My son, pay attention to my wisdom. Turn your ear to my understanding,
that you may maintain discretion, that your lips may preserve knowledge.
For the lips of an adulteress drip honey. Her mouth is smoother than oil,
but in the end she is as bitter as wormwood, and as sharp as a two-edged sword.
Her feet go down to death. Her steps lead straight to Sheol.
She gives no thought to the way of life. Her ways are crooked, and she doesn’t know it.
Now therefore, my sons, listen to me. Don’t depart from the words of my mouth.
Remove your way far from her. Don’t come near the door of her house,
lest you give your honor to others, and your years to the cruel one;
lest strangers feast on your wealth, and your labors enrich another man’s house.
You will groan at your latter end, when your flesh and your body are consumed,
and say, “How I have hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;
neither have I obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor turned my ear to those who instructed me!
I have come to the brink of utter ruin, among the gathered assembly.”
Drink water out of your own cistern, running water out of your own well.
Should your springs overflow in the streets, streams of water in the public squares?
Let them be for yourself alone, not for strangers with you.
Let your spring be blessed. Rejoice in the wife of your youth.
A loving doe and a graceful deer— let her breasts satisfy you at all times. Be captivated always with her love.
For why should you, my son, be captivated with an adulteress? Why embrace the bosom of another?
For the ways of man are before Yahweh’s eyes. He examines all his paths.
The evil deeds of the wicked ensnare him. The cords of his sin hold him firmly.
He will die for lack of instruction. In the greatness of his folly, he will go astray.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 23 Or, understanding.
Or, understanding.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–23 Pro 5:1 My son, attend unto my wisdom, [and]…
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.
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{a} Ethic., lib. vii. cap. 3,4.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 Regard, or, keep, i.e. hold fast, as it is…
Regard, or, keep, i.e. hold fast, as it is in the next clause. Discretion; spiritual wisdom for the conduct of thy life, as this word is used Pro 1:4, and elsewhere in this book.
That thy lips may keep knowledge; that by wise and pious discourses thou mayst preserve and improve thy wisdom for thine own and others’ good.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 15 Here we have,
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 2:7); but those that are ready and mighty in the scriptures may not only in their devotions, but in their discourses, be spiritual priests.
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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 (Pro 5:3); 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, Pro 5:4. 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, Ecc 7:26. [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, Pro 5:5. 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 4:11.
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, Mat 5:28-30.
(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 (Pro 5:9); 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 (Pro 5:10): "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, Pro 5:11. 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, Pro 5:11. 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 [plea?]. 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, Pro 5:12. 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 (Pro 5:13); 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 (Pro 5:14): 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 25:6), 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 30:28. Let that be avoided which will be thus rued at last.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–23 My son, attend unto my wisdom,.... Not the wisdom…
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", Co1 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.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 22, 23 A farther exhortation to wisdom, ver. 1, 2. A…
A farther exhortation to wisdom, ver. 1, 2. A caution against whoredom, ver. 3-14. Remedies against it, ver. 15-23.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23 Farther exhortations to acquire wisdom, 1, 2.
CHAPTER V
Farther exhortations to acquire wisdom, 1, 2.
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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.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 8, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22 Pro 5:1-2. My son, attend unto my wisdom —…
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 שׁמרsignifies, 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.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 23 The formula of a new counsel, introducing another warning…
The formula of a new counsel, introducing another warning against the besetting sin of youth Pro 2:16.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Charles Bridges 1846 · Public Domain On vv1, 15, 20 PONDER this chapter — ye that know not the…
PONDER this chapter — ye that know not the poison and corruption of fleshly lusts. Perhaps painful experience (1Ki 11:1-8 . Ecc 7:26 ) had given the wise man wisdom and understanding. Therefore attend to it with fear and trembling. Man’s own strength, the restraint of education or self-discipline, is powerless, as the green withs to bind the giant. (Jdg 16:9 .) Engrafted wisdom is the only effectual safeguard. This heavenly influence teaches us, both to regard discretion for the covering of our souls, and to keep knowledge for the warning of our fellow-sinners. (Pro 2:10-11, Pro 2:16 ; Pro 6:20, Pro 6:24 ; Pro 7:1-5 . Psa 17:4 ; Psa 119:9, Psa 119:11 .)
The extreme plausibility of the temptation calls our attention. The deluded victim only tastes, or expects to taste, the honeycomb: only hears the wily smoothness of the charmer’s voice. (Pro 2:16 ; Pro 6:24 ; Pro 7:21 .) But never is the beginning so sweet as the end is bitter. God shows the wormwood — the two-edged sword (Compare Psa 55:21 ) — her path of death — every step taking hold of hell, as if invading it with a high hand; grasping it as her home. One feature of the tempter’s wiliness is most remarkable.†1 She winds herself in a thousand moveable ways, to meet the varying humours and circumstances (Pro 7:21 ); she works upon every weakness; seizes every unguarded moment — all with one deeply-hidden object — lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life. The checks of conscience must be diverted. No time must be given for reflection. The intrusion of one serious thought might break the spell, and open the way of escape. (See Psa 119:59 . Eze 18:28 . Luk 15:17 .)
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Can we wonder then at parental earnestness, forcing back the children playing on the brink of a precipice? Hear now, O ye children! We mean no austere restraint upon youthful pleasures. Only avoid the tempter’s touch, her word, even her look. Remove thy way far from her. Not only go not in to her; but — such is the contagion — come not near the door. (Compare Pro 4:14-15 ; Pro 6:27-28 .) To thrust ourselves into temptation, is to throw ourselves out of God’s protection. The snare as it approaches becomes more enticing. The voice of wisdom therefore is — "Flee youthful lusts."
The loss of honour (Pro 6:32-33 . Gen 38:23-26 ), taking the crown from the victim’s head (2Sa 12:11 ; 2Sa 15:30 . Neh 13:26 ); years given to the cruel mockers of his misery (Pro 6:26, Pro 6:35 ; Pro 29:3 . Job 31:12 . Hos 7:9 . Luk 15:13, Luk 15:30 . Compare Sir 5:6 ); servitude in a stranger’s house (Luk 15:15-16 ): consumption, slowly bringing the body to the grave (1Co 6:18 ) — such is the bitter fruit of the neglected warning. Add to this the voice of conscience at the last; telling of slighted privileges, stifled convictions, abused knowledge. And will not this be the sting of thousands instructed in our schools, or the children of godly parents, now despising the reproofs of God, and the voice of their teachers; proclaiming their shame openly; perhaps making Christian assemblies the scenes of almost all evil? (Num 25:6-7 . Eze 8:5-16 .)
Such is the picture of sin. Its "pleasure is but for a season;" "its wages death eternal." (Heb 11:25 . Rom 6:23 .) Every sin unrepented here will bring its perpetual torment in eternity. Impenitence does not put away its sorrow. It only delays it to mourn at the last, when mercy shall have fled away for ever (Pro 1:24-31 ), and nothing will remain, but the piercing cry of the accusing conscience — "Son! remember." (Luk 16:25 .) There are no infidels in eternity, and but few on a death-bed. Sinner! the path of life is now open to thee. Ponder it anxiously, prayerfully. The light of the word, and the teaching of the Spirit, guide thee to it.
Footnotes:
†1 Schultens in loco. Pro 1:18 ; Pro 7:17 ; Pro 9:18 . 1Co 6:9-10 . Rev 21:8 .
Charles Bridges, An Exposition of the Book of Proverbs (1846) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv2, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22 Thoughts. Or wisdom; and act with discretion. --- Mind,…
Thoughts. Or wisdom; and act with discretion. --- Mind, &c., is omitted in Hebrew and St. Jerome. (Calmet) --- By woman all concupiscence, or the inducement to sin, is commonly understood. We must not think of such things. (Worthington)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 8. Warning against intercourse with wanton women, and against…
8. Warning against intercourse with wanton women, and against the ruinous consequences of licentiousness
Pro_5:1-23
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1 My son, give heed to my wisdom,
to my prudence incline thine ear,
2 so that thou maintain discretion,
and thy lips preserve knowledge.
3 For the lips of the strange woman distil honey,
and smoother than oil is her mouth:
4 but at last she is bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a two-edged sword.
5 Her feet go down to death,
her steps lay hold upon the lower world;
6 the path of life she never treadeth,
her steps stray, she knoweth not whither.
7 And now, ye children, hearken to me,
and depart not from the words of my mouth!
8 Turn away thy path from her,
and draw not near to the door of her house!
9 that thou mayest not give to others thine honor,
and thy years to a cruel one;
10 that strangers may not sate themselves with thy strength,
and (the fruit of) thy labor (abide) in a stranger’s house,
11 and thou must groan at last
when thy body and thy flesh are consumed,
12 and say, “Why then did I hate correction
and my heart despised reproof?
13 and I did not hearken to the voice of my teachers,
did not incline mine ear to those that instructed me?
14 Well nigh had I fallen into utter destruction
in the midst of the assembly and the congregation!”
15 Drink waters from thine own cistern,
and flowing streams from thine own well spring!
16 Shall thy streams flow abroad
as water brooks in the streets ?
17 Let them be thine alone,
and none belong to strangers with thee.
18 Let thy fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of thy youth,
19 the lovely hind, the graceful gazelle;
let her bosom charm thee always;
in her love delight thyself evermore.
20 Why, my son, wouldst thou be fascinated with a stranger,
and embrace the bosom of a wanton woman?
21 For before the eyes of Jehovah are the ways of man,
and all his paths He marketh out.
22 His own sins overtake him, the evil doer,
and by the cords of his sin is he held fast.
23 He 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 הַט follows its object, Bött., § 960, c. ex. (comp. critical note on Pro_4:20).—A.]
Pro_5:2.—לִשְׁמֹר. The construction in the Hebrew is the same as in Pro_2:8; the Infinitive with לְ, is followed by the finite verb. [יִנְצֹרוּ, a masc. verbal form with a fern, subject,—comp. note on Pro_4:10. For emphasis or euphony the assimilation of the נ is sometimes dispensed with. Bött, §1100,3.—A.]
Pro_5:14.—[הָיִיתִי, a Perf. with the signification of a pluperf. subj.; a very little and I should have fallen. Comp. Bött., § 947, d.—A.]
Pro_5:18 [Bött., § 964, 6, makes תְּהִי 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.—[יִלְכְּדֻנוֹ, a unique example of the attachment of וֹ, a more common suffix of the Perf., to the lengthened form of the third plur masc. of the Imperf. See Bött., §§ 881, λ,—1042, 5,—1047, ex., correcting Ewald, § 250 b, who makes the נ 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 David’s 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 Beiträge zu J. A. Bengel’s Schrifterklärung, 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 discretion—literally reflection, מְזִמּוֹת, 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 lips—not precisely the heart, Pro_3:1—are 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” (נֹפֶת, 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 woman’s words that are sweet as honey, Pro_7:14 sq.—Smoother, than oil is her mouth.—The palate (חֵךְ) 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 bitter—literally “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 (לַעֲנָה, for which the LXX inaccurately gives χολή, 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 רֹאשׁ gives an intimation” (Umbreit; comp. Celsius, Hierobot. I. 480; Oken, Naturgesch. III: 763 sq.).—As a two-edged sword—literally as a sword of mouths, a sword with more than one mouth (חֶרֶב פִּיוֹת comp. Psa_149:6; Jdg_3:16). [The multiplicative plural is sometimes used thus even of objects that occur in pairs; comp. Bött., 702, 3—A.] “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 hold—i.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 שְׁאוֹל 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, חַיִּים in Pro_5:6, which plainly has amoral import. Comp, Fuerst’s Handw.—A.] Comp. Pro_2:18 ; Pro_7:27,—and on שְׁאוֹל, Hades, the lower world, Pro_1:12.—The path of life she never treadeth.—The verb פלם, here just as in Pro_14:26, means to measure off (not to “consider,” as Bertheau maintains), to travel over. The particle פֶּן, 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 תְּפַּלֵּם as second pers. masc.; “viam vitas ne forte expendas, vagantur orbitæ 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. Bertheau’s 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 enter—A.] The LXX, Vulg. and other ancient versions already contain the more correct interpretation, regarding פֶּן as here essentially equivalent to לֹא; 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.—נָעוּ 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 לֹא תֵּדַע 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.—וְעַתָּה 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 others—i.e., as an adulterer who is apprehended and exposed to public disgrace.—And thy years to a cruel one—i.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.—כֹחַ might, strength, is here undoubtedly equivalent to property, possessions, as the parallel עֲעָבֶיךָ, 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 last—literally “at thine end,” i.e., when thou hast done, when all is over with thee. נָהַם 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 (καὶ μεταμεληθήσῃ) appear to have read וְנִהַמְתָּ a gloss containing a true explanation, but needlessly weakening the genuine sense of the word.—When thy body and flesh are consumed. בְּשָֽׂרְךָ וּשְׁאֵרֶֽךָ, 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 destruction—i.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 congregation—Hebrew קָהָל and עֵדָה—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 קָהָל is in general always a convened assembly, convocatio; עֵדָה 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 love’s 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 spring—With בּוֹר, i.e., properly “cistern,” an artificially prepared reservoir, there is associated in the second clause בְּאֵר, 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 נוֹזְלִים, 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 פֶּן (Gesenius, Umbreit) or אַל (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, Döderlein, 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.—יְהִי “attaches itself formally to the jussive יִהְיוּ 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. בָּרוּךְ 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 Hitzig’s view, the connection with the second clause recommends above that of Umbreit, which explains בָּרוּךְ 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 וַיְהִי instead of יְהִי, and likewise וְשָֽׂמַחְתָּ instead of וּשְׂמַח, 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” (צְבִי, Tαβιθά and its equivalent Δορκάς as a woman’s 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 testimony—and no sweeter comparison can be found.” Thomson, The Land and the Book, I., 252—A.]—Let her bosom charm thee always.—Instead of דַּדֶּיהָ, her breasts, the Versio Veneta reads דּדֶיֽהָ her love (αἱ ταύτης φιλίαι), 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. שָׁגָה 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 שָׁגָח 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 (תַּחְבֵּק חֵק) testifies to the correctness of the reading דַּדֶּיהָ 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 Jehovah’s eyes are the ways of man, and all his paths He marketh.—(פִּלֵּם here also not to “ponder,” but to “mark out,” see note on Pro_5:6.) An important proof text not merely for God’s omniscience, but also for His special providence and “concursus” [coöperation 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 יִלְכְּדֻנוֹ 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 בְּאֵין מוּסָר, and not “without correction” (Umbreit). The בְּ is not circumstantial, but causal (instrumental), as in the 2d member.—As to the meaning of שָׁגָה 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 devil’s 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 man’s 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 one’s 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 Father’s 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 sinner’s chief labor is to hide his sin; and his labor is all lost. Sin becomes the instrument of punishing sinners—retribution in the system of nature, set in motion by the act of sin].
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23 regard--or, "observe."
regard--or, "observe."
keep--preserve constantly.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23 EXHORTATIONS TO CHASTITY, Pro_5:1-14.
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.)
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1. Understanding — Discernment. Compare Pro_6:20; Pro_7:1.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 19, 21, 23 Tenth Address. Chap. 5. Pro_5:1-23
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).
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1. bow] Rather, incline, R.V., because the same Heb. word is so rendered Pro_4:20.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23 (3) Her mouth is smoother than oil.—The experience of…
V.
(3) Her mouth is smoother than oil.—The experience of David also with Ahitophel (Psa_55:21).
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–23 Vers. 1-23. Eighth admonitory discourse. Warning against adultery, and…
Vers. 1-23. 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 age to the married man may 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 (vers. 1-6).
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(2) The main or didactic section (vers. 7-20), embracing
(a) warnings against adulterous intercourse with "the strange woman" (vers. 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 (vers 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 vers. 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 interpretation a 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 adultery the violation, in its most repulsive form, of the sacred obligations of marriage. The whole discourse is an impressive commentary on the seventh commandment.
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 Psa_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).
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON Vers. 1-14. Meretricious pleasures and their results.
I GENERAL ADMONITION. (Vers. 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" (ver. 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. (Ver. 3; comp. Pro_2:16) Her lips are honeyed with compliments and flattery. (comp. Son_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, vanity at 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. (Vers. 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. Ver. 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. (Vers. 7-13) A gloomy vista opens, in prospect of which the warning is urgently renewed (vers. 7, 8).
1. The exposure of the detected adulterer. (Ver. 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. (Ver. 10) The punishment of adultery under the Law was stoning. (Lev_20:10 Deu_22:22, sqq.) Possibly this might be commuted into the forfeiture of goods and enslavement to the injured husband.
3. Remorse. (Vers. 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 (ver. 14). J.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON Vers. 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 (ver. 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 (vers. 3, 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 (ver. 6); it is a shame to a man to surrender his manly virtue to one so utterly undeserving of his honour (vers. 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. (Vers. 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 (ver. 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 (vers. 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 (ver. 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.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23 My son, attend unto my wisdom.
Pro_5:1-14
My son, attend unto my wisdom.
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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.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v22 "His own iniquities shall take the wicked, And he…
CHAPTER 6
THE WAYS AND ISSUES OF SIN
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"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?
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 21 ILLUSTRATION OF Pro_5:19
ILLUSTRATION OF Pro_5:19
Here we have started up, and sent leaping over the plain, another of Solomon’s 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.—Thomson’s Land and the Book.
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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 Lange’s 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.” Lange’s 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. Lange’s 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 PARAGRAPH—Pro_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 gambler’s 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 man’s 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 solidarity—this union of interests—is 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, God’s 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 manhood’s 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 double—a threefold—hedge 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 man’s 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 men’s. We are not like the builders of Noah’s 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 God’s 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 thief’s 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 God’s 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 reader’s 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 can—to touch some soul with an effectiveness which no other can. Wonderful is this well within—inexhaustible and ever active.
II. Man is bound to use these resources. “Drink waters out of thine own cistern;” do not live on others. Self-drawing—First: 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 subject—First: Indicates the kind of service one man can spiritually render another. To priest, rabbi, sectary, I would say—Man 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 subject—Secondly: 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 subject—Thirdly: 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 man’s duty nor satisfy a woman’s 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 youth”—this 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 man’s question.—Miller.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v22
Proverbs
THE CORDS OF SIN
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Pro 5:22.
In Hosea’s tender picture of the divine training of Israel which, alas! failed of its effect, we read, ‘I drew them with cords of a man,’ which is further explained as being ‘with bands of love.’ The metaphor in the prophet’s mind is probably that of a child being ‘taught to go’ and upheld in its first tottering steps by leading-strings. God drew Israel, though Israel did not yield to the drawing. But if these gentle, attractive influences, which ever are raying out from Him, are resisted, another set of cords, not now sustaining and attracting, but hampering and fettering, twine themselves round the rebellious life, and the man is like a wild creature snared in the hunter’s toils, enmeshed in a net, and with its once free limbs restrained. The choice is open to us all, whether we will let God draw us to Himself with the sweet manlike cords of His educative and forbearing love, or, flinging off these, which only foolish self-will construes into limitations, shall condemn ourselves to be prisoned within the narrow room of our own sins. We may choose which condition shall be ours, but one or other of them must be ours. We may either be drawn by the silken cord of God’s love or we may be ‘holden by the cords’ of our sins.
In both clauses of our text evil deeds done are regarded as having a strange, solemn life apart from the doer of them, by which they become influential factors in his subsequent life. Their issues on others may be important, but their issues on him are the most important of all. The recoil of the gun on the shoulder of him who fired it is certain, whether the cartridge that flew from its muzzle wounded anything or not. ‘His own iniquities shall take the wicked’-they ring him round, a grim company to whom he has given an independent being, and who have now ‘taken’ him prisoner and laid violent hands on him. A long since forgotten novel told of the fate of ‘a modern Prometheus,’ who made and put life into a dreadful creature in man’s shape, that became the curse of its creator’s life. That tragedy is repeated over and over again. We have not done with our evil deeds when we have done them, but they, in a very terrible sense, begin to be when they are done. We sow the seeds broadcast, and the seed springs up dragon’s teeth.
The view of human experience set forth, especially in the second clause of this text, directs our gaze into dark places, into which it is not pleasant to look, and many of you will accuse me of preaching gloomily if I try to turn a reflective eye inwards upon them, but no one will be able to accuse me of not preaching truly. It is impossible to enumerate all the cords that make up the net in which our own evil doings hold us meshed, but let me point out some of these.
I. Our evil deeds become evil habits.
We all know that anything once done becomes easier to do again. That is true about both good and bad actions, but ‘ill weeds grow apace,’ and it is infinitely easier to form a bad habit than a good one. The young shoot is green and flexible at first, but it soon becomes woody and grows high and strikes deep. We can all verify the statement of our text by recalling the tremors of conscience, the self-disgust, the dread of discovery which accompanied the first commission of some evil deed, and the silence of undisturbed, almost unconscious facility, that accompanied later repetitions of it. Sins of sense and animal passion afford the most conspicuous instances of this, but it is by no means confined to these. We have but to look steadily at our own lives to be aware of the working of this solemn law in them, however clear we may be of the grosser forms of evil deeds. For us all it is true that custom presses on us ‘with a weight, heavy as frost and deep almost as life,’ and that it is as hard for the Ethiopian to change his skin or the leopard his spots as for those who ‘are accustomed to do evil’ to ‘do good.’
But experience teaches not only that evil deeds quickly consolidate into evil habits, but that as the habit grips us faster, the poor pleasure for the sake of which the acts are done diminishes. The zest which partially concealed the bitter taste of the once eagerly swallowed morsel is all but gone, but the morsel is still sought and swallowed. Impulses wax as motives wane, the victim is like an ox tempted on the road to the slaughter-house at first by succulent fodder held before it, and at last driven into it by pricking goads and heavy blows. Many a man is so completely wrapped in the net which his own evil deeds have made for him, that he commits the sin once more, not because he finds any pleasure in it, but for no better reason than that he has already committed it often, and the habit is his master.
There are many forms of evil which compel us to repeat them for other reasons than the force of habit. For instance, a fraudulent book-keeper has to go on making false entries in his employer’s books in order to hide his peculations. Whoever steps on to the steeply sloping road to which self-pleasing invites us, soon finds that he is on an inclined plane well greased, and that compulsion is on him to go on, though he may recoil from the descent, and be shudderingly aware of what the end must be. Let no man say, ‘I will do this doubtful thing once only, and never again.’ Sin is like an octopus, and if the loathly thing gets the tip of one slender filament round a man, it will envelop him altogether and drag him down to the cruel beak.
Let us then remember how swiftly deeds become habits, and how the fetters, which were silken at first, rapidly are exchanged for iron chains, and how the craving increases as fast as the pleasure from gratifying it diminishes. Let us remember that there are many kinds of evil which seem to force their own repetition, in order to escape their consequences and to hide the sin. Let us remember that no man can venture to say, ‘This once only will I do this thing.’ Let us remember that acts become habits with dreadful swiftness, and let us beware that we do not forge chains of darkness for ourselves out of our own godless deeds.
II. Our evil deeds imprison us for good.
The tragedy of human life is that we weave for ourselves manacles that fetter us from following and securing the one good for which we are made. Our evil past holds us in a firm grip. The cords which confine our limbs are of our own spinning. What but ourselves is the reason why so many of us do not yield to God’s merciful drawings of us to Himself? We have riveted the chains and twined the net that holds us captive, by our own acts. It is we ourselves who have paralysed our wills, so that we see the light of God but as a faint gleam far away, and dare not move to follow the gleam. It is we who have smothered or silenced our conscience and perverted our tastes, and done violence to all in us that ‘thirsteth for God, even the living God.’ Alas! how many of us have let some strong evil habit gain such a grip of us that it has overborne our higher impulses, and silenced the voice within us that cries out for the living God! We are kept back from Him by our worse selves, and whoever lets that which is lowest in him keep him from following after God, who is his ‘being’s end and aim,’ is caught and prisoned by the cords woven and knitted out of his sins. Are there none of us who know, when they are honest with themselves, that they would have been true Christians long since, had it not been for one darling evil that they cannot make up their minds to cast off? Wills disabled from strongly willing the good, consciences silenced as when the tongue is taken out of a bell-buoy on a shoal, tastes perverted and set seeking amid the transitory treasures of earth for what God only can give them, these are the ‘cords’ out of which are knotted the nets that hold so many of us captive, and hinder our feet from following after God, even the living God, in following and possessing whom is the only liberty of soul, the one real joy of life.
III. Our evil deeds work their own punishment.
I do not venture to speak of the issues beyond the grave. It is not for a man to press these on his brethren. But even from the standpoint of this Book of Proverbs, it is certain that ‘the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth, much more the wicked and the sinner.’ Probably it was the earthly consequences of wrongdoing that were in the mind of the proverb-maker. And we are not to let our Christian enlightenment as to the future rob us of the certainty, written large on human life here and now, that with whatever apparent exceptions in regard to prosperous sin and tried righteousness, it is yet true that ‘every transgression and disobedience receives its just recompense of reward.’ Life is full of consequences of evil-doing. Even here and now we reap as we have sown. Every sin is a mistake, even if we confine our view to the consequences sought for in this life by it, and the consequences actually encountered. ‘A rogue is a roundabout fool.’ True, we believe that there is a future reaping so complete that it makes the partial harvests gathered here seem of small account. But the framer of this proverb, who had little knowledge of that future, had seen enough in the meditative survey of this present to make him sure that the consequences of evil-doing were certain, and in a very true sense, penal. And leaving out of sight all that lies in the dark beyond, surely if we sum up the lamed aspirations, the perverted tastes, the ossifying of noble emotions, the destruction of the balance of the nature, the blinding of the eye of the soul, the lowering and narrowing of the whole nature, and many another wound to the best in man that come as the sure issue of evil deeds, we do not need to doubt that every sinful man is miserably ‘holden with the cords of his sin.’ Life is the time for sowing, but it is a time for reaping too, and we do not need to wait for death to experience the truth of the solemn warning that ‘he who soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.’ Let us, then, do no deeds without asking ourselves, What will the harvest be? and if from any deeds that we have done we have to reap sorrow or inward darkness, let us be thankful that by experience our Father is teaching us how bitter as well as evil a thing it is to forsake Him, and cast off His fear from our wayward spirits.
IV. The cords can be loosened.
Bitter experience teaches that the imprisoning net clings too tightly to be stripped from our limbs by our own efforts. Nay rather, the net and the captive are one, and he who tries to cast off the oppression which hinders him from following that which is good is trying to cast off himself. The desperate problem that fronts every effort at self-emendation has two bristling impossibilities in it: one, how to annihilate the past; one, how to extirpate the evil that is part of my very self, and yet to keep the self entire. The very terms of the problem show it to be insoluble, and the climax of all honest efforts at making a clean thing of an unclean by means within reach of the unclean thing itself, is the despairing cry, ‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?’ But to men writhing in the grip of a sinful past, or paralysed beyond writhing, and indifferent, because hopeless, or because they have come to like their captivity, comes one whose name is ‘the Breaker,’ whose mission it is to proclaim liberty to the captives, and whose hand laid on the cords that bind a soul, causes them to drop harmless from the limbs and sets the bondsman free. Many tongues praise Jesus for many great gifts, but His proper work, and that peculiar to Himself alone, is His work on the sin and the sins of the world. He deals with that which no man can deal with for himself or by his own power. He can cancel our past, so that it shall not govern our future. He can give new power to fight the old habits. He can give a new life which owes nothing to the former self, and is free from taint from it. He can break the entail of sin, the ‘law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus’ can make any of us, even him who is most tied and bound by the chain of his sins, ‘free from the law of sin and death.’ We cannot break the chains that fetter us, and our own struggles, like the plungings of a wild beast caught in the toils, but draw the bonds tighter. But the chains that cannot be broken can be melted, and it may befall each of us as it befell the three Hebrews in the furnace, when the king ‘was astonished’ and asked, ‘Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?’ and wonderingly declared, ‘Lo, I see four men loose walking in the midst of the fire, and the aspect of the fourth is like a son of the gods.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Unholy Passion. Hallowed Love
Unholy Passion. Hallowed Love
A dissuasive from immorality addressed exclusively to men. The two leading thoughts are (1) the disastrous consequences of adultery; loss of honour, property, life, opportunity of repentance, and (2) the sufficiency and desirableness of conjugal love.
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6. Read, 'Lest she should ponder the path of life, her ways are unstable, and she knoweth not.' So far is she from entering on the level path which leads to life, her ways are unstable and she is reckless about it.
9-11. All the fruits of a man's labour are preyed on by the false-hearted woman and her confederates:
'Gaming, Women and Wine,
While they laugh, they make a man pine.'
14. He has only just escaped being brought before the assembly of the people, who would have sentenced him to death (Lev_20:19; Deu_22:22).
15-17. A man's pleasures should be sought at home. Read, with RV, 'Should thy springs be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets?'
18. It is blessed when enjoyed legitimately.
19. The opening words are an exclamation: 'Lovely hind! Charming wild goat!'
22. He has had the instruction, but took no heed of it. Now it is too late.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v5 Heb. "Sheol," (See Scofield "Hab 2:5")
hell
Heb. "Sheol," (See Scofield "Hab 2:5")
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 1. Shun the strange woman and sinful passion (Pro…
CHAPTER 5
1. Shun the strange woman and sinful passion (Pro 5:1-14)
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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.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 15 Warning against Wantonness
Warning against Wantonness
v. 1. My son, attend unto my wisdom, giving heed to its precepts, and bow thine ear, in the attitude of the most careful listening, to my understanding, both the possession of knowledge and the proper exercise of discrimination in applying it to the various situations of life being urged,
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v. 2. that thou mayest regard discretion, the reflection and consideration needed for circumspect behavior, and that thy lips may keep knowledge, preserving its instructions word for word and repeating them often, lest they be forgotten. This is placed in contrast to the seductions of the wanton woman.
v. 3. For the lips of a strange woman, of a harlot, drop as an honeycomb, with seductive invitations, and her mouth is smoother than oil, in framing flattering and alluring speeches;
v. 4. but her end, her future, the reward which is sure to strike her, is bitter as wormwood, the universal emblem of poisonous bitterness, sharp as a two-edged sword, such is the final result of yielding to her seductions.
v. 5. Her feet go down to death, whither she leads all those who have yielded to her blandishments; her steps take hold on hell, the course of her life ends in everlasting destruction.
v. 6. Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, or, "Far from treading the pathway of life," her ways are movable, her steps stray from that which is right and good, that thou canst not know them, rather, she knows not whither and does not seem to care, the result being that all who attempt to follow her will be stricken with a dizziness which will prevent them from seeing and considering in a normal manner.
v. 7. Hear me now, therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth, this admonition being based upon the picture just drawn and introducing the following warning.
v. 8. Remove thy way far from her, for safety, in the case of this temptation, does not lie in attempting to give battle, but in fleeing and keeping one’s distance, and come not nigh the door of her house, thereby risking and inviting temptation,
v. 9. lest thou give thine honor unto others, for there is not only the exposure of the fornicator to be considered, but also the fact that the harlot and her favorites will succeed in taking the respect of men from their victim, and thy years unto the cruel, the wanton woman and the procurers employed by her, who calmly and cruelly ruin the health of those who are seduced by ~them and take their riches into the bargain;
v. 10. lest strangers be filled with thy wealth, enjoying their fill in consuming the, labor and strength of their victim, and thy labors, what a man has worked for with hard labor, be in the house of a stranger, the harlot being so designated because originally all that plied her trade were foreigners,
v. 11. and thou mourn at the last, groaning in distress when it is too late, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, this being the punishment which will eventually strike the libertine,
v. 12. and say, How have I hated instruction, as here given, and my heart despised reproof, by which earnest men, true friends, tried to keep him from the path of lewdness;
v. 13. and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me! Such is the vain lament of the ruined sinner over his neglect of warning and his sad fate in being brought to public disgrace.
v. 14. I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly, literally, "Almost I had been in the extremity of evil in the midst of assembly and congregation," that is, he had just barely escaped the height of ruin, open condemnation in the midst of the congregation, which might have resulted in severe punishment for him. Such is the way of sin, to hold alluring temptations before the eyes of the unwary and then to plunge him into the greatest misery, the victim’s repentance often coming too late.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 18, 20, 22 General Information:
General Information:
The writer speaks as a father teaching his children.
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incline your ears
Here the word "ears" represents the person who is listening. The writer speaks of listening attentively to someone as if it were leaning forward so that the ears are closer to the one speaking. See how you translated this in Proverbs 4:20. AT: "listen attentively" (See: Synecdoche and Metaphor)
discretion
Discretion is the quality of being careful with regard to one's actions and speech. See how you translated this in Proverbs 1:4.
your lips may protect knowledge
Here the word "lips" represents the person who speaks. The writer speaks of a person being careful only to say what is true as if the person's lips were protecting knowledge. AT: "you will speak only what is true" (See: Synecdoche and Metaphor)
translationWords
wise
know
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 5, 9, 11, 15, 19, 21, 22, 23 5:1-23 These instructions on embracing one’s wife and avoiding…
5:1-23 These instructions on embracing one’s wife and avoiding immoral women were originally addressed to young men just beginning their professional careers (see also 2:16-22; 7:1-27). This topic is also popular in ancient Egyptian wisdom writing.
5:1-2 Paying attention to instruction results in discernment—the ability to tell a right action from a wrong one. These instructions are vitally important when dealing with an immoral woman.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.