An exhortation to avoid sexual immorality
5
📚My son, give attention to my wisdom, and turn your ear
to my understanding,
2 📚That you may regard discretion
and that your lips
may keep knowledge.
3 📚For the lips of a strange woman
drip like a honeycomb,
and her mouth is smoother than oil,
4 📚But the result with her is
as bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a two-edged sword.
5 📚Her feet go down to death;
her steps hold to the path of the grave 📖.
6 📚Lest you should ponder the path of life,
her ways are unstable,
so that you cannot understand them.
7 📚Therefore, listen to me now,
O you children, and do not depart
from the words of my mouth.
8 📚Keep your way far from her,
and do not come near the door of her house,
9 📚Lest you give your honour to others,
and your years to those who are cruel,
10 📚Lest strangers be filled with your wealth,
and your labours be for the house
of a stranger,
11 📚And you mourn at the last,
when your flesh and your body are consumed,
12 📚And say, “How I hated instruction!
And my heart despised rebuke!
13 📚And I have not obeyed the voice
of my teachers,
or turned my ear to those
who instructed me!
14 📚I was almost in total misery in the midst
of the congregation and assembly”.
5:9-14 The practice of adultery will bring a person to utter ruin. Even if he (or she) seems to escape in this life the deserved punishment, escape will not be forever (1 Cor 6:9-10; Heb 13:4; Rev 21:8).⚜
15 📚Drink water out of your own cistern,
and running water out of your own well.
16 📚Should your springs flow outside
and be like rivers of water
in the streets?
17 Let them be only your own,
and not strangers sharing with you.
18 📚Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice with the wife of your youth.
19 📚Let her be like a loving doe
and graceful deer;
let her breasts satisfy you at all times,
and always be captivated by her love.
5:15-19 Each verse here exhorts the son to be satisfied with his own wife and not to go looking for pleasures forbidden outside the marriage relationship.⚜
20 📚And why will you, my son,
be captivated by a strange woman,
and embrace the bosom of a stranger?
5:20 Since adultery leads to ruin and destruction why even consider engaging in this deadly sin?⚜
21 📚For the ways of man are
before the eyes of the LORD,
and he ponders all his goings.
22 📚The iniquities of the wicked will
capture him,
and he will be held by the cords of his sins.
5:22 Num 32:23; Ps 7:15-16; 9:16. If we sin we are creating bonds that will hold us in slavery. See John 8:34; Rom 6:16.⚜
23 📚He will die without instruction,
and in the greatness of his folly
he will go astray.
5:3-23 He returns to the theme of adultery which he referred to in Prov 2:16-19 and which he takes up again in Prov 6:23-35 and Prov 7:6-27. He shows it for what it is – one of the most dangerous and deadly of sins. It may seem sweet in the beginning (v 3), but the end will be bitterness and death (vs 4,5), and condemnation by one’s own thoughts, by others, and by God (vs 11-14,21).⚜
5:23 If false ways that lead to death are the result of a lack of instruction how we should welcome and value instruction in our lives. See Ps 25:4-5.⚜