1MY SON, PAY attention to my wisdom,
listen well to my words of insight,
2that you may maintain discretion
and your lips may preserve knowledge.
3For the lips of an adulteress drip honey,
and her speech is smoother than oil;
4but in the end she is bitter as gall,
sharp as a double-edged sword.
5Her feet go down to death;
her steps lead straight to the grave.
6She gives no thought to the way of life;
her paths are crooked, but she knows it not.
7Now then, my sons, listen to me;
do not turn aside from what I say.
8Keep to a path far from her,
do not go near the door of her house,
9lest you give your best strength to others
and your years to one who is cruel,
10lest strangers feast on your wealth
and your toil enrich another man’s house.
10At the end of your life you will groan,
when your flesh and body are spent.
12You will say, “How I hated discipline!
How my heart spurned correction!
13I would not obey my teachers
or listen to my instructors.
14I have come to the brink of utter ruin
in the midst of the whole assembly.”
15Drink water from your own cistern,
running water from your own well.
16Should your springs overflow in the streets,
your streams of water in the public squares?
17Let them be yours alone,
never to be shared with strangers.
18May your fountain be blessed,
and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.
19A loving doe, a graceful deer—
may her breasts satisfy you always,
may you ever be captivated by her love.
20Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress?
Why embrace the bosom of another man’s wife?
21For a man’s ways are in full view of the LORD,
and he examines all his paths.
22The evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him;
the cords of his sin hold him fast.
23He will die for lack of discipline,
led astray by his own great folly.
Original Meaning
MORE THAN ANY of the other instructions in chapters 1–9, the lectures of chapter 5 address the perennial issue of marital faithfulness and describe the disastrous results of its compromise. The warning against the “strange woman,” the second of four,1 is the only one to include a positive description of marital fidelity. Although the teaching seeks to discipline the awakening sexual awareness of young males, it is a concern for all, young and old, male and female, just as it has been since ancient days.
Warnings against promiscuous women were common in the ancient Near Eastern instructions directed to young males. Still, original audiences for the book of Proverbs would most likely also be familiar with the prohibitions of the Ten Commandments and prophetic descriptions of adultery as symbols of covenantal unfaithfulness. The teaching about the wisdom of faithfulness in marriage also symbolizes faithfulness to the Lord. By stressing faithfulness to the “wife of one’s youth” (5:18), the parents also make sure that the young man hears that his relationship with wisdom is to be like a lifelong marriage.
Warnings against extramarital sex and adultery also come to the forefront in the next two chapters, occupying more and more of the parental teachers’ attention. Following the basic structure outlined in chapter 2, the theme of adultery and the strange woman in chapters 5–7 follows the topics of friendship with Yahweh (2:5–8; cf. 3:1–12), love of wisdom (2:9–11; cf. 3:13–18; 4:1–9), and the enticement of evil men (2:12–15; cf. 4:14–27).2 Another way of looking at the progression of these chapters is to focus on relationships. If the emphasis of chapter 4 was placed on the relationship of a father with his son, chapter 5 turns to the relationship of husband and wife. Chapter 6 will focus on the neighbor; even the warning about adultery there brings in the wronged husband. Finally, chapters 4–5 seem especially interrelated, as shown by the repetition of key terms that appear in a mirror reflection:
A (4:1–9) Lay hold of my words (temak, 4:4)
Get Wisdom and love her as one would a wife (4:6)
Embrace her (4:8)
Garland of grace (ḥen, 4:9)
B (4:10–19) Years of life will be many (4:10)
Safety: if you hold on to instruction (musar, 4:13)
Wicked eat (4:17)
C (4:20–27) Pay attention; listen well (4:20)
Keep words within your heart (šemor, 4:21)
Truthful lips (4:24)
Straight and considered paths (4:26)
C′ (5:1–6) Pay attention; listen well (5:1)
To maintain discretion (šemor, 5:2)
Knowledgeable and lying lips (5:2–3)
Crooked paths that are not considered (5:6)
B′ (5:7–14) Years of your life given to one who is cruel (5:9)
Ruin, not safety: “I hated discipline” (musar, 5:12)
Others eat (5:10)
A′ (5:15–23) Be captivated by your wife’s love (5:19)
A graceful deer (hen, 5:19)
Why embrace another man’s wife? (5:20)
Cords of sin hold him fast (tamek, 5:22)
The A sections associate faithfulness to wisdom with faithfulness to one’s spouse, while the B sections contrast the results of receiving or rejecting wisdom. The C sections contrast the way of integrity with the way of the adulteress, a way characterized by false and ruinous speech.
Looking more closely, we see that chapter 5 contains three addresses (“my son[s],” 5:1, 7, 20), but the consistent focus on the theme of fidelity in marriage unifies the chapter into one larger instruction.3 Correspondence of some key terms suggests a chiastic or mirror pattern that overlays the larger structure of chapters 4–5, modifying it slightly by breaking 5:15–23 into two sections.
A (5:1–6) Avoid the adulteress—the strange woman
B (5:7–14) Do not give what is yours to others—lest strangers feast on wealth
B′ (5:15–19) Drink from your own well—do not share with strangers
A′ (5:20–23) Why be captive of the adulteress—the strange woman?
The repetition of terms at the beginning and end of the chapter create a frame or inclusio that links the two A sections. Death and dying as a result of ignoring wisdom teaching appear in 5:5 and 23. The Hebrew terms for “lead” in 5:5 and “hold him fast” in 5:22 come from the same root (tmk), creating a link between being led away to the grave and being held fast in sin. The frame also pairs the words for the woman who “gives no thought” to her “way” (5:6) and the “way” that Yahweh “examines” (5:21). The word “strangers” (5:10, 17) links the two B sections. Other key terms repeat throughout the chapter as well. The other woman is mentioned in three sections (5:3, 17, and 20), and there are recurrences of “end” (5:4, 11), and “discipline” (5:12, 23). Verses 12–14 and 23 both conclude with a lack of discipline that leads to ruin.
Avoid the Adulteress (5:1–6)
THE TEACHER REPEATS the anatomy of wisdom from the previous chapter: The son is to turn his ear (5:1; cf. 4:20), to let his lips preserve knowledge (5:2; cf. 4:24), and to keep his feet from following the path of the other woman, whose feet go down to death (5:5; cf. 4:26). Just as discretion will keep its possessor (cf. 2:11), so here the young man is to “maintain discretion” and “preserve knowledge” (5:2). Discretion and knowledge are paired only here and in 8:12 in all of the Hebrew Bible. In both contexts, it is discretion that enables the young man to choose wisely. In a sense, he keeps and preserves what wisdom possesses and gives.
As always, the teacher places responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the son. He is to maintain discretion and preserve knowledge via speech (5:2); he is to guard and protect it as he lives by it and as he passes it on to the next generation. He is to listen to the teaching (with his ears), live it (by choosing good paths with his feet), and leave it with the generation to come (with his lips).
The teacher then warns that single-minded faithfulness to this goal can be compromised by the temptations of adultery (5:3–6). The description of the adulteress (lit., the “strange woman,” zarah, 5:3) pits her words against the words of the teacher, raising the issue of trust. If the character of a person’s words is measured by the end they bring about, then her end (and potentially his), is bitter. It is not surprising that the teacher’s second call to attention follows a description of her path to the grave (Heb. šeʾol, the home of the dead4; cf. 2:18–19; 9:18). Verse 7 literally reads, “do not turn aside from the speech of my mouth.”
The warnings against sexual involvement with the “other woman” are earthy, the motivations imaged here as bitter gall and sharp sword. The name of Yahweh does not appear, nor does the prohibition against adultery (Ex. 20:14), although both can be assumed in the background that is made more explicit in Proverbs 5:21. If adultery is an offense to Yahweh, it is also ruinous to the naive person who believes that one can escape unscathed. The young man is challenged to look around to see that experience proves the truthfulness and authority of the wisdom teacher and Yahweh, whom he represents.
The deceptions of adultery are communicated via images of eating and drinking. Just as the wicked eat wickedness and drink violence (4:17), the words of the strange woman are like honey and oil—at first (5:3). Her lips “drip with honey,” an image possibly meant to carry overtones of her kisses (Song 4:11; 7:9).5 Then they become bitter and sharp, just as a false friend’s words can seem “smooth as butter” and “more soothing than oil,” but are in reality “drawn swords” (Ps. 55:21). Gall, sometimes called wormwood, is the bitter juice derived from leaves and buds of the plant Artemesia, often used in the treatment of worms (Lam. 3:19; Amos 6:12). The two-edged sword has two “mouths” in Hebrew, so that “the sword devours one, as well as another” (2 Sam. 11:25). Readers should keep watch to see that images of eating and drinking continue throughout the chapter.6
The principal contrast here is drawn between the deceptively sweet and smooth lips of the other woman and the lips of the young man that are to preserve knowledge and wisdom. We can infer that the father has preserved wisdom and knowledge with his lips and hopes to continue the preservation on the lips of his son. He is to keep knowledge and not lose it, considering his paths and keeping them straight (compare 4:26 and 5:6). If the young man takes her crooked path and misses the path of life, the tradition of knowledge and wisdom is lost. We do well to pay attention to the symbolic significance of this picture. The strange or loose woman is not identified, so we cannot say whether she is a foreigner, wife of another, or prostitute (cultic or otherwise). What is clear is that the young male is to avoid her at all costs. She represents both the folly of adultery and all that is foreign to the way of wisdom.
The translation of 5:6 seeks to clarify a difficult Hebrew phrase (lit., “lest she consider the way of life”; cf. “lest” in 5:9–10). Two of the verbs in the verse can also be translated second-person masculine, and so the rabbis of old took it to read: “You cannot weigh the path of life, for its ways wander and you do not know how.” They concluded that one should keep all the commands because we cannot know how God weighs life and its rewards.7 But context indicates that it is the woman who does not know, just as the wicked “do not know” in 4:19.8 She gives no thought to her way of life, recalling 4:26, a sentence that uses the same Hebrew word to urge the learner to consider the paths of his feet. “She does not know” in 5:6 also recalls the wicked who do not know what makes them stumble (4:19).
The symbol of the way links the end of chapter 4 and beginning of chapter 5, comparing evildoers who do not see where they are going with the young man who should. In sum, if this young man does not keep discretion and knowledge on his lips, he will be led astray by the lips of another, and the tradition of wisdom and life will be lost to that family line. He will also lose his life (5:5). We read on to see what that loss of life entails.
Do Not Give What Is Yours to Others (5:7–14)
A RENEWED CHARGE to listen in 5:7 seems to say, “Now this is important. Be sure to get this.” The plural “sons” suggests that the teaching is directed to a wide audience (cf. 4:1; 7:24). Directing attention away from the strange woman and her deceptive charms, the teacher says, “listen to me” and “do not turn from what I say,” keeping attention on the metaphor of the path. The son is told to make his path far from the woman, to not go near her door of her house (for “door,” cf. 8:34; 9:14); one sure way to avoid trouble is to stay clear of it.
The motivations or reasons for the charge in 5:9–14 are all negative; each involves some sort of loss, whether it be loss of strength, years, wealth, or honor. Even the tradition of instruction can be lost if it is rejected (5:12–13). This woman has a house that is to be avoided (5:8; cf. 2:18; 7:8); if it is not, one’s wealth and toil go to another man’s house (5:10).
Because the teacher draws such a vivid picture of adultery and its outcomes in a community setting, interpreters have struggled with the historical and social background of the imagery, mostly because of lack of agreement about the historical basis for the strange woman and the masculine “strangers.”9 We have said in chapter 2 that the woman is strange, not because she represents foreign peoples or religions10 but because she is not one’s own wife; she belongs to another or, simply put, is “other.” Whatever symbolic significance the woman carries, interpretation must begin with the actual consequences of adultery.
Yet if we agree that the teacher speaks of adultery and its costs, it is still not clear how the adulterer loses strength, years, and wealth to others. Commentators’ suggestions include damages paid to a betrayed husband (5:10; cf. 6:35), money given to a mistress, payment for blackmail, and venereal disease (5:9, 11). The wide range of interpretation points up the difficulties, but the loss of one’s wealth, then honor to another family is the simplest and most likely.11
If we cannot determine the social situation with precision, we can look at the symbolism of the teacher’s scenario and see that death (5:5–6) is here defined as loss of strength, years, substance, and reputation, the reverse of wisdom’s benefits of long life, riches, and honor (3:16). While it would be useful to know the historical referents that original hearers may have known, the cumulative strength of the many images does tell us that the teacher means to scare the son, primarily by showing him that a foolish choice would mean the loss of everything he holds dear. The poetic justice at work shows that in going after a strange woman, one that is not his own, the son could lose all that is his own to strangers.12 It may be that a sidelong glance at the cost of acquiring wisdom (“all you have,” 4:7) is intended.
The teacher then fast-forwards this fictional narrative to the end of the son’s life, the time when “flesh and body are spent.” He tells the young man he “will groan” the way a heart groans in anguish from a sick and wasted body (cf. Ps. 38:3–9). Elsewhere in Proverbs this groan is used to describe a lion’s roar and a king’s wrath (19:12; 20:2; 28:15). The sound of this groan and the words that follow is heart-wrenching, but they are really the teacher’s words; the son never actually speaks in Proverbs. Instead of reporting the recrimination of the assembly, the teacher puts words of remorse in the mouth of the son, perhaps to increase the shock effect. This is the second time negative consequences and regret have followed rejection of discipline and correction (cf. 1:29–31). There may be an intended irony that words of regret speak with discretion and knowledge that come too late (5:1–2).
Perhaps the most potent source of regret is the shame that comes to light in the last few words of 5:14, “in the midst of the whole assembly.” The teacher concludes the story by showing how adultery that begins in private becomes public, not only with loss of wealth but also loss of standing, so that the whole family is shamed (cf. Sir. 23:21–26 for shame of adultery in the community). The public stoning of Deuteronomy 22:22 is probably not in view here, but that text does give us a sense of the abhorrence the community was taught to feel about adultery. For them it was a public matter. Loss of everything included public reputation.
In sum, the instruction of Proverbs 5:7–14 warns that if the young man chooses the words of the adulteress over the instruction of the teachers, he will lose all that he might have kept: strength, wealth, and social standing. In this way, the choice to love folly instead of wisdom is symbolized as a rejection of wisdom and her gifts of life, riches, and reputation. The parental teacher imagines what the young man will say when the truth is known, hoping that the young man’s own voice will prove to be persuasive. The son’s regrets clearly state the sages’ view: Adultery is not only a sin that exacts payment, it is the ultimate symbol of the fool’s pathway.
Drink from Your Own Well (5:15–23)
HAVING MADE HIS scenario on adultery as frightening as possible, the teacher now turns to admonition, using images of flowing water to recommend marital faithfulness. Just as the speech of the adulteress tasted like honey and oil that turned to bitter gall, so here drinking water becomes a metaphor for faithful sexual expression with one’s spouse. The contrast is striking; the Hebrew word for “in the midst” appears in both 5:14 and 15, comparing the public shame “in the midst” of the assembly with water drunk “from the midst” of one’s own cistern. “Your own,” repeated in 5:15, introduces the emphasis on privacy and possession that runs throughout the exhortation. Just as the narrative scenario on adultery depicted loss and regret, here the teacher uses poetic imagery to offer an alternative, an example of keeping and preserving.
Interpreters wrestle with the use of water metaphors in 5:15–20. Is the water from the well a wife? Are the springs in the streets the love of the wife or the husband? Before solutions are considered, some observations should guide the discussion. (1) It is important to remember that the idea of “your own” is repeated throughout the chapter, and it is especially emphasized in 5:15 and 17 (the Heb. suffix for “your” is used throughout). The contrasting idea is repeated in 5:16–17; the water should not overflow in streets or public squares, it should not be shared with “strangers.”
(2) The instruction must be set in the larger context of Proverbs 1–9. So, for example, the key word “embrace” is used for wisdom (3:18; 4:8) and the adulteress (5:20) to construct a contrast between wisdom and folly.
(3) It is especially important to appreciate that the experience of reading or hearing the poem is also a part of its persuasive strategy. By likening the sexual intimacy of marriage with sensual images of drinking and swooning, the teacher here means to create a scene that is as inviting as the scene of loss was meant to be frightening. In other words, the poem appeals to the young man’s senses to render marital faithfulness attractive.13 These guidelines may help us discern the writer’s overall message and purpose, even if the referents of the water imagery may be difficult to determine.
What do these various symbols of water and drinking stand for? The suggestions made by interpreters include: the pleasures of physical love, the production of offspring, the squandered seed that does not produce offspring, or the wife herself.14 We may take a clue from Song of Songs 4:12–15, in which the man tells his beloved, “You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride; you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain. . . . You are a garden fountain, a well of flowing water streaming down from Lebanon.”15 Note that “fountain” and “wife of your youth” are in parallel lines (Prov. 5:18), suggesting they are synonymous, but it is even more important to take the verse as a whole. It directs the son to have physical relations with his wife alone.
If this is key to understanding the passage,16 it can also be argued that all of the water imagery in the poem speaks of the marriage relationship, itself a source of delight, refreshment, offspring, and ongoing life.17 It is this relationship that should not overflow into the streets, and loving attention should not be shared with strangers.18 The Hebrew words for “streets” and “public squares” are both in 7:12 for the adulteress who is there, and it is stolen water that folly pronounces sweet in 9:17. In sum, reading the images as making primary reference to sexual relationship is consistent with the guidelines of context and sensual imagery outlined above. Hubbard put it well: “The contrast between the harlot’s honey that goes bitter (vv. 3–4) and the wife’s water that stays sweet (‘running’) is the point of the whole chapter.”19
The metaphor of drinking from one’s own cistern and well may mark the saying of 5:15 as a proverb.20 The actions of 5:16 are clear enough: Springs overflow or disperse in the streets, and streams of water do the same in the public squares. However, the LXX adds a negative, which commentators take as a clue to read “lest” or “let not.” The NIV correctly reads the Hebrew text in the form of a question, designed to be answered in the negative. A similar use of rhetorical questions appears in 6:27–29.
Gazelles and does (5:19) are associated with awakening love in Song of Songs 2:7 and 3:5. The Hebrew for “may her breasts satisfy you always” is similar to the invitation of the adulteress, “Let’s drink deep of love,” in Proverbs 7:18. “Captivated,” restated in 5:20 and 23 (“led astray”; Heb. šgh) is key to understanding the chapter, as the commentary on those verses will show.
In sum, the teacher implores the son to be faithful to his wife. In the larger context of Proverbs 1–9, the exhortation also symbolizes the son’s relationship with wisdom, for she is to be found just as one finds a good wife (18:22; 31:10; cf. 8:35).21 Given that the metaphor of the well can be applied to the love of one’s own wife or a foreign/strange woman (23:27b), we can observe that this love, associated with springs and wells, is also associated with wisdom. “The spring/well is a trope for his relations with his wife, wisdom, and God.”22 In other words, the sexual metaphors always point in some way to relations both human and divine.
Why Be Captive of the Adulteress? (5:20–23)
THE CONCLUSION OF this parental teaching begins with a rhetorical question “Why?” providing a strong antidote to folly even as it highlights it. Verse 20 is connected with 5:19 by the word “captivated” (šgh; cf. 5:23).23 The teacher restates the problem of adultery, this time drawing attention to the ever-present eyes of Yahweh (5:21). The instruction concludes, as did that of chapter 3, with a motivation based on Yahweh’s supervision of life; “he examines” every person’s “paths” (cf. the same Heb. term in 4:26; 5:6, pls). The warning to the son to consider his paths (4:26) and the example of the adulteress who does not (5:6) is now brought full circle with a reminder that Yahweh considers everyone’s path.24
But this is not the only motivation for avoiding adultery. Piling up terms for sin, 5:22 envisions evil as a trap, cords that will trip up those who do wrong and hold them there until a hunter comes to end their lives (cf. to the birds in 1:17). But the loss of life is not so much due to the choice of evil as the earlier rejection of discipline (musar; cf. 5:12). In other words, it is the choice of an extramarital sexual partner that traps and kills, yet that is only the result of refusing instruction and fear of God. “The wicked are always running with death at their heels. That death is most likely the reverse of Shalom, life that is short, deprived, and alienated. Death involves corruption, a cutting off from all that has value, including God.”25
The meaning of the phrase “led astray” (5:23) must be appreciated in the light of the play on this word in 5:19–20.26 For example, the New Jewish Version uses “infatuated” in all three instances, so that 5:23 reads, “He will die for lack of discipline, infatuated by his great folly,” stressing that both Eros and folly have the power to fascinate and deceive. Of all the terms that might be used to translate the three occurrences, “lost” may come the closest to capturing the sense of the Hebrew. If one can stagger, be intoxicated, swoon, be captivated with passion, become “lost in love,” one can also be “lost” by one’s own folly, “led astray” with judgment, dulled in a kind of drunkenness, “lost” in the sense of reaping a disastrous result. Allen Ross prefers the word captivated: “If the young man is not captivated by his wife but becomes captivated with a stranger in sinful acts, then his own iniquities will captivate him; and he will be led to ruin.”27
In sum, chapter 5 develops the idea of keeping the heart (4:21–23) by urging the son to preserve knowledge (5:1–2), that is, to keep hold of wisdom in the face of temptations to lose or reject it. In the economy of the sages, one keeps wisdom and keeps all that one has as a result (4:1–9). To lose or forsake wisdom is to lose everything else as well (5:7–14). The example in this chapter is the marriage relationship. To take one’s intimacy to strangers is to risk losing all to strangers; to drink from one’s own well is to keep all that is one’s own, including one’s life.
Bridging Contexts
MARRIAGE IMAGERY. One way to find what is timeless and enduring in a text is to look for the overarching theme that ties its teachings together. At first reading, this chapter appears to be about faithful marriage and the threat of adultery—and so it is, claiming eighteen of the twenty-three verses.28 However, the chapter opens and closes with more general exhortations to accept parental instruction in the way of wisdom. Those exhortations set out the purpose for all that comes in between: “that you may maintain discretion and your lips may preserve knowledge” (5:2). The ultimate goal of the wise life is illustrated here as faithfulness to one’s spouse. Going one step farther, we also observe that this theme of wise living points beyond love of wife and love of wisdom to love of God. Here, as in so many of the prophets’ speeches, the marriage metaphor points to a relationship with God.
In order to appreciate the significance of the main theme, contemporary readers must pay attention to the writer’s literary strategy of contrasting images. By holding out vivid pictures of what is desirable in life and placing them alongside images of death, the teachers of Proverbs make their rhetorical appeals. Like visitors to an art museum, readers today can view these pictures created for ancient audiences and learn from their message.
Three contrasts in characterization coalesce into one overall comparison between keeping what is one’s own and taking what belongs to others. (1) The first is the contrast between the honeyed lips and smooth words of adultery and the lips that preserve wisdom and knowledge (5:2–3). The reader recalls that in chapter 4, the father sought to pass on the tradition of wisdom to his son, who in turn will pass it on to others. In the father’s view, wisdom is preserved or “kept” by internalizing it and teaching it. Neither happens if one chooses to listen instead to the lies of adultery.
One of the main contrasts to observe, then, is between what the young man is to become and what the other/outsider woman already is. His lips are to preserve knowledge, and he must consider the paths of his feet (5:2; 4:26–27). Her lips drip deceptive honey and oil; she does not consider the way of life, apparently unconcerned that Yahweh does (5:6, 21). In this way, adultery and rejection of the way of wisdom are closely related. For this reason, the teacher warns the son that if he chooses adultery, he will say, “How I hated discipline! How my heart spurned correction” (5:12; cf. 1:7).
(2) A second contrast is the difference between the long-lasting joy of marital faithfulness and the temporary and stolen pleasures of adultery. Therefore, a scenario of a relationship with the other woman is developed as a contrast with a loyal covenantal relationship with one’s own wife. The contrast is symbolized in the waters contained and enjoyed at home and the waters that are poured out in the streets. Faithfulness is a form of keeping; unfaithfulness, a form of losing. The ironic turn of the contrast says to the son, “When you take what is not yours, you can end up losing what is”—a message that is applicable today.
(3) The third set of images contrasts being lost in love with being lost in folly. There is a profound difference between ecstasy and stupor, and this is the difference between the joys of marital love and the pleasures of adultery. One sharpens judgment, the other dulls it. One supports and nurtures the covenantal relationship, the other destroys that relationship and the one who wanders away from it.
On a symbolic level, then, the overall contrast is between going to folly, personified as an “other woman,” who is not one’s own, and staying faithful to wisdom, who is personified as a virtuous woman and good wife. The contrast is developed more fully in chapters 7–9, and this larger context instructs us to read what is said about the other woman as an antitype to wisdom. In other words, whenever we read a description of her behaviors, we can look at their opposite and learn more about the qualities of wisdom (and vice versa when wisdom is described). If the other woman lies, Wisdom tells the truth (8:6–8); if the other woman’s path leads to death, Wisdom’s path leads to life (3:16–17); if the other woman leads astray, then Wisdom is a good guide that leads along good and safe paths (2:10–22). Thus the contrast between personified Wisdom and Folly in chapters 1–9 appears here as adultery and marital faithfulness are compared.
In sum, each of the contrasts illustrates the irony of adultery and all other related follies to say, “If you take what does not belong to you, you wind up losing what does.” The prophet Nathan used a parable to get this truth across to a king who had become so entangled in sin’s folly that he hoped to cover up adultery with murder. The prophet broke through his self-deluding defenses with a story of a man who had flocks of sheep but stole the only lamb his neighbor had. Enraged, King David pronounced his own sentence: “The man who did this should die!” Shaken out of his stupor, he saw that what he had done was sin against God, he repented, and he suffered the loss of the child that had been conceived, the first of many losses (2 Sam. 12:1–25). His own life had been spared, but he would later say, “If only I had died instead of you—O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Sam. 18:33).
Eros and wisdom in marriage. With the theme of keeping and losing in mind, we may make the bridge from ancient times to today by looking at both the concrete experience of marital love and its symbolic representation of a lifelong relationship with wisdom. We cannot divide our interpretation into literal and symbolic senses, because faithfulness is an expression of wisdom, adultery a form of folly. If we talk about wisdom, we must talk about faithfulness; if we talk about folly, we must talk about the foolishness of adultery.
To begin with the concrete experience of marital love, the teachers of Proverbs not only acknowledge the power of eros in the son’s life, they give it their blessing. We should observe that, unlike so many of the erotic images that compete for our attention in contemporary media, the most vivid images of sexual ecstasy here describe the joys of marriage. To state the obvious in order to develop the point, the instruction to find these joys at home in marriage contradicts a great deal of popular thinking on the subject.
The transition from an institutional to a companionship view of marriage in the twentieth century has placed increasingly high expectations on marriage, including strong romantic feelings and great sex.29 Lewis Smedes has observed that our culture typically tells us to define our lives in terms of present needs and future possibilities, not commitments we have made in the past. The question, Smedes says, is what kind of people we want to be, covenant keepers or self-maximizers. The first thinks of marriage in terms of faithfulness, the second in terms of romance and fulfillment, and both coexist within each of us. Yet to focus only on the latter is to give way to folly: “Only a fool would claim to know all that marriage is for. But perhaps our culture has made fools of us all by getting us to believe that marriage is only for making people happy and that successful sex is its dream come true.”30
For this reason, seeking fulfillment outside of a relationship that has gone flat seems justifiable to a person who feels so deprived. Many a Hollywood movie justifies the start of a new relationship with a quick glimpse of an unhappy marriage. While we must recognize the reality of troubled marriages and that some are broken beyond repair, we should also refuse to be taken in to believe that convenient plot devices describe the way life works in the real world. We also refuse to accept that unhappiness in a present relationship is reason enough to begin another.
The admonition to rejoice in the wife of one’s youth speaks to the fact that the power of eros can drive in two directions. It can lead toward or away from lifelong commitment. The Song of Songs also shows how the detailed descriptions of ancient love poetry evoke a longing for exclusive relationship, describing an eros given by God as means of bonding (5:19; Song 2:16–17; 4:5). The lush and erotic poetry quotes the lovers saying, “You and no other.” When the woman warns, “Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires!” (2:7; 3:5; 8:4), she speaks with wisdom about the appropriate use of its power. For that reason, she tells her lover to “place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave” (8:6). Both the teachers of Proverbs and the unnamed lovers of the Song of Songs claim that human eros is meant to create bonds that last, but they also know that the same eros can draw one away if nothing else in the relationship supports and strengthens that bond.
The discipline of saying no to inappropriate desire, then, should find its counterpart in saying yes to building a strong marriage. Eros alone is not enough to keep a relationship together, but wisdom in its reflective and loving capacities can. The difference between waters poured in the streets and waters gathered in cisterns and wells speaks to the wisdom of enjoying the delights of erotic pleasure within the bounds of faithfulness and promise. Wisdom also helps a person discern the lies in false promises of pleasure that call from beyond those boundaries. The sages’ imagery of instruction not only dares to talk about the physical pleasures of marriage, it does so to encourage readers to understand that they are designed to be enjoyed, and enjoyed within boundaries.
The church needs to do the same, explaining how saying no to that which is out of bounds is not an end in itself but a way of saying yes to God’s gift of sexual pleasure. Moreover, it is a way of keeping and not losing, that is, keeping this gift of sexuality within proper boundaries so that its intent of creating bonds is not lost.
God’s faithful love. We have also seen that these instructions about marriage and adultery are symbolic of the young man’s relationship with wisdom who, as wife and teacher, protects her spouse from the seductive words of the other woman (2:16–19; 7:4–5). The instructions juxtapose charges to maintain both discretion (5:2) and the marriage relationship (5:15–19), to preserve knowledge as well as waters. As we have seen above, this “keeping” of passion is similar to the way the Song of Songs uses the “Nuptial Metaphor”31 to speak to our faith commitments and our human relationships. Each helps us understand the other, and the sages would remind us that life’s experiences have many lessons to teach if we pay attention to them. In his memoirs, Malcolm Muggeridge wrote about the experience of meeting his wife at the train station:
There is always a dread on such occasions that somehow the rendezvous will not be kept; that arrangements which seemed so precise will somehow have gone awry. So one studies the gathering faces with mounting anxiety; every sort of face showing up expect the particular one in question, until, at last, there it is; unmistakable, unique, infinitely dear. . . . What is love but a face, instantly recognizable in a sea of faces? A spotlight rather than a panning shot? This in contradistinction to power, which is a matter of numbers, of crowd scenes. I heard of an inscription on a stone set up in North Africa which reads: “I the captain of a Legion of Rome, have learnt and pondered this truth, that there are in life but two things, love and power, and no man can have both.” Some twenty centuries later, I append my own amen.32
In presenting the joys of exclusive, committed love, the sages of Proverbs appeal to the human experiences of love, asking us to see them as windows for understanding God’s exclusive, even jealous love for us. God’s exclusive love—“you and no other”—is the foundation of God’s covenant with Israel, as Deuteronomy 7:7–8 signifies:
The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
And the response is just as singular in devotion (Deut. 6:4):
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
Jeremiah 3:19–20 combines metaphors of sonship and marriage to make a similar point:
“I myself said,
‘How gladly would I treat you like sons
and give you a desirable land,
the most beautiful inheritance of any nation.’
I thought you would call me ‘Father’
and not turn away from following me.
But like a woman unfaithful to her husband,
so you have been unfaithful to me, O house of Israel,”
declares the LORD.
If the covenant and the prophets help us understand the love of God through this nuptial metaphor, a God who is jealous yet faithful even in the face of betrayal, then the wisdom writings of Proverbs and the Song of Songs help us understand the sanctity of human love that is as strong as death—because it is like God’s love (or should be) in its focus on the one. When humans commit to one another saying, “You and no other,” they reflect God’s exclusive love for us that evokes a similar response in return. Therefore, just as adultery is the ultimate picture of folly, so faithful married love can be a picture of divine love, God’s grace revealed in human faithfulness.
Yahweh’s role in the end of the wicked. If God’s love is reflected in the discipline and joy of faithful marital sexual love, the final scene of the chapter, the end of the wicked, points to another aspect of God’s character. Does 5:21–23 picture God’s judgment? The only mention of “the LORD” in this entire chapter states simply that he sees all, that a person’s ways are in “full view” and Yahweh “examines” every path. Nothing more is said, and we may conclude that the picture of God here is passive, for he does nothing to judge. Yet 5:22–23 speaks of a disastrous end, namely, the wicked caught in the cords of sin, forfeiting life itself because of folly.
One of the puzzles of Proverbs is the tension created between texts that speak of God’s active supervision of human affairs and those that portray God as an observer, not passive but involved in watching. Here again, we recognize that the sages saw no contradiction between sin’s earthly consequences and God’s final judgment of human character. Again, Paul’s repeated phrase that God “gave them over” (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28) to sinful ways is incorporated in God’s wrath (1:18). Here in Proverbs Yahweh is not so much an active judge who dispenses rewards as an overseer who makes sure that everything works as it should. “Folly,” then, comes not only in rejecting discipline (Prov. 5:23) but also in believing that God does not see or does not care. Both couldn’t be more mistaken. As Plantinga puts it:
Sin is folly. No matter what images they choose, the Bible writers say this again and again. Sin is missing the target; sin is choosing the wrong target. Sin is wandering from the path or rebelling against someone too strong for us or neglecting a good inheritance. . . . To rebel against God is to saw off the branch that supports us.33
Here the instruction that began in chapter 4 has come full circle. Just as the teacher promised, “Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you” (4:6), so here the wicked who have taken the other road (4:14–17) come to their awful end, their way is a “deep darkness” that makes them stumble (4:19). Refusing to keep the words of instruction (4:20–5:2) and rejecting wisdom, they have lost all to death. The conclusion of 5:21–23 shows how the folly of human adultery is but one species of the folly of rejecting wisdom.
Contemporary Significance
LIES. In the film Presumed Innocent, a successful middle-aged lawyer gets involved with a coworker whose seduction is, in part, accomplished with words. “It’s going to be so good,” she says, and it seems to be—for a time. Later, when the woman has been murdered and he is charged with the crime, the lawyer comes to his senses. Recounting the details to his lawyer, he remembers how he felt out of control, like a fool: “I used to phone her just to hear her voice and then hang up—like a kid.” He is acquitted of the crime only to find out that it was his wife who killed his lover. Like King David, he is released from one penalty only to suffer another.
While most cases of marital unfaithfulness are not as dramatic, the film, like the portrayal of adultery in this chapter, highlights not only the losses that follow this reaching out of bounds, but the lies that come before. It is no accident that the description of the other woman centers on her words, not her beauty, because she represents the lie that sexual pleasure can be enjoyed in ways it was never designed for. The film suggests that the teachers of Proverbs are not alone but rather join their voices with the voice of experience.
To take another example, many people write off blues music because it sometimes brags about extramarital sex, but a great many of the songs lament the pain of betrayal. The Texas bluesman B. K. Turner sounded as though he had taken this chapter for inspiration in his song “No Good Woman.” And Robert Cray, in “Strong Persuader,” is the masculine seducer who comes to remorse.
The lyrics of these songs remind us that the problem of the “No Good Woman” can just as likely be a problem of a “No Good Man.” We would be mistaken to understand the symbolism of the other woman as communicating a negative view of women; no, the other woman personifies the falsehoods that either male or female can speak. While the teachers of Proverbs were probably not the first to observe that adultery takes root in the soil of deception, they take special pains to speak directly to the son (and indirectly to Scripture readers) to make sure that this principle is heard and heeded.
One lesson for the church in this chapter, then, is the charge to reject the lies that swell in our culture and seep into our consciousness by degrees. (1) The first lie is that the power of eros is the reason and basis for the marriage relationship. Taken to the extreme, this view claims that a marriage is only as good as its sexual relationship. If eros is present, the marriage is good; if not, something is wrong. Similarly, the myth of romance that plays out in so many movies celebrates the magic of love that is both irresistible and above any accountability.
(2) The second lie is that self-fulfillment, including sexual fulfillment, is the primary goal of human life, all others secondary in importance. The teachers of Proverbs do not condemn joy and fulfillment, for as we have seen, they celebrate the pleasures of married love. But neither do they force issues of character and faith to bow before that throne.
(3) The third falsehood is that sex can be enjoyed outside of a lifelong relationship. In this view, the sexual relationship is seen as more of an object to be acquired than as a bond between persons. Sexual delight is affirmed by the chapter, but when enjoyed apart from a relationship of faithfulness, it is treated as a thing, separate unto itself, “to be indulged in, played around with, and enjoyed quite separately from a faithful relation of love and responsibility. . . .”34 While Christians would readily reject the last of these lies, they may still find themselves vulnerable to the first two, just because they are more subtle. Because they are harder to identify, Christians may be tempted to rationalize unfaithfulness, forgetting that the one who looks outside of marriage is deceived, just as the deceiver of Proverbs 5:6 is herself deceived.
Instructions. In place of the lies, the sages offer three instructions to Christians today, each built on the images of drinking in the chapter. (1) They want us to recognize the honeyed lips of invitation for what they are, a deception. The “end” reveals what is real, a crooked path that leads to death. The images of loss, loss of strength, years, wealth, and toil once again urge the contemporary readers to consider the outcomes and consequences of their actions.
(2) The sages tell those of us who are married or will be to “drink from your own well” (5:15), that is, to practice faithfulness with intention and effort. Faithfulness first requires a decision to say no to adultery no matter what the circumstances or possible justifications. Adultery is always wrong; it is never right. Faithfulness also requires the work that it takes to build marriages.
Psychologist John Gottman has become well known for asking the question: Given that so many marriages fail, what is it that contributes to those that are a success? He and his colleagues have watched happy couples interact and created a list of characteristics that build marriages: pleasure, intimacy, admiration with respect, passion, and commitment to a shared view of the future. They also list some destructive characteristics: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, withdrawal.35 Their work has fostered a number of educational workshops for couples, many of which are sponsored by local churches. One pair of psychologists I know run weekend sessions to teach the skills of communication that build marriages. They often ask, “Given what we spend so much on so many things in a year, doesn’t an investment of time and money in learning to build marriages seem worthwhile?”36
(3) “Rejoice in the wife of your youth” (5:18) actually contains two commands. To rejoice is to praise, to encourage, to appreciate, to value the other enough to work at marriage. To rejoice is also to reserve these things for one’s spouse alone, the wife (or husband) of one’s youth. The accent of the water imagery that follows is on the second person pronoun: your cistern, your well, your springs, your streams, your fountain. The repetition is not to be taken as a right of possession but rather a call to exclusive partnership.
This call to exclusive relationship is also a call to joy; it is the discipline that brings pleasure. “Love is a virtue. Perhaps love always begins as a feeling, but certainly it must be continued as a virtue if it is to continue indeed. Feelings come and go; virtue is skill and strength that persist, an aspect of character.”37 And it is virtue that keeps feeling alive. Certainly a relationship of commitment brings with it its own joys. Although the word is not used here, one can speak of a marriage covenant, something more than a contract that can be broken.38
Spiritual applications. We should not leave this chapter without some word that the warnings against adultery in particular are also warnings against folly in general. Even as we recognize the seductions of the other woman as a challenge to the marriage covenant, we also recognize that the seductions of this world lead us away from faithfulness to God. Just as someone might imagine that it is possible to have a spouse and someone else at the same time, so it is folly to believe that one can be in relationship with God and have our own way, making decisions that undermine that commitment. Sin is both seductive and deceptive. Sin is a folly trying to convince any who would listen that it is possible to reach out and take what is not ours to have. The sages shake us into awareness with the maxim: Take what is not yours; lose all that is yours.
The sages’ teaching can also be summed up in a more positive maxim: Guard the heart to live well; live well to guard the heart. Here is a way of saying that good practice shapes good character, which in turn leads to more good practice. One becomes good by doing good. Good persons do good deeds, and good deeds shape good persons. It is the practice of faithfulness that dispels the illusions and self-deceptions of folly.
In the novel Straight Man, Hank Deveraux is a man with more problems than any chair of a college English department should have. He’s in full-blown mid-life crisis, wondering if it is worth refereeing fights between faculty who take themselves and their careers too seriously and teaching students who don’t take anything seriously. He is aware that a number of his colleagues are involved in extramarital affairs, and he realizes that he is tempted also, especially by the attractive young adjunct who has been flirting with him. Hank is also afraid his wife is having an affair, although he has no evidence to back up his imaginations. She has gone out of town for a job interview, and Hank wonders if it has anything to do with the fact that his friend the dean has also gone on a trip. In the middle of a very bad day, Hank slips away to a phone booth in the basement of the English building and calls her.
“Hank,” she says. . . . “It feels like a week.” “My thought exactly,” I confess, and that’s not all I’m thinking. Because it’s both wonderful and oddly sad to hear the familiar voice of this woman who shares my life, to feel how much I’ve missed it. By what magic does she softly say my name and in so doing restore me to myself? More important, why am I so often ungrateful for this gift? Is it because her magic also dispels magic? Is it because her voice, even disembodied as it is now, renders lunatic the fantasies that have been visiting me of late? “Lilly . . . ,” I say, allowing my voice to trail off and wondering if, when I say her name, it has for my wife any of these same magical properties.39
Human love, claimed the sages, is itself an expression of wisdom, a practice that dispels the deceptions of folly, even the self-deceptions, and in so doing reflects the love that calls us back to our true selves.