History of the Kings s2

PROVERBS

LESSON 5 THE FOREIGN WOMAN

Two words are used for “strange” and “stranger:” one the Hebrew word Zur, an apostate Israelite woman gone over to the idolatrous impurities of heathen religion, the other nakar, a purely foreign woman of a similar character. The danger is religious rather than moral. Hence here in Proverbs 5:3 it is zur. The Companion Bible by Baxter

Proverbs 5:1-6

5:1 The Peril of Adultery 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. NKJV

5:1 My son, listen to my wisdom; incline your ear to my insight,

2 That you may have foresight, while your lips hold fast to knowledge.

3 For the lips of a forbidden or strange woman drip honey; her mouth is smoother than oil;

4 But in the end she is as bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.

5 Her feet go down to Death; her steps take hold of Sheol.

6 She does not chart a path of life; her course meanders for lack of knowledge.

Proverbs 5:1-6 Tanakh Hebrew Text

5:1-23: Lecture 8: Stick to your own wife.

(1) This is the first of three Lectures on the “strange woman” (5:1-23; 6:20-35; 7:1-27).

(2) See 2:16-20 notes.

(3) The adulteress is deadly (verses 3-6), and every man must keep away from her,

(4) Or he will pay a severe price (verses 7-14).

(5) Instead, a man should take his sexual pleasures with his own wife (verses 15-20).

(6) God sees everything and sin is inevitably punished (6:21-23). [Jewish Study Bible]

5:3-6: The strange woman’s words are sweet and seductive (2:16), but they leave a bitter aftertaste, and her dulcet speech turns out to be deadly. [Jewish Study Bible]

Proverbs 5:1-2

Here a fourth rule of life follows the three already given, 4:24, 25, and 26-27:

1 My son, attend unto my wisdom,

And incline thine ear to my prudence,

2 To observe discretion,

And that thy lips preserve knowledge.

3 For the lips of the adulteress distil honey,

And smoother than oil is her mouth,

4 But her end is bitter like wormwood,

Sharper than a two-edged sword.

PROVERBS LESSON FIVE

5 Her feet go down to death,

Her steps cleave to Hades.

6 She is far removed from entering the way of life,

Her steps wander without her observing it.

Proverbs 5:1-2

a. Wisdom and understanding increase with the age of those who earnestly seek after them.

b. It is the father of the youth who here requests a willing ear to his wisdom of life, gained in the way of many years' experience and observation.

c. In v. 2 are plans, projects, designs, for the most part in a bad sense, intrigues and artifices (vid. 24:8),

d. But also used of well-considered resolutions toward what is good, and hence of the purposes of God, Jeremiah 23:20.

e. Lips, which preserve knowledge are such as permit nothing to escape from them (Psalms 17:3b), which proceeds not from the knowledge of God,

f. And in Him of that, which is good and right, and aims at the working out of this knowledge;

g. The lips, which distil the honey of enticement stand opposite to the lips which distil knowledge;

h. The object of the admonition is to furnish a protection against the honey-lips.

(Keil and Delitzsch Commentary)

Proverbs 5:1

PROVERBS 5:1-23 -Prefatory exhortation to the study of wisdom:

1. Warning again the love of strange women, whose words are smooth, but who at last bring ruin on their followers (Proverbs 5:1-14).

2. Exhortation to the love of one's own wife alone, because the Lord ponders men's ways, and the wicked shall be holden with the cards of his own sins (Proverbs 5:15-23).

3. My son, attend unto my wisdom ... my understanding - i.e., unto the words of wisdom and understanding, which I address to thee.

4. He demands the youth's attention to a subject little thought of by the lovers of pleasure.

(Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown Commentary)

Proverbs 5:2

That thou mayest regard discretion, and (that) thy lips may keep knowledge - that they lips may have a discreet and intelligent reply to give to the allurements of pleasure; as, for instance, to those of the "strange woman" (Proverbs 5:3; 1:4; Psalms 119:100-101).

Proverbs 5:3

(1) Zaaraah (OT: 2114 to commit adultery) denotes the wife who belongs to another, or who does not belong to him to whom she gives herself or who goes after her (vid. Proverbs 2:16).

(2) She appears here as the betrayer of youth.

(3) The poet paints the love and amiableness, which she feigns with colors from the (Canticles, 4:11, cf. 5:16).

PROVERBS LESSON FIVE

5:3

(4) Nopet (OT: 5317 a dripping of honey) denotes the honey flowing of itself from the combs (tsuwpym), thus the purest and sweetest;

(5) Its root-word is not nuwp (OT: 5130), which means to shake, vibrate, and only mediately (when the object is a fluid) to scatter, sprinkle,

(6) But, as Schultens has observed, as verb naapat = Arabic Nafat, to bubble, to spring up, nafath, to blow, to spit out, to pour out.

(7) As the instrument of speech: smoother than oil (cf. Psalms 55:22), it shows itself when it gives forth amiable, gentle, impressive words (2:16, 6:24);

(8) Also our "schmeicheln" (= to flatter, caress) is equivalent to make smooth and fair; in the language of weavers it means to smooth the warp. (Keil & Delitzsch Commentary)

Proverbs 5:3

a. For the lips of a strange woman (note, Proverbs 2:16) drop (as) as a honeycomb.

b. "Thy lips," by "keeping knowledge" (Proverbs 5:2) of "the fear of the Lord,"

c. And "the judgments of the Lord," which are, in reality as well as appearance, "sweater than honey and the honey- comb" (Psalms 19:10),

d. Will counteract her "lips," which only in appearance "drop as a honey-comb."

e. Her mouth is smoother than oil - (Psalms 55:21,) which the oil of grace alone can counteract.

(Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown Commentary)

Proverbs 5:4-5

(1) In verse 4 the reverse of the sweet and smooth external is placed opposite to the attraction of the seducer, by whose influence the inconsiderate permits himself to be carried away:

(2) Her end, i.e., the last that is experienced of her, the final consequence of intercourse with her (cf. Proverbs 23:32), is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.

(3) The O.T. language regards bitterness and poison as related both in meaning and in reality, the word la`anaah (OT: 3939 wormwood).

(4) The end in, which the disguised seduction terminates, is bitter as the bitterest, and cutting as that, which cuts the most:

(5) Self-condemnation and a feeling of divine anger, anguish of heart, and destructive judgment.

(6) The feet of the adulteress go downward to death.

(7) Death, (so named from the stretching of the corpse after the stiffness of death), denotes the condition of departure from this side as a punishment,

(8) With, which is associated the idea of divine wrath.

(9) In Shª’owl, lie the ideas of the grave as a place of corruption,

(10) And of the under-world as the place of incorporeal shadow-life.

(11) Her steps hold fast to Hades is equivalent to; they strive after Hades and go straight to it; (Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament)

Proverbs 5:4

But her end is bitter as wormwood - (Ecclesiastes 7:26). The flesh promises every delight, but it leaves bitter dregs (Mercer). The strange woman's own end is bitter, and such must be also that of her follower. When she falls, so must he also. Sharp as a two-edged sword - therefore only to be foiled with "the Word of God," which is "quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword" (Hebrews 4:12). (Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown Commentary)

PROVERBS LESSON FIVE

Proverbs 5:5

Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell - in awful contrast to "taking hold of the paths of life" (Proverbs 2:19). Death of the body: spiritual death here, eternal death hereafter.

(Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown Commentary)

Proverbs 5:6

(a) But that it does not happen to the adulteress ever to walk in the way of life.

(b) Thus: Far from taking the course of the way of life, (which has life as its goal and reward)

(d) Much rather do her steps willfully stagger (Jeremiah 14:10) hither and thither, they go without order and without aim, at one time hither, at another time thither, without her observing it;

(e) I.e., without her being concerned at this, that she thereby runs into the danger of falling headlong into the yawning abyss.

(f) The old Jewish interpreters (and recently also Malbim) here, as also at Proverbs 2:16, by the zaaraah (to turn aside, to commit adultery)

(g) Strange woman understand heresy (mynwt), or the philosophy that is hostile to revelation;

(h) The ancient Christian interpreters understood by it folly (Origen), or sensuality (Procopius), or heresy (Olympiodorus), or false doctrine (Polychronios). (Keil and Delitzsch Commentary)

Proverbs 5:6

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

b. "Lest" expresses this-Her aim and tendency are toward death (Proverbs 5:6), so that thou canst not ponder the path of life (as I advised thee to do, Proverbs 4:26):

c. Do not, therefore, flatter thyself thou canst escape being dragged down with her "to death," if thou dost keep company with her.

d. 'Her ways are so moveable' - i.e., so versatile, varied (Proverbs 30:18-19), and lubricous, and baffling all thy power of 'knowing them'

e. (Cf. Psalms 35:8, "at unawares;" Hebrew, 'which he knoweth not of'), that thou canst not escape destruction with her, unless thou standeth quite aloof from her.

f. Thou canst not touch pitch without being soiled by it. (Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown)

Eighth Introductory Mashal Discourse, 5:7-23 Warning against Adultery and Commendation of Marriage

(1) With Proverbs 5:1-6, which like 4:20 commences it once more; the seventh discourse is brought to a conclusion.

(2) The address bªniy (OT: 1121 a son) is three times repeated in similar connections, 4:10, 20; 5:1.

(3) There is no reason for breaking off the fatherly admonition (introduced with the words, "And he said to me," 4:4),

(4) Which was addressed to the author in the period of his youth, earlier than here, where the author again resumes the baaniym (a son) shimª`uw (OT: 8085 to hear intelligently)

(5) With, which he had begun (4:1) this seventh narrative address.

(6) That after the father has ceased speaking he does not express himself in a rounded manner may be taken as a sign,

PROVERBS LESSON FIVE

(7) That toward the end he had become more and more unmindful of the role of the reporter.

(8) With, which he realizes for his circle of hearers the admonition, which had been in part addressed to him, does not prove the contrary. (Keil & Delitzsch Commentary)

Proverbs 5:7-14

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." NKJV

5:7 So now, sons, pay heed to me, and do not swerve from the words of my mouth.

8 Keep you far away from her; do not come near the doorway of her house,

9 Lest you give up your vigor to others, your years to a ruthless one;

10 Lest strangers eat their fill of your strength, and your toil be for the house of another,

11 And in the end your roar when your flesh and body are consumed,

12 And say “O how I hated discipline, and heartily spurned rebuke.

13 I did not pay heed to my teachers, or incline my ear to my instructors.

14 Soon I was in dire trouble amidst the assembled congregation.”

Proverbs 5:7-14 Tanakh Hebrew Text

5:9-10:

(a) Vigor and strength may refer to the adulterer’s property, which he will waste on the woman,

(b) Or to his sexual potency (see 31:3), which he will give up

(d) Who will benefit from the adulterer’s “labor.”

(e) The ruthless one is the enraged husband (see verses 34-35).