Proverbs 5:1-23
1 My son, pay attention to my wisdom;
Lend your ear to my understanding,
2 That you may preserve discretion,
And your lips may keep knowledge.
3 For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey,
And her mouth is smoother than oil;
4 But in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
Sharp as a two-edged sword.
5 Her feet go down to death,
Her steps lay hold of hell.
6 Lest you ponder her path of life—
Her ways are unstable;
You do not know them.
7 Therefore hear me now, my children,
And do not depart from the words of my mouth.
8 Remove your way far from her,
And do not go near the door of her house,
9 Lest you give your honor to others,
And your years to the cruel one;
10 Lest aliens be filled with your wealth,
And your labors go to the house of a foreigner;
11 And you mourn at last,
When your flesh and your body are consumed,
12 And say:
"How I have hated instruction,
And my heart despised correction!
13 I have not obeyed the voice of my teachers,
Nor inclined my ear to those who instructed me!
14 I was on the verge of total ruin,
In the midst of the assembly and congregation."
15 Drink water from your own cistern,
And running water from your own well.
16 Should your fountains be dispersed abroad,
Streams of water in the streets?
17 Let them be only your own,
And not for strangers with you.
18 Let your fountain be blessed,
And rejoice with the wife of your youth.
19 As a loving deer and a graceful doe,
Let her breasts satisfy you at all times;
And always be enraptured with her love.
20 For why should you, my son, be enraptured by an immoral woman,
And be embraced in the arms of a seductress?
21 For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD,
And He ponders all his paths.
22 His own iniquities entrap the wicked man,
And he is caught in the cords of his sin.
23 He shall die for lack of instruction,
And in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.
The warning is for men and women alike to avoid sexual immorality, to have a wife or husband and keep to them alone, just as we keep to the Lord as our God and not other false gods or idols. The example here is focused on a man with an immortal seductress, but the same is seen for women in other areas of the scriptures as well, for God made a man to have a wife and a woman to have a husband from the beginning as designed by God Himself (Genesis 2:24, 1 Corinthians 6:16, 18, 7:2). Wisdom then hears and acknowledges these facts foremost to have discretion and be well pleasing to Him. Immoral words drip like honey to entice into compromising God’s words, leading with temptation into disobedience, just as the serpent did with Eve in the Garden of Eden, causing her to accept the lie to her own wisdom apart from the truth and to then sin for that pleasure (Genesis 3:5-6). In the end, however, the result is the same, the bitterness of the results of sinful rejection of God’s commands for our good. Such is the path to perdition, not to God’s presence and good pleasure (His and our own). Just looking at the immoral person’s life shows a path of destruction in the instability of reasoning set at odds with God’s. Why journey along this path? Yes, may we always keep God’s word of command and principle and example in mind to avoid those who find pleasure in our destruction and avoid them! We are not to dishonor ourselves as God’s, but are to steer clear of such flattering seducers who offer only the fleeting pleasures of sin (Hebrews 11:25) which only consumes us, over the eternal pleasure of our Sovereign Creator, a poor exchange indeed. Instead of hating godly instruction and despising correction which spares us such destructive consequences observed by the assembly around us, we must love discipline and the corrective vectoring of God’s word for our counsel (2 Timothy 3:16-17) to keep us on the righteous path of holiness which honors our Savior who died for those and other sins. The lesson then is to be married and share that sexual intimacy with our wife as a man or our husband as a woman (there are no other combinations in God’s design for us), and not another for a moment let alone longer. We only cheat God and ourselves if we fall for such sexual immortality that desecrates these temples which He abides in. Our fountains of love and intimacy are to be guarded from pollution and treasured as the gift from the Lord which they are. Our pleasure is from the physical, emotional, and intellectual joining of one man to one woman in a spiritual and mystical union reflecting that of Christ and the church as His bride committed Body and soul to Him alone (Ephesians 5:31-32). We should therefore be enraptured with our spouse alone and not be tempted with another, just as we do not want other doctrines to take us from sole worship of our God in Christ such as the cults and other religions try to sell us to buy into. God sees all we do; we cannot hide from His view of what we think or do; why then wander off the narrow path set before us into a byway of temporary pleasure in titillating seduction? Our sins trap us and tie us down if we continue in them and do not confess and forsake them (1 John 1:9). It is therefore utter foolishness to deny this instruction of God’s word and go astray in such cosmic folly. May this passage of scripture remind us to be ever vigilant and committed to be valiant for the truth lived out and not just nodded at with mental assent. Remember that godly wisdom avoids the immortality trap.
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