Proverbs 5

Proverbs 5:1

H. The Folly of Immorality (Chap. 5)5:1, 2 Solomon is anxious to warn his son against one of the besetting sins of youth. Those who pay attention to sound advice and learn from the experience of others develop true discretion. Because their speech is pure and true, it protects them from getting into trouble. Nothing but the Word of God is an adequate safeguard against the seduction and delusion running rampant in our day. Therefore, Paul exhorts Timothy to stick to the Word when surrounded by apostasy (2Ti_3:13-17). 5:3 The rest of chapter 5 deals with what has been called “the oldest profession"prostitution. The immoral woman is a prostitute, one who hires herself out for debased purposes. She may be thought of as a symbol of sin, of the evil world, of false religion, of idolatry, or of any other seductive temptation that the sons of men meet. Her lips . . . drip honeysweet, smooth, and specious. She is a flatterer, a slick, clever talker. 5:4 At first she seems pleasant and desirable, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood. It is the old storysin is attractive as a prospect but hideous in retrospect. The price of going to bed with her is enormousguilty conscience, remorse, scandal, venereal disease, wrecked marriage, broken home, mental disturbance, and a host of other ills. 5:5, 6 She leads her victims down a one-way street to death and hell. Abandoned woman, she cares nothing for the good life. Her character is unstable and shifty, and she doesn’t realize how low she has fallen. “The high road of Life is not for her, shifty and slippery are her tracks” (Moffatt). 5:7 As he considers all that is at stake, Solomon injects a solemn warning to his children, to hear him and not depart from what he has to say. 5:8 One great safeguard is to stay as far away from the temptation as possible. There is no use asking God for deliverance if we insist on toying with objects or places that are associated with sin. In some cases, it is necessary to actually flee. Joseph did this, and although he lost his coat, he maintained his purity and gained a crown. In order to obey verse 8 we may have to get a new job, move to a different location, or take some other equally decided step. 5:9, 10 Those who visit the brothel squander their manly vigor, and give the best of their golden years to a cruel temptress. In addition, “respectable” citizens who have secret immoral liaisonswhether literally or through pornography, “x-rated” films, and videotapesoften find themselves the victims of blackmail. If they don’t pay “hush money,” they are threatened with public exposure. 5:11 The end of such a life is punctuated with a protracted groan, as the body is racked with gonorrhea, syphilis, blindness, locomotor ataxia, AIDS, and emotional disturbances. 5:12, 13 There is the added grief of regret and remorse. The burned-out wreck reproaches himself for not having obeyed his parents, his Sunday School teachers, his Christian friends. He could have avoided oceans of misery, but he was too pig-headed to be warned. 5:14 And there is the possibility of being brought to public disgrace. That seems to be the thought in this verse, although it might also include the idea of being sentenced for his misdeeds. 5:15, 16 In figurative language, Solomon counsels his son to find all his sexual satisfaction with his own wife in a life of pure married love. If we follow the KJV, this verse describes the blessings of a faithful marriage relationship reaching out to family and friends. The NKJV changes the verse to a question: “Should your fountains be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the streets?” This is a picturesque description of the utter waste of one’s reproductive powers that is involved in going in to a prostitute. Knox translates the verse, “Thence let thy offspring abound, like waters from thy own fountain flowing through the public streets.” The wife here is the fountain, and the waters are the children, tearing out of the house and playing happily in the streets. 5:17 The true marriage relationship is an exclusive one, and the children enjoy the security of “belonging.” So this verse warns against the tragedy of illegitimate children or the doubtful parentage of those who are born as a result of promiscuous sexual union. 5:18 The fountain here again refers to a man’s own wife. Let him find his joy and companionship in the wife of his youth. In “forsaking all others” a man finds, as Michael Griffiths expressed it, that “there is no end to the richness that springs out of that exclusive relationship, and the warmth of the welcome that reaches out from his home to bless others.” 5:19, 20 Let a man reserve the intimacies of marital union for his wife, treating her as the loving, graceful woman she is. Let her breasts be his satisfying portion, and may he always be enraptured with her love. For why should he be enraptured by the false charms of an immoral woman? Or why fold a seductress into his arms? 5:21, 22 Though no human eye may follow him to the brothel, the motel room, or the secret rendezvous, yet God sees all that takes place. “Secret sin on earth is open scandal in heaven.” Man cannot sin and get away with it. Sin’s built-in consequences are inescapable. As Jay Adams counsels: Sinful habits are hard to break, but if they are not broken, they will bind the client ever more tightly. He is held fast by these ropes of his own sin. He finds that sin spirals in a downward cycle, pulling him along. He is captured and tied up by sin’s ever-tightening cords. At length he becomes sin’s slave. 5:23 Ellicott calls this verse the final scene in the life of the profligate. He would not exercise self-control. Now he dies as a result. “For lack of sense he dies; his utter folly ruins him” (Moffatt). The poet Shelley is an illustration of this passage. In his conceit, he ridiculed the idea of monogamous marriage, as if it were a matter of marrying one and disappointing thousands. The results of his approach, according to Griffiths, were desertions, suicides, illegitimate children, and jealousy. G. Sampson questioned “whether in the life of any poet there is such a trail of disasters as that which this `beautiful but ineffectual’ angel left behind him.”