Discourse 10: Avoid Promiscuous Women; Love Your Wife (5:1–23)

May your fountain be blessed (5:18–19). The sage admonishes his son to love his wife and enjoy her sexual pleasures rather than pursue the adulteress or wayward woman. Here he paints a verbal picture of his wife’s sexuality, using language shared with the Song of Songs. The fountain is suggestive of the woman’s vagina (Song 4:12, 15). Verse 19 further characterizes the wife of his youth as a doe or graceful deer, terms that are erotic and reminiscent of Song of Songs 2:9, 17; 8:14.33 The wish that the son might be intoxicated by his wife’s breasts and inebriated by her love is also paralleled in the Song of Songs, where the woman claims that the man’s “love is better than wine” (Song 1:2, 4; 4:10). Love and lovemaking make one lightheaded, similar to the effects of drinking wine.

Adultery

Egyptian and Mesopotamian wisdom advises against sleeping with a woman other than one’s wife, whether she is married or a prostitute. Like Proverbs this counsel emanates from practical considerations, not from any law (see below). That is, adultery brings more pain than enjoyment. The following is a sampling of the teaching from other ancient Near Eastern wisdom sources (see also the reference to Any in the comment on 2:16):

Do not speak (?) with a girl, if you are married; the slander is strong.

[My] son, do not sit (alone) in a [chamber] with someone else’s wife.A-4

Do not take for yourself a woman whose husband is alive, lest he become your enemy. (8.12)

When a man smells of myrrh his wife is a cat before him. (14.11)

Do not violate a married woman. (21.18)

He who violates a married woman on the bed will have his wife violated on the ground. (21.19)

He who makes love to a woman of the street will have his purse cut open on its side. (22.6)A-5

While wisdom literature tries to persuade based on practical considerations, the law condemns adultery and in most cases provides for the death penalty. This is true of biblical law (Ex. 20:14; Lev. 20:10; Deut. 5:18; 22:22–27) as well as Mesopotamian law collections (Laws of Ur-Nammu #6; Laws of Eshnunna #26).

The Ur-Nammu law code: code of 57 laws including criminal law, family law, inheritance law, labor law, including slave rights, and agricultural and commercial tariffs.

Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY, Museum of Oriental Antiquities, Istanbul

Plaques featuring couples lying side by side were commonly used to bring fertility.

Caryn Reeder, courtesy of the British Museum

The “Strange” and “Foreign” Woman

The father often warns the son to avoid the “strange” woman (“adulteress” in 5:3, 20; 7:5; 22:14) and “foreign” (“wayward wife/woman” in 6:24; 7:5; 20:16; 23:27; 27:13). But what makes the strange woman strange, the foreign woman foreign? The two Hebrew words, “strange” (zārâ) and “foreign” (nokrîyâ) may be understood in a variety of ways. However, it is unlikely that “foreign” in parallel with “strange” indicates a non-Israelite woman. The strangeness of this woman is seen in her willingness to operate outside the bounds of moral, legal, and customary restraints—an idea developed further in the following chapters.

This lack of restraint is described in 2:17 as a failure for the strange woman to honor her commitments to the intimate relationship of her youth as well as to the covenant of her God. The first colon of this verse thus accuses her of not sustaining her marriage vows, since the words “partner of her youth” refer here to her own marriage. By committing adultery, therefore, she is breaking her covenant with God.A-6 The fact that she is described as having been in a covenant with God is further support for the view that this woman is an Israelite temptress, not an ethnically foreign one.A-7 And a temptress she is. Her primary strategy for seducing the man is through her flattering speech and secondarily through physical attraction. For ancient Near Eastern admonitions to avoid dubious women, see the sidebar “Adultery.”