Proverbs 5

¹My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding:

Pr 5:1-23. A warning against the seductive arts of wicked women, enforced by considering the advantages of chastity, and the miserable end of the wicked. 1. This connection of wisdom and understanding is frequent (Pr 2:2; 3:7); the first denotes the use of wise means for wise ends; the other, the exercise of a proper discrimination in their discovery.

²That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.

2. regard--or, “observe.” keep--preserve constantly.

³For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:

3. (Compare Pr 2:16). Her enticing promises are deceitful.

⁴But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword.

4. her end--literally, “her future,” in sense of reward, what follows (compare Psa 37:37; 73:17). Its nature is evinced by the use of figures, opposite those of Pr 5:3. The physical and moral suffering of the deluded profligate are notoriously terrible.

⁵Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.

5. feet ... , steps--that is, course of life ends in death.

⁶Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.

6. her ways ... know--Some prefer, “that she may not ponder the path of life,” &c.; but perhaps a better sense is, “her ways are varied, so as to prevent your knowledge of her true character, and so of true happiness.”

⁸Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house:

⁹Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel:

8-9. Avoid the slightest temptation.

¹⁰Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger;

10. wealth--literally, “strength,” or the result of it. labours--the fruit of thy painful exertions (Psa 127:2). There may be a reference to slavery, a commuted punishment for death due the adulterer (De 22:22).

¹¹And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,

11. at the last--the end, or reward (compare Pr 5:4). mourn--roar in pain. flesh and ... body--the whole person under incurable disease.

¹²And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;

¹³And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!

¹⁴I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.

12-14. The ruined sinner vainly laments his neglect of warning and his sad fate in being brought to public disgrace.

¹⁵Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.

¹⁶Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets.

¹⁷Let them be only thine own, and not strangers' with thee.

¹⁸Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.

¹⁹Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.

²⁰And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?

15-20. By figures, in which well, cistern, and fountain [Pr 5:15, 18] represent the wife, and rivers of waters [Pr 5:16] the children, men are exhorted to constancy and satisfaction in lawful conjugal enjoyments. In Pr 5:16, fountains (in the plural) rather denote the produce or waters of a spring, literally, “what is from a spring,” and corresponds with “rivers of waters.”

²¹For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings.

21. The reason, God’s eye is on you,

²²His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.

²³He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.

22-23. and He will cause sin to bring its punishment.