My son, keep your father’s command,
And do not forsake the law of your mother.
Bind them continually upon your heart;
Tie them around your neck.
When you roam, they will lead you;
When you sleep, they will keep you;
And when you awake, they will speak with you.
For the commandment is a lamp,
And the law a light;
Reproofs of instruction are the way of life,
To keep you from the evil woman,
From the flattering tongue of a seductress.
Do not lust after her beauty in your heart,
Nor let her allure you with her eyelids.
For by means of a harlot
A man is reduced to a crust of bread;
And an adulteress will prey upon his precious life.
Can a man take fire to his bosom,
And his clothes not be burned?
Can one walk on hot coals,
And his feet not be seared?
So is he who goes in to his neighbor’s wife;
Whoever touches her shall not be innocent.
Proverbs 6:20-29 (NKJV).
As we'll continue to read later on in scripture, Solomon understands what can ruin a man.
Note that Solomon does not try to denigrate the appearance of the "evil woman", but is instead honest about her beauty, both physical and verbal. He is intentionally identifying with his son to explain the nature of temptation.
I've said it before, but you can't be tempted by something you don't want. It just doesn't work. Temptation always comes from something we already desire, but being offered to us in a time or via a means by which we would run afoul of God's commands.
Sex, for example, is neither implicitly a good or bad thing, and so we must add context to it before it gains any moral significance. Terms like adultery, rape, fornication, all of them include a context which denies God's desires for humanity in favor of humanity satisfying their own desires by their own means and on their own timing.
Solomon, and biblical writers, speak positively about sex within the context of marriage, and even in the midst of discouraging marriage, even Paul recognized the necessity of marital intimacy, of having a sanctified outlet by which the desires that God gave us can be appropriately expressed for those who do not have the "gift" of celibacy as he did.
What this means practically is that the "evil woman" is desirable, and it's not in that we find the problem. Her being attractive isn't the issue, it's the context of the intimacy that a man would seek with her, not being his wife, that the sin is found. The reason I point this out is that physical appearance is a contentious issue, given the connection between desire and appearance.
The moralistic will seek not to address the heart issue, but instead seek to disarm the "evil woman" from being able to snare a man in the first place. An example of this idea taken to a logical conclusion is the way that Islam treats women, by covering them, in some cases literally from head to toe, with nothing of the appearance of the woman being seen by those around them.
That dynamic is also seen in the justification given by Islamic migrants to Europe, who have on record claimed that because the women dress so provocatively, the men cannot control themselves and so are driven to rape and sexual assault. European nations are then bending over backward to try and cover this up, but as the details of the sexual assaults have come out people have been appalled at the behavior of men who demonstrate no restraint when it comes to their sexual behavior.
Again, the "simple" answer may appear to be that women should then just cover up, so that a man's desires are not provoked in the first place, but the problem isn't appearance, it's in the permissive nature of succumbing to desires and then using your own failure to temptation to direct the behaviors of those around you to compensate. It's why, so frequently, those who demand legislating certain types of morality are so commonly discovered to have failed spectacularly and are now trying to project their own failures on everyone else to cope.
Because the man cannot control himself, he must exert control over women's appearance instead of learning any restraint. This is not the path towards a healthy and mature society. Legalizing morality never results in the hearts of people changing, merely restrictions on what evil those hearts are able to commit in public view, because privately the heart will pursue what it desires regardless.
Solomon hammers this topic so often in Proverbs because men so easily grow arrogant in their process of accumulating power and competency that they come to believe that they can escape the consequences of their choices. They buy into the lies that their power can overcome any negative consequences, so what's the harm in pursuing some pleasure?
Yet Solomon literally had it all, and was brought down by his lust, his sexual desires, just like his father before him.
Solomon had wisdom, but then didn't heed it himself, and brought great destruction upon Israel because of it. Remember that his father, David, is even more well known for having done the exact same thing with Solomon's own mother, Bathsheba. Yea, in case you hadn't made the connection before, Solomon's mother was the target of his father's illicit sexual desire, and Solomon was by this time very well aware of the terrible circumstances that Israel faced because of complications due to David's promiscuity and the conflict over who would succeed him on the throne, let alone the damage that Solomon caused through his own folly.
Thus the emphasis Solomon places is not on whether the sinful act is pleasurable, or whether the son might get away with it for a time, or whether the attractive woman is really attractive, but that actions always have consequences, and they will always catch up to you in one way or another, in ways you may never have predicted or expected, and so entertaining adultery is simply a terrible idea.
The message resonates even today, if you are watching the political scene, wherein the adulterous actions of the current President were being used as justification to collect information to support efforts to impeach him from office. Whether that is appropriate or not, consider that had he not partook in such an illicit affair in the first place, there would not be a weakness to exploit, even if the whole ordeal is entirely disingenuous, in the first place.
When men give in to their instincts, their desires, they rebel against God, wreak havoc on both their families and their nations, all in choosing to believe that the pursuit of short-term pleasures can sufficiently offset the long-term costs. Do not be so foolish, do not believe that "where they failed, I will succeed in escaping judgment for my actions."
Do not surrender to your desires, but instead give yourself over to God, pursue God's wisdom in humility, and take pleasure only in the wife of your youth.
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