15.4.18

Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 7:10-20

And there a woman met him,
With the attire of a harlot, and a crafty heart.
She was loud and rebellious,
Her feet would not stay at home.
At times she was outside, at times in the open square,
Lurking at every corner.
So she caught him and kissed him;
With an impudent face she said to him:
I have peace offerings with me;
Today I have paid my vows.
So I came out to meet you,
Diligently to seek your face,
And I have found you.
I have spread my bed with tapestry,
Colored coverings of Egyptian linen.
I have perfumed my bed
With myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.
Come, let us take our fill of love until morning;
Let us delight ourselves with love.
For my husband is not at home;
He has gone on a long journey;
He has taken a bag of money with him,
And will come home on the appointed day.”

Proverbs 7:10-20 (NKJV).

Appearances matter. While not the only thing that matters, they are not irrelevant in combination with behavior when it comes to the "beauty" of a woman. Notice the attributes that Solomon lists about the immoral woman, the things which would identify her.

Being "loud and rebellious" is something that should not surprise given the nature of Feminist movements in Western Civilization over the past century or so. Whether intentional or accidental, the theme of "not being heard" has shown up time and again in their propaganda, the implicit premise being that "men" aren't "listening", so women have to be louder, to make themselves heard, to affect the changes they feel are necessary. At no point does it seem to occur to them that men heard them all along, but just did not choose to act in the way requested of them during the chanting, marching, and screaming.

Now, this isn't because being louder isn't ever a signal of anything, the ability to "make yourself heard" is a dominance move, a showing of authority to have your words heard and obeyed. That is why the immoral woman is "loud and rebellious", because she is seeking to overturn the existing mechanisms or authority, of the order which provided her the safety and opportunity to be rebellious in the first place, all to satisfy her own desires, caring little of the future ramifications for the path she walks.

This is further highlighted by the amusing "her feet would not stay at home." Another facet of the efforts of Feminism has been to get young women out of the house as soon as possible and learning to be independent, all the while demanding that everyone else in society make the necessary accommodations so that these women can be protected from mistakes that they will make during this learning process.

While, traditionally, these were all lessons learned under the care and protection of the father and mother in the household, thanks to the shifts towards r-selection with an environment of abundance in our modern world, daughters and sons are pushed out of the home as soon as possible so that mom and dad can go back to having fun, and the kids "will be fine" without being actually being taught the basics of life.

Two different examples of this exact same dynamic are public breastfeeding and "rape culture" on college campuses. In both cases the arguments already start off "wrong", with most people skipping past the premises of the "problems" and pushing right on towards the main claims, never questioning whether even the circumstances that led to an issue existing were legitimate and necessary, let alone whether the accommodations that the rest of society makes are reasonable or not.

In the first, public breastfeeding is an entirely modern phenomenon because, again traditionally, mothers would not be going out in public on a frequent basis with such young children in the first place. There would be no impetus for the young mother to leave her home, go to a public place, and then put herself in a position of weakness. This is at some level because homes were not isolated from the rest of the community. Everyone knew everyone and if you needed supplies from the market, you had people you could trust that would get things for you while tending to the needs of your baby.

There was no question or debate on whether public breastfeeding was immodest or not because it simply wasn't happening. Women who'd just given birth would be cared for by those around them, the expectation was not that she had to do it all herself, and that leads us right into the next example.

College debt is said to be higher than it's ever been before, and yet that at the same time, more women are going to college than men, and yet women are still not getting the "high paying jobs" that are supposedly unlocked after attaining certain tiers of higher education. On top of that, it's very easy to find terrifying statistics that these young girls sent off on their own to school or work, all by themselves, are being sexually assaulted. Surely the response is that we should be doing a better job protecting and employing women, right? The whole arrangement would work out just fine except for all those terrible men taking advantage of women, right? We have to protect women from consequences they aren't prepared to handle on their own, right? Oh, no, women are "equals" and can "do anything a man could do better"? Hmm.

Young women traditionally didn't leave the house unless they were then entering the care and protection of another man, specifically their husband. That was the natural way to afford a woman complete protection from men who only had their sexual appetites in mind, but we had to destroy that framework because it limited her "freedoms", and now everyone is expected to come up with solutions which are never as effective or efficient, but that sustain the impression of rebellion.

Why is all this important to understand?

The immoral woman entices this effective stranger to enter her bed under the pretense of there being no consequences, no fear of being caught, and thanks to the "peace offering", she's prepared everything for a pleasurable experience without any apparent "risk" at all. The promise to the man from the immoral woman is that he will entertain great pleasure at no cost, and do not doubt that her offer is partly true, though she does not have the power to avert all the consequences of such illicit entanglements.

This is the deception that Solomon speaks about with "empty words". The immoral woman believes that her husband will not return early, but she does not control his schedule. The immoral woman believes that there won't be consequences, but they wouldn't fall most harshly on her in the first place either.

It is not hard to imagine a similar conversation between Adam and Eve after she had been deceived. Adam knew what was wise, but heeded the voice of his wife to disobey God. This pattern of behavior has been repeating over and over since the dawn of humanity.

It's all appearances, it's the appearance of desirability, it's the appearance of power, it's the appearance of authority, it's the appearance that all the problems can and will be ameliorated, it's the appearance that there is everything to gain and nothing to lose, but that's all it ever is, appearance.

This is why appearances matter, but can't be everything, because you have to see past appearances in order to see the trap being set for your soul. Solomon's cautions are to be aware of what appearances are, what they mean, what they are used for. We are not to ignore them, but understand them, and that is what the "youth" he is describing does not understand, does not have the wisdom to perceive.

Do not be like the ignorant youth.

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