Proverbs 5King James Version
A strong warning against the strange woman. Her lips drop as a honeycomb, but her end is bitter as wormwood. Rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her breasts satisfy thee at all times. The chapter is not shy, and it is not cold.
The longest sustained warning against adultery in the early chapters. The lips of the strange woman drip honey but end in bitterness, her feet lead to death. The father urges the son to drink from his own cistern, to rejoice in the wife of his youth. Straying leads to ruin watched by God; the wicked man is caught in his own cords.
Sexual faithfulness is not a restriction; it is the path to joy. The adulteress promises sweetness and delivers destruction.
5:18: 'Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.' Covenant love, not novelty, is the source of lasting satisfaction.
Solomon's court culture included exposure to foreign women (a tension the book is partly navigating). The 'strange woman' may reference both adulteresses and foreign women whose worship patterns could lead Israel astray.
Father and son. The 'strange woman' (adulteress) as seductress with deadly ends. The 'wife of thy youth' as the counterpoint, a source of blessing.
Ancient wisdom traditions across the Near East warned against adultery, but Proverbs' treatment is unusually personal and relational. The chapter ends with God seeing all paths, connecting sexual ethics to covenant accountability. The vision of marital joy in verses 15-19 is rare, warm poetry within the wisdom genre.
For when short-term temptation is making long-term costs invisible. The chapter doesn't moralize; it just shows the math in full.
1My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding:
2That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.
3For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:
4But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword.
5Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.
6Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.
7Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.
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:
10Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger;
11And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,
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.
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?
21For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings.
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.