singular evidence, but with powerful reasons. That thou mayest regard, or keep, as signifies, that is, hold fast, as it is in the next clause, discretion Or wisdom for the conduct of thy life, as this word is used, chap. 1:4, and in other parts of this book. And that thy lips may keep knowledge That, by wise and pious discourses, thou mayest preserve and improve thy wisdom, for thine own good, and that of others.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Pro 5:3. The lips of a strange woman drop as a honey-comb. She employs all her arts for bread, for drunkenness, for crime. How wretched, how bitter is the life of a ruined and abandoned woman. Their number is now alarming to the state. The men who support them are equal in number. Asylums are inadequate to remedy the hundredth part of the evil. In the purer ages of patriarchal society, they were put to death. When Tamar was pregnant, Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burned. Gen 38:24. Maimonides names a case in which a priests daughter was burned, during the sixth century. Unless the heads of houses are made responsible for female virtue, national ruin of health and character must be the consequence.
Pro 5:5. Her feet go down to death. Here is the remedy which God provides; a disease which consumes the body with rottenness and corruption: Pro 5:11.Her steps take hold on hell. This is the punishment of the soul beyond the grave. Solomon speaks as a father to the young men of his kingdom, and in particular to those of his court. He represents sin as a sharp sword with two edges, which kills the body and destroys the soul. He represents their deplorable case as pining away with disease, and all their wealth as filling the house of strangers. But argument is lost on men sold to sin. The good Fenelon represents Mentor as saving the almost yielding Telemachus, by taking him by the hair of the head, and throwing him from a rock into the sea, that he might swim to a ship. This is plucking out the right eye.
Horace describes the virtues of Ulysses as inflexible in character. On his return from Troy, he had to encounter a succession of difficulties, which he subdued. You have heard of the charming voices of the syrens [Psa 58:5] and of the deleterious cup of Circe. Had he drank the poison, as his foolish companions did, his return had been impossible; he had become the victim of an infamous woman, and been metamorphosed into an unclean dog, or a sow that wallows in the mire.
Sirenum voces et Circ pocula nsti; Qu si cum sociis stultus cupidusque bibisset, Sub domin meretrice fuisset turpis et excors, Vixisset canis immundus, vel amica luto sus. HORAT. EPIST. lib. 1. epist, 2. 50:23.
Pro 5:18. Rejoice with the wife of thy youth. The young mans heart will then rest in the bosom of virtue. Even while his affections are but engaged to the amiable companion of his life, he will feel a flame which is noble; attended with the approbation of both God and man, and which scorns the seductive charms of vice. When young people marry in the Lord, and with prudence, they taste the highest happiness prepared for man in this world, and lay a wise foundation for the augmentation of their eternal joy.
Pro 5:21. The ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord. The omniscience of God is the last dissuasive from criminal connections. Why should he sin when he cannot escape detection? Divine justice is laying snares for the wicked, that the most secret sins may be discovered by their fruits; that the public may say, he died as the fool dieth, for despising instruction. How preferable that youth should read the holy scriptures in seminaries, than authors grossly mixed with immodesty, with approbation of fashionable vices, and with hisses at real religion, under a pretext of ridiculing superstition. When they advocate a moral cause, and expatiate on virtue, there is not a vestige of that sacred influence which everywhere distinguishes the morality of the sacred writings.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Pro 5:1-9, Pro 5:10-19, Pro 5:20-23. Three hortatory discourses exactly similar to those in Pro 5:2 and Pro 5:3. The subject is the praise of Wisdom, and the description of the blessings she confers.
Pro 5:3 f. One of the few passages referring to Heb. educational methods (pp. 109f.). Instruction is oral, given by the father or the mother (Pro 1:8). Books are not mentioned, and it is difficult to infer the nature of the teaching, whether it consisted of instruction in the Law, or merely the advice of experience given to youth. The date may be about the third century B.C.
Pro 5:7. Heb. yields no good sense, the beginning of wisdom is, get wisdom. LXX probably correctly omits the verse.
Pro 5:9. crown of beauty: lit. glorious crown (cf. Isa 28:1, Job 19:9). The figure is from the custom of wearing wreaths on festal occasions, hardly, as Isa 28:1 shows, a sign of Greek or Roman influence.
Pro 5:10-18. A discourse describing the way of life and the way of death (cf. The Two Ways, the earlier Jewish portion of the Didache).
Pro 5:12 a. cf. Job 18:7 a, the idea being the cramping and hindering of ones steps by a narrow and rocky path.
Pro 5:13 b. cf. Deu 32:47. Note the gradual deepening of the sense of life, beginning with prolonging of days, as in Deu 32:47, and gaining in spiritual content until it comes to mean the knowledge of God and communion with Him (Joh 17:3; cf. the life which is life indeed, 1Ti 6:19).
Pro 5:14-17. Probably the same class as that described in Pro 1:10-19, belonging to city life rather than to an agricultural or nomad state of society.
Pro 5:18. unto the perfect day: lit. until the day is established, which may mean either the full morning light or the noon-day. The reference may be to the good old age of a righteous life, its radiant culmination, or, less probably, to the Day of the Lord, which will be light for the righteous (cf. Isa 30:26; Isa 34:8).
Pro 5:20-23. A third discourse exhorting the young man to heed the instruction of the sage and adhere to the path of uprightness.
Pro 5:23. heart: in Heb. the seat not of the emotions but of the intellect (cf. Hos 7:11, where without heart means without intelligence). The seat of the emotions in the OT is represented by the bowels, the will and moral perceptions by the reins (cf. Jer 4:19, Psa 16:7).issues: lit. goings forth (cf. Psa 68:20).it: i.e. the obedience recommended in Pro 5:23 a, life, whether material or spiritual, is the result of obedience (cf. Deu 32:47).
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
9. Warnings against unfaithfulness in marriage ch. 5
Chapters 5-7 all deal with the consequences of sexual sins: eventual disappointment (ch. 5), gradual destruction (ch. 6), and ultimate death (ch. 7). [Note: Wiersbe, p. 48.] Chapter 5 first reveals the ugliness under the surface of the attractive seductress (Pro 5:1-6). Then it clarifies the price of unfaithfulness (Pro 5:7-14). Finally it extols the wisdom of marital fidelity (Pro 5:15-23).
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
The danger of seduction 5:1-6
The lips of the youth (Pro 5:2) contrast with those of the seductress (Pro 5:3). Knowing what is right and being able to articulate that with one’s lips is really a protection against the power of the seductress’s speech (Pro 5:1-6). The temptress comes with words that are sweet (flattering) and smooth (delightful, Pro 5:3). [Note: M. Dahood, "Honey That Drips. Notes on Proverbs 5:2-3," Biblica 54 (1973):65-66.] Nevertheless if swallowed, they make the person tempted by them feel bitter (ashamed) and wounded (hurt, Pro 5:4). Even flirting produces this effect sometimes.
"There is an old saying, ’Honey is sweet, but the bee stings’; and this lady has a sting in her tail." [Note: Kenneth T. Aitken, Proverbs, p. 63.]
Typically the seductress will lead a person down a path that takes him or her to death and the grave (Pro 5:5), though one can experience a living death as a result of following her, too. She has no concern with living a truly worthwhile life but only with gaining some immediate physical and emotional thrill (Pro 5:6).
"God created sex not only for reproduction but also for enjoyment, and he didn’t put the ’marriage wall’ around sex to rob us of pleasure but to increase pleasure and protect it." [Note: Wiersbe, p. 48.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
CHAPTER 6
THE WAYS AND ISSUES OF SIN
“His own iniquities shall take the wicked, And he shall be holden with the cords of his sin. He shall die for lack of instruction; And in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.” Pro 5:22-23
IT is the task of Wisdom, or, as we should say, of the Christian teacher, -and a most distasteful task it is, -to lay bare with an unsparing hand
(1) the fascinations of sin, and
(2) the deadly entanglements in which the sinner involves himself, –
“there is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” {Pro 14:12} It would be pleasanter, no doubt, to avoid the subject, or at least to be content with a general caution and a general denunciation; one is tempted to take refuge in the opinion that to mention evils of a certain kind with any particularity is likely to suggest rather than to suppress, to aggravate rather than to lessen, them. But Wisdom is not afraid of plain speaking; she sees that shame is the first result of the Fall, and behind the modest veil of shame the devil works bravely. There is a frankness and a fullness in the delineations of this chapter and of chapter seven which modern taste would condemn; but the motive cannot be mistaken. Holiness describes the ways of sin in detail to create a horror and a hatred of them; she describes exactly what is within the tempting doors, -all the glamour, all the softness, all the luxury, all the unhallowed raptures, -and shows distinctly how these chambers are on the incline of death, in order that curiosity, the mother of prurience, may be stifled, and the unwary may be content to remove his way far from the temptress, and to come not nigh the door of her house. {Pro 5:8}
But this, it may be said, is the plea urged by a certain school of modern Realism in Art. Let us depict-such is the argument-in all its hideous literalness the sinful life, and leave it to work its own impressions, and to act as a warning to those who are entering on the seductive but dangerous ways. From this principle-so it may be said-has sprung the school of writers at whose head is M. Zola. Yes, but to counteract vice by depicting it is so hazardous a venture that none can do it successfully who is not fortified in virtue himself, and constantly led, directed, and restrained by the Holy Spirit of God. Just in this point lies the great difference between the realism of the Bible and the realism of the French novel. In the first the didactic purpose is at once declared, and the writer moves with swift precision through the fascinating scene, to lift the curtain and show death beyond; in the last the motive is left doubtful, and the writer moves slowly, observantly, even gloatingly, through the abomination and the filth, without any clear conception of the Divine Eye which watches, or the Divine Voice which condemns.
There is a corresponding difference in the effects of the two. Few men could study these chapters in the book of Proverbs without experiencing a healthy revolt against the iniquity which is unveiled; while few men can read the works of modern realism without contracting a certain contamination, without a dimming of the moral sense and a weakening of the purer impulses.
We need not then complain that the powers of imaginative description are summoned to heighten the picture of the temptation, because the same powers are used with constraining effect to paint the results of yielding to it. We need not regret that the Temptress, Mistress Folly, as she is called, is allowed to utter all her blandishments in full, to weave her spells before our eyes, because the voice of Wisdom is in this way made more impressive and convincing. Pulpit invectives against sin often lose half their terrible cogency because we are too prudish to describe the sins which we denounce.
I. The glamours of sin and the safeguard against them.- There is no sin which affords so vivid an example of seductive attraction at the beginning, and of hopeless misery at the end as that of unlawful love. The illustration which we generally prefer, that drawn from the abuse of alcoholic drinks, occurs later on in the book, at Pro 23:31-32; but it is not so effectual for the purpose, and we may be thankful that the Divine Wisdom is not checked in its choice of matter by our present-day notions of propriety. There are two elements in the temptation: there is the smooth and flattering speech, the outpouring of compliment and pretended affection expressed in Pro 7:15, the subtle and inflaming suggestion that “stolen waters are sweet”; {Pro 9:17} and there is the beauty of form enhanced by artful painting of the eyelids, {Pro 6:25} and by all those gratifications of the senses which melt the manhood and undermine the resisting power of the victim. {Pro 7:16-17} In our own time we should have to add still further elements of temptation, -sophistical arguments and oracular utterances of a false science, which encourages men to do for health what appetite bids them do for pleasure.
After all, this is but a type of all temptations to sin. There are weak points in every character; there are places in every life where the descent is singularly easy. A siren voice waylays us with soft words and insinuating arguments; gentle arms are thrown around us, and dazzling visions occupy our eyes; our conscience seems to fade away in a mist of excited feeling; there is a sort of twilight in which shapes are uncertain, and the imagination works mightily with the obscure presentations of the senses. We are taken unawares; the weak point happens to be unguarded; the fatal bypath with its smooth descent is, as it were, sprung upon us.
Now the safeguard against the specific sin before us is presented in a true and whole-hearted marriage. {Pro 5:15-19} And the safeguard against all sin is equally to be found in the complete and constant preoccupation of the soul with the Divine Love. The author is very far from indulging in allegory, -his thoughts are occupied with a very definite and concrete evil, and a very definite and concrete remedy; but instinctively the Christian ear detects a wider application, and the Christian heart turns to that strange and exigent demand made by its Lord, to hate father and mother, and even all human ties, in order to concentrate on Him an exclusive love and devotion. It is our method to state a general truth and illustrate it with particular instances; it is the method of a more primitive wisdom to dwell upon a particular instance in such a way as to suggest a general truth. Catching, therefore, involuntarily the deeper meanings of such a thought, we notice that escape from the allurements of the strange woman is secured by the inward concentration of; a pure wedded love. In the permitted paths of connubial intimacy and tenderness are to be found raptures more sweet and abiding than those which are vainly promised by the ways of sin.
“Here Love his golden shafts employs, here lights His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings,
Reigns here and revels; not in the bought smile of harlots, loveless, joyless, unendeared.”
Forbidding to marry is a device of Satan; anything, which tends to degrade or to desecrate marriage bears on its face the mark of the Tempter. It is at our peril that we invade the holy mystery, or brush away from its precincts the radiant dews which reflect the light of God. Nay, even the jest and the playful teasing which the subject sometimes occasions are painfully inappropriate and even offensive. We do ill to smile at the mutual absorption and tender endearments of the young married people; we should do better to pray that their love might grow daily more absorbing and more tender. I would say to brides and bridegrooms: Magnify the meaning of this sacred union of yours; try to understand its Divine symbolism. Labor diligently to keep its mystical passion pure and ardent and strong. Remember that love needs earnest, humble, self-suppressing cultivation, and its bloom is at first easily worn off by negligence or laziness. Husbands, labor hard to make your assiduous and loving care more manifest to your wives as years go by. Wives, desire more to shine in the eyes of your husbands, and to retain their passionate and chivalrous admiration, than you did in the days of courtship.
Where marriage is held honorable, -a sacrament of heavenly significance, -where it begins in a disinterested love, grows in educational discipline, and matures in a complete harmony, an absolute fusion of the wedded souls, you have at once the best security against many of the worst evils which desolate society, and the most exquisite type of the brightest and loveliest spiritual state which is promised to us in the world to come.
Our sacred writings glorify marriage, finding in it more than any other wisdom or religion has found. The Bible, depicting the seductions and fascinations of sin, sets off against them the infinitely sweeter joys and the infinitely more binding fascinations of this condition which was created and appointed in the time of mans innocence, and is still the readiest way of bringing back the Paradise which is lost.
II. The binding results of sin.- It is interesting to compare with the teaching of this chapter the doctrine of Karma in that religion of Buddha which was already winning its victorious way in the far East at the time when these introductory chapters were written. The Buddha said in effect to his disciple, “You are in slavery to a tyrant set up by yourself. Your own deeds, words, and thoughts, in the former and present states of being, are your own avengers through a countless series of lives. If you have been a murderer, a thief, a liar, impure, a drunkard, you must pay the penalty in your next birth, either in one of the hells, or as an unclean animal, or as an evil spirit, or as a demon. You cannot escape, and I am powerless to set you free. Not in the heavens,” so says the Dhammapada, “not in the midst of the sea, not if thou hidest thyself in the clefts of the mountains, wilt thou find a place where thou canst escape the force of thy own evil actions.”
“His own iniquities shall take the wicked, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sin.” This terrible truth is illustrated with mournful emphasis in the sin of the flesh which has been occupying our attention, a sin which can only be described as “taking fire into the bosom or walking upon hot coals,” with the inevitable result that the clothes are burnt and the feet are scorched. {Pro 6:27-28} There are four miseries comparable to four strong cords which bind the unhappy transgressor. First of all, there is the shame. His honor is given to others, {Pro 5:9} and his reproach shall not be wiped away. {Pro 6:33} The jealous rage of the offended husband will accept no ransom, no expiation; {Pro 6:34-35} with relentless cruelty the avenger will expose to ruin and death the hapless fool who has transgressed against him. Secondly, there is the loss of wealth. The ways of debauchery lead to absolute want, for the debauchee, impelled by his tormenting passions, will part with all his possessions in order to gratify his appetites, {Pro 5:10} until, unnerved and “feckless,” incapable of any honest work, he is at his wits end to obtain even the necessities of life. {Pro 6:26} For the third binding cord of the transgression is the loss of health; the natural powers decay, the flesh and the body are consumed with loathsome disease. {Pro 5:11} Yet this is not the worst. Worse than all the rest is the bitter remorse, the groaning and the despair at the end of the shortened life. “How have I hated instruction, and nay heart despised reproof!” {Pro 5:12-14} “Going down to the chambers of death,” wise too late, the victim of his own sins remembers with unspeakable agony the voice of his teachers, the efforts of those who wished to instruct him.
There is an inevitableness about it all, for life is not lived at a hazard; every path is clearly laid bare from its first step to its last before the eyes of the Lord; the ups and downs which obscure the way for us are all level to Him. {Pro 5:21} Not by chance, therefore, but by the clearest interworking of cause and effect, these fetters of sin grow upon the feet of the sinner, while the ruined soul mourns in the latter days. The reason why Wisdom cries aloud, so urgently, so continually, is that she is uttering eternal truths, laws which hold in the spiritual world as surely as gravitation holds in the natural world; it is that she sees unhappy human beings going astray in the greatness of their folly, dying because they are without the instruction which she offers. {Pro 5:23} But now, to turn to the large truth which is illustrated here by a particular instance, that our evil actions, forming evil habits, working ill results on us and on others, are themselves the means of our punishment.
“The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us.”
We do not rightly conceive God or Judgment or Hell until we recognize that in spiritual and moral things there is a binding law, which is no arbitrary decree of God, but the essential constitution of His universe. He does not punish, but sin punishes; He does not make hell, but sinners make it. As our Lord puts it, the terrible thing about all sinning is that one may become involved in an eternal sin. {Mar 3:26} It is by an inherent necessity that this results from a sin against the Holy Spirit within us.
We cannot too frequently, or too solemnly, dwell upon this startling fact. It is a fact established, not by a doubtful text or two, nor by a mere ipse dixit of authority, but by the widest possible observation of life, by a concurrent witness of all teachers and all true religions. No planetary movement, no recurrence of the seasons, no chemical transformation, no physiological growth, no axiom of mathematics, is established on surer or more irrefutable grounds. Sin itself may even be defined, from an induction of facts, as “the act of a human will which, being contrary to the Divine Will, reacts with inevitable evil upon the agent.” Sin is a presumptuous attempt on the part of a human will to disturb the irresistible order of the Divine Will, and can only draw down upon itself those lightnings of the Divine power, which otherwise would have flashed through the heavens beautiful and beneficent.
Let us, then, try to impress upon our minds that, not in the one sin of which we have been speaking only, but in all sins alike, certain bands are being woven, certain cords twisted, certain chains forged, which must one day take and hold the sinner with galling stringency.
Every sin is preparing for us a band of shame to be wound about our brows and tightened to the torture-point. There are many gross and generally condemned actions which when they are exposed bring their immediate penalty. To be discovered in dishonorable dealing, to have our hidden enormities brought into the light of day, to forfeit by feeble vices a fair and dignified position, will load a conscience which is not quite callous with a burden of shame that makes life quite intolerable. But there are many sins which do not entail this scornful censure of our fellows, sins with which they have a secret sympathy, for which they cherish an ill-disguised admiration, -the more heroic sins of daring ambition, victorious selfishness, or proud defiance of God. None the less these tolerated iniquities are weaving the inevitable band of shame for the brow: we shall not always be called on only to fade our fellows, for we are by our creation the sons of God, in whose image we are made, and eventually we must confront the children of Light, must look straight up into the face of God, with these sins-venial as they were thought-set in the light of His countenance. Then will the guilty spirit burn with an indescribable and unbearable shame, -“To hide my head! To bury my eyes that they may not see the rays of the Eternal Light,” will be its cry. May we not say with truth that the shame which comes from the judgment of our fellows is the most tolerable of the bands of shame?
Again, every sin is preparing for us a loss of wealth, of the only wealth which is really durable, the treasure in the heavens; every sin is capable of “bringing a man to a piece of bread,” {Pro 6:26} filching from him all the food on which the spirit lives. It is too common a sight to see a young spendthrift who has run through his patrimony in a few years, who much pass through the bankruptcy court, and who has burdened his estate and his name with charges and reproaches from which he can never again shake himself free. But that is only a superficial illustration of a spiritual reality. Every sin is the precursor of spiritual bankruptcy; it is setting ones hand to a bill which, when it comes in, must break the wealthiest signatory.
That little sin of yours, trivial as it seems, the mere inadvertence, the lighthearted carelessness, the petty spleen, the innocent romancing, the gradual hardening of the heart, -is, if you would see it, like scratching with a pen through and through a writing on a parchment. What is this writing? What is this parchment? It is a title-deed to an inheritance, the inheritance of the saints in light. You are quietly erasing your name from it and blotching its fair characters. When you come to the day of account, you will show your claim, and it will be illegible. “What,” you will say, “am I to lose this great possession for this trifling scratch of the pen?” “Even so,” says the Inexorable; “it is precisely in this way that the inheritance is lost; not, as a rule, by deliberate and reckless destruction of the mighty treasure, but by the thoughtless triviality, the indolent easefulness. See you, it is, the work of your own hand. His own iniquities shall take the wicked.”
Again, every sin is the gradual undermining of the health, not so much the bodys, as the souls health. Those are, as it were, the slightest sins by which “the flesh and the body are consumed.” “Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes?” Who is stricken and hurt and beaten, bitten as if by an adder, stung as if by a serpent? {Pro 23:29; Pro 23:32} It is the victim of drink, and every feature shows how he is holden, by the cords of his sin. But there is one who is drunk with the blood of his fellowmen, and has thriven at the expense of the poor, who yet is temperate, healthy, and strong. The disease of his soul does not come to the light of day. None the less it is there. The sanity of soul which alone can preserve the life in the Eternal World and in the presence of God is fatally disturbed by every sin. A virus enters the spirit; germs obtain a lodgment there. The days pass, the years pass. The respected citizen, portly, rich, and courted, goes at last in a good old age from the scene of his prosperity here, -surely to a fairer home above?
Alas, the soul if it were to come into those fadeless mansions would be found smitten with a leprosy. This is no superficial malady; through and through the whole head is sick, the whole heart faint. Strange that men never noticed it down there in the busy world. But the fact is, it is the air of heaven which brings out these suppressed disorders. And the diseased soul whispers, “Take me out of this air, I beseech you, at all costs. I must have change of climate. This atmosphere is intolerable to me. I can only be well out of heaven.” “Poor spirit,” murmur the angels, “he says the truth; certainly he could not live here.”
Finally the worst chain forged in the furnace of sin is Remorse: for no one can guarantee to the sinner an eternal insensibility; rather it seems quite unavoidable that someday he must awake, and standing shamed before the eyes of his Maker, stripped of all his possessions and hopelessly diseased in soul, must recognize clearly what might have been and now cannot be. Memory will be busy. “Ah! that cursed memory!” he cries. It brings back all the gentle pleadings of his mother in that pure home long ago; it brings back all his fathers counsels; it brings back the words which were spoken from the pulpit, and all the conversations with godly friends. He remembers how he wavered” Shall it be the strait and hallowed road, or shall it be the broad road to destruction?” He remembers all the pleas and counterpleas, and how with open eyes he chose the way which, as he saw, went down to death. And now? Now it is irrevocable. He said he would take his luck and he has taken it. He said God would not punish a poor creature like him. God does not punish him. No, there is God making level all his paths now as of old. This punishment is not Gods; it is his own. His own iniquities have taken the wicked; he is held with the cords of his sin.
Here then is the plain, stern truth, -a law, not of Nature only, but of the Universe. As you look into a fact so solemn, so awful; as the cadence of the chapter closes, do you not seem to perceive with a new clearness how men needed One who could take away the sins of the world, One who could break those cruel, bonds which men have made for themselves?