My son, keep my words,
And treasure my commands within you.
Keep my commands and live,
And my law as the apple of your eye.
Bind them on your fingers;
Write them on the tablet of your heart.
Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,”
And call understanding your nearest kin,
That they may keep you from the immoral woman,
From the seductress who flatters with her words.
Proverbs 7:1-5 (NKJV).
While Solomon does try to anthropomorphize "wisdom", and commonly so as a woman, this is not because wisdom is female, but because of the connotation of the relationship that Solomon is describing to his son. In this sense, wisdom has no gender, but the way that a man will interact with wisdom will reflect relationships he has with the women around him.
This time around, wisdom is like a sister. As one who has a sister, the idea that I am to treat wisdom like someone close resonates, I can understand it. I didn't have a brother, so I can't contrast that with any degree of personal experience, but I can understand treating wisdom and understanding like family.
In our current social paradigm, we're trying to destroy family, in both structure and meaning. We're trying to create families out of strangers, and the better we pull this charade off, the more social kudos we earn from those around us, including those we are now treating like family. The problem is that family is connected in ways that are not a choice, and that bond then becomes something unique.
The uniqueness of that connection means that you'll do things for your family that you wouldn't do for anyone else. You will sacrifice for your family in a way you wouldn't for anyone else, and they will do the same. At least "good" family will. This mutual "benefit of the doubt" also means that you'll listen to them, and they to you, in a way which a complete stranger won't. They'll be concerned for your future in ways a complete stranger won't.
Your family is a connection that is different between siblings and parents than between husband and wife, intimate and yet platonic, with a closeness and an honesty that can be hard to come by. While your wife or husband is still part of your family, and your children family, they are not the same family that you grew up with, they belong to a new family, a new dynamic.
Family cares about each other because, in some ways, they're the only people who will stick by you through thick and thin. There's a reason why close friends are "like family", because the connotation of family is a powerful one.
And that power traces back to God, which is why the family is under assault, because we live in a world in its death throes of rebellion, ruled by a prince who has already lost, but is so depraved that he'll try to drag as many souls to eternal condemnation as is possible. The family must either be destroyed or diluted, it either must not exist, or if it does, it must be perverted and misshapen.
The immoral woman that Solomon references is not family. She is not your sibling, your parent, one who is worthy of your sacrifices, of lending your ear, let alone your bed. Siblings help us filter people out, to give us wisdom and a different perspective, whether we asked for it or not, and whether we agree with them or not.
In this passage, Solomon is indicating that when you treat wisdom and understanding like family, when you let them have influence over you, when you care about what they have to say, that they will help steer you away from the immoral woman who may appear like a "good time", but who only leads man down a path of destruction. In the same way that a brother or sister may comment on someone you are seeing and feel confident in providing an unvarnished opinion on the matter, treating wisdom and understanding as playing the same role can guide us even when we don't have our family with us at all.
Solomon is not just trying to impart wisdom, you see, he's also trying to build awareness to the fact that people who are in a role to provide such wisdom will not always be around. The drive has to be internal, you have to already know how to pursue wisdom, how to seek her out and how to listen, before you're in over your head, on your own, in a distant land, or just isolated on the street as you travel home.
You aren't always going to have someone there, a real person that you can trust, and so you must instill the teachings of wisdom, to pursue understanding before it's necessary, so that you are not caught off-guard, unprepared, unable to escape a trap that you could have otherwise easily avoided.
For men, as an example, it's about really internalizing that no amount of effort on anyone else's part is going to stop you from adultery. Nothing that anyone else does can, ultimately, overcome your own sinful desires if you succumb to them. Sure, you may hold out for a time, but when you seek to satisfy the desires of the flesh, eventually all the best laid plans are ruined in the sheer force of hunger. You, as a man, must command control over your own desires, and learn how to keep yourself from the immoral woman before you have seen her, before she whispers her sweet temptations, before you smell the perfume, barely covering over the stench of death that follows her around.
Treat wisdom like someone who deserves your ear, your sacrifices, your attention, and you will be prepared for, and understand, how you are to escape from temptation when it presents itself. Unlike Solomon, we now even have the advantage of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, serving to add another voice to the decision making process, another source of wisdom that we can tap into at any time, that we can lean on and draw strength from in facing sin.
Simply put, we are without any excuse for our sin, and that is why God is just in punishing it so harshly, and why our lives are so blessed when we are obedient to the wisdom that God shares freely with us.
Showing posts with label Adultery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adultery. Show all posts
12.4.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 6:30-35
People do not despise a thief
If he steals to satisfy himself when he is starving.
Yet when he is found, he must restore sevenfold;
He may have to give up all the substance of his house.
Whoever commits adultery with a woman lacks understanding;
He who does so destroys his own soul.
Wounds and dishonor he will get,
And his reproach will not be wiped away.
For jealousy is a husband’s fury;
Therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance.
He will accept no recompense,
Nor will he be appeased though you give many gifts.
Proverbs 6:30-35 (NKJV).
Solomon here is building upon the previously discussed folly of the adulterer by contrasting it to the petty thief. In essence, what he is saying that when people steal because they have a genuine need, people don't hate them for that. People don't hate someone for being hungry and doing whatever they can to fill their stomachs, though at the same time that does not mean being a thief is without any consequences.
The difference though is that the adulterous man is not hungry, and where the thief has a tangible quantity that can be restored to whom they stole from, the man who commits adultery with another man's wife cannot ever give back what has been stolen, cannot return "sevenfold" back to whom they stole from by bedding someone else's wife.
Solomon notes that there is nothing that can be done to repay the husband whose wife you have committed adultery with. There is no amount of gifts that will assuage the debt that is now owed because of what has been done. The adulterer has then marked themselves for life, presuming that even lasts very long, all for the sake of temporary pleasure.
Sex is a pleasurable activity, but it has a distinct beginning and ending, and life continues after sex has finished. Solomon is using the framing of adultery a lot, because of how entirely destructive it is, but the underlying logic behind why it is destructive applies to all sinful temptations.
Look at the iconic "seven deadly sins", and notice how each is associated with a short-term gain that is undermined, offset, negated or entirely dwarfed by the long-term consequences: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride.
Each of them represents an imbalance, a perversion of a desire or a pleasure or even a possible act of righteousness into a gross exaggeration, an unrefined and all-consuming emotional dictate on the behaviors of the individual.
This is why Solomon talks about it destroying not just materially, but spiritually as well, because to succumb to these all denigrates who we truly are as humans. At the most obvious level, by taking away from our glorification of God and drowning us in material matters, but at the more subtle level, in that by succumbing to these singular drives, we have to conquer all that God has created us to be, in both material and spiritual, and throwing all of it aside to be reduced to such a state.
When we make sinful choices, we aren't tapping into some wellspring of "evil", as if it had a tangible existence or power that sought to fight God. Instead, like the concept of "cold" being a relative lack of "heat", "evil" is a relative lack of "God".
Thus adultery specifically, and sin in general, are a denial of God's designs, God's desires, and that's why Solomon indicates that those who partake of it do not understand. They don't understand the consequences, the impact, the effects of what they are doing, whether judgment comes in the temporal or the eternal. If we understood the damage, the judgment that would come down on us, if we understood the debt we pile up for ourselves, we would not be inclined to make these choices, their allure would be lost and we'd be able to make a more rational judgment.
Even back to the beginning, with Adam and Eve, Satan preyed upon their ignorance as to the long-term consequences of their choice to disobey God, deceiving Eve into believing that what she would gain would be worth the cost, and Adam was simply too much of a coward to obey God instead of Eve.
How many times have you talked to an older person about their life experiences, and heard some variation of the phrase "if I only knew then what I knew now, things would have been different?" Solomon exhorts us to pursue wisdom so that we don't find ourselves trapped in that very place of ignorance, making sinful decisions, and only learning the error of our ways afterwards.
God's desire for us is that, through pursuing wisdom, pursuing understanding the heart of God, we would be prepared to face these temptations, knowing what they really are, not being deluded by the deceit and empty words, and choose to align ourselves with God in rejecting sin.
The world wants you to believe that your choices don't matter, that there's always a way to make amends, that forgiveness and love always win out in the end. The truth is that justice will be had, sin will be punished, and our choices matter, leading us down different paths that all lead into eternity.
How we spend eternity, let alone our temporal lives, always depends on what we choose in the present. Learn about how and why to make better choices, from the God who is good, and you will not spend an eternity suffering for the temporary gains you sought to fill your life with now.
If he steals to satisfy himself when he is starving.
Yet when he is found, he must restore sevenfold;
He may have to give up all the substance of his house.
Whoever commits adultery with a woman lacks understanding;
He who does so destroys his own soul.
Wounds and dishonor he will get,
And his reproach will not be wiped away.
For jealousy is a husband’s fury;
Therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance.
He will accept no recompense,
Nor will he be appeased though you give many gifts.
Proverbs 6:30-35 (NKJV).
Solomon here is building upon the previously discussed folly of the adulterer by contrasting it to the petty thief. In essence, what he is saying that when people steal because they have a genuine need, people don't hate them for that. People don't hate someone for being hungry and doing whatever they can to fill their stomachs, though at the same time that does not mean being a thief is without any consequences.
The difference though is that the adulterous man is not hungry, and where the thief has a tangible quantity that can be restored to whom they stole from, the man who commits adultery with another man's wife cannot ever give back what has been stolen, cannot return "sevenfold" back to whom they stole from by bedding someone else's wife.
Solomon notes that there is nothing that can be done to repay the husband whose wife you have committed adultery with. There is no amount of gifts that will assuage the debt that is now owed because of what has been done. The adulterer has then marked themselves for life, presuming that even lasts very long, all for the sake of temporary pleasure.
Sex is a pleasurable activity, but it has a distinct beginning and ending, and life continues after sex has finished. Solomon is using the framing of adultery a lot, because of how entirely destructive it is, but the underlying logic behind why it is destructive applies to all sinful temptations.
Look at the iconic "seven deadly sins", and notice how each is associated with a short-term gain that is undermined, offset, negated or entirely dwarfed by the long-term consequences: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride.
Each of them represents an imbalance, a perversion of a desire or a pleasure or even a possible act of righteousness into a gross exaggeration, an unrefined and all-consuming emotional dictate on the behaviors of the individual.
This is why Solomon talks about it destroying not just materially, but spiritually as well, because to succumb to these all denigrates who we truly are as humans. At the most obvious level, by taking away from our glorification of God and drowning us in material matters, but at the more subtle level, in that by succumbing to these singular drives, we have to conquer all that God has created us to be, in both material and spiritual, and throwing all of it aside to be reduced to such a state.
When we make sinful choices, we aren't tapping into some wellspring of "evil", as if it had a tangible existence or power that sought to fight God. Instead, like the concept of "cold" being a relative lack of "heat", "evil" is a relative lack of "God".
Thus adultery specifically, and sin in general, are a denial of God's designs, God's desires, and that's why Solomon indicates that those who partake of it do not understand. They don't understand the consequences, the impact, the effects of what they are doing, whether judgment comes in the temporal or the eternal. If we understood the damage, the judgment that would come down on us, if we understood the debt we pile up for ourselves, we would not be inclined to make these choices, their allure would be lost and we'd be able to make a more rational judgment.
Even back to the beginning, with Adam and Eve, Satan preyed upon their ignorance as to the long-term consequences of their choice to disobey God, deceiving Eve into believing that what she would gain would be worth the cost, and Adam was simply too much of a coward to obey God instead of Eve.
How many times have you talked to an older person about their life experiences, and heard some variation of the phrase "if I only knew then what I knew now, things would have been different?" Solomon exhorts us to pursue wisdom so that we don't find ourselves trapped in that very place of ignorance, making sinful decisions, and only learning the error of our ways afterwards.
God's desire for us is that, through pursuing wisdom, pursuing understanding the heart of God, we would be prepared to face these temptations, knowing what they really are, not being deluded by the deceit and empty words, and choose to align ourselves with God in rejecting sin.
The world wants you to believe that your choices don't matter, that there's always a way to make amends, that forgiveness and love always win out in the end. The truth is that justice will be had, sin will be punished, and our choices matter, leading us down different paths that all lead into eternity.
How we spend eternity, let alone our temporal lives, always depends on what we choose in the present. Learn about how and why to make better choices, from the God who is good, and you will not spend an eternity suffering for the temporary gains you sought to fill your life with now.
11.4.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 6:20-29
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.
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.
5.4.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 5:15-20
Drink water from your own cistern,
And running water from your own well.
Should your fountains be dispersed abroad,
Streams of water in the streets?
Let them be only your own,
And not for strangers with you.
Let your fountain be blessed,
And rejoice with the wife of your youth.
As a loving deer and a graceful doe,
Let her breasts satisfy you at all times;
And always be enraptured with her love.
For why should you, my son, be enraptured by an immoral woman,
And be embraced in the arms of a seductress?
Proverbs 5:15-20 (NKJV).
Not even to Song of Solomon yet, but you can already get a sense for why he wrote that one too, right?
Solomon starts off comparing the resource of water to that of intimacy with one's wife, and this is not to make of her an inanimate object, but to emphasize the importance of the physical relationship between her and him, and the exclusivity of that relationship.
Water, especially in an arid environment, is precious. It is desirable, it is necessary to live and to thrive. While Solomon may not be intending to attach the entirety of that connotation to sexual intimacy between husband and wife, it would have been an analogy that people of that era would recognize immediately.
Modern technology has diluted the significance of this reference, with plumbing and city water supplies and each household not needing to tap its own water supply, but before the invention of modern plumbing systems, if you could not find a source of water on your property, you were in trouble.
Without access to water, you could not irrigate crops, provide water to your livestock, as well as have access to water for your family. You'd have to set up an arrangement with a neighbor, and that could get complicated fast. Realize that there weren't ways to transport large quantities of water over any great distance, so to feed a herd of cattle, you'd have to take the whole herd to the source of water. All the while, those creatures are grazing, and eating of the grass of your neighbor's fields while on the way to get water, thus reducing the amount of grass that they'd have for their own cattle, further entwining the relationship with your neighbor as they take their herds onto your lands in order to have sufficient access to food.
The reason I emphasize this is that water was necessary, important, and access to it was carefully guarded, carefully protected from those who would not appreciate it, take care of the water infrastructure, or perhaps even poison or taint it through foul play.
In the same sense of importance then Solomon emphasizes the physical relationship between the husband and wife. For the same reason that you wouldn't waste water by spilling it out into the street, you wouldn't just grant anyone access, nor would you try to gain access to someone else's water supply when you have your own, so should a husband find satisfaction only in his wife, and she only in him.
This is not just an intellectual love, a romantic or idealized emotional love either, but a physical one, which should be clear in that Solomon is literally saying to enjoy your wife's body, even after the youth has departed from both of you. The immoral woman may be more attractive, more desirable.
The water always seems cooler when drawn from someone else's well, right?
The problem is that the seductress is not interested in your future, only in leveraging your present desires to satisfy her current needs, or the needs of whomever has deployed her, and will not shed a single tear for the destruction you wreak upon your own family, your own legacy, your own future in pursuing her embrace.
Instead, care to and appreciate what you already have, because the "wife of your youth" is intimately invested in both you and your family. She cares deeply about the results of the decisions you make, and not just because of how she benefits from them, but because there is no way for her to benefit without lifting up the rest of the family as well.
In the modern world, through legal and social changes, this dynamic has been destroyed, almost entirely. No longer are women encouraged to seek the benefit of their entire household, only themselves, through the deception of their own emotional state supposedly acting as an accurate reflection of the reality of the family status. In turn, men are no longer able to enjoy the wives of their youth, who have been perverted by and fallen prey to demonic deceits, and so in response, in still desiring a helper, a companion who sacrifices of themselves, they turn to immoral women to satiate desire, but not to continue to grow their own legacy.
It's the pattern of The Garden, of The Fall, all over again. Eve is tempted to lust after that which she cannot, or at least should not, obtain, and as a reaction, Adam elects to pursue physical companionship and intimacy instead of obedience to God.
This is why Solomon states what he does about intimacy in marriage, not because there is nothing else important about the marriage dynamic, but because this is what can so easily destroy it, and has done so reliably since the dawn of human civilization. It's because of how frequent, how damaging, these acts are that they get so much emphasis.
Later in Proverbs, Solomon will discuss other details, other dynamics, but it's important not to miss the significance that in the first discussion of marriage dynamics, he emphasizes the need to avoid adultery, to appreciate what you have and not lust after what only appears desirable, but in fact leads to destruction.
And running water from your own well.
Should your fountains be dispersed abroad,
Streams of water in the streets?
Let them be only your own,
And not for strangers with you.
Let your fountain be blessed,
And rejoice with the wife of your youth.
As a loving deer and a graceful doe,
Let her breasts satisfy you at all times;
And always be enraptured with her love.
For why should you, my son, be enraptured by an immoral woman,
And be embraced in the arms of a seductress?
Proverbs 5:15-20 (NKJV).
Not even to Song of Solomon yet, but you can already get a sense for why he wrote that one too, right?
Solomon starts off comparing the resource of water to that of intimacy with one's wife, and this is not to make of her an inanimate object, but to emphasize the importance of the physical relationship between her and him, and the exclusivity of that relationship.
Water, especially in an arid environment, is precious. It is desirable, it is necessary to live and to thrive. While Solomon may not be intending to attach the entirety of that connotation to sexual intimacy between husband and wife, it would have been an analogy that people of that era would recognize immediately.
Modern technology has diluted the significance of this reference, with plumbing and city water supplies and each household not needing to tap its own water supply, but before the invention of modern plumbing systems, if you could not find a source of water on your property, you were in trouble.
Without access to water, you could not irrigate crops, provide water to your livestock, as well as have access to water for your family. You'd have to set up an arrangement with a neighbor, and that could get complicated fast. Realize that there weren't ways to transport large quantities of water over any great distance, so to feed a herd of cattle, you'd have to take the whole herd to the source of water. All the while, those creatures are grazing, and eating of the grass of your neighbor's fields while on the way to get water, thus reducing the amount of grass that they'd have for their own cattle, further entwining the relationship with your neighbor as they take their herds onto your lands in order to have sufficient access to food.
The reason I emphasize this is that water was necessary, important, and access to it was carefully guarded, carefully protected from those who would not appreciate it, take care of the water infrastructure, or perhaps even poison or taint it through foul play.
In the same sense of importance then Solomon emphasizes the physical relationship between the husband and wife. For the same reason that you wouldn't waste water by spilling it out into the street, you wouldn't just grant anyone access, nor would you try to gain access to someone else's water supply when you have your own, so should a husband find satisfaction only in his wife, and she only in him.
This is not just an intellectual love, a romantic or idealized emotional love either, but a physical one, which should be clear in that Solomon is literally saying to enjoy your wife's body, even after the youth has departed from both of you. The immoral woman may be more attractive, more desirable.
The water always seems cooler when drawn from someone else's well, right?
The problem is that the seductress is not interested in your future, only in leveraging your present desires to satisfy her current needs, or the needs of whomever has deployed her, and will not shed a single tear for the destruction you wreak upon your own family, your own legacy, your own future in pursuing her embrace.
Instead, care to and appreciate what you already have, because the "wife of your youth" is intimately invested in both you and your family. She cares deeply about the results of the decisions you make, and not just because of how she benefits from them, but because there is no way for her to benefit without lifting up the rest of the family as well.
In the modern world, through legal and social changes, this dynamic has been destroyed, almost entirely. No longer are women encouraged to seek the benefit of their entire household, only themselves, through the deception of their own emotional state supposedly acting as an accurate reflection of the reality of the family status. In turn, men are no longer able to enjoy the wives of their youth, who have been perverted by and fallen prey to demonic deceits, and so in response, in still desiring a helper, a companion who sacrifices of themselves, they turn to immoral women to satiate desire, but not to continue to grow their own legacy.
It's the pattern of The Garden, of The Fall, all over again. Eve is tempted to lust after that which she cannot, or at least should not, obtain, and as a reaction, Adam elects to pursue physical companionship and intimacy instead of obedience to God.
This is why Solomon states what he does about intimacy in marriage, not because there is nothing else important about the marriage dynamic, but because this is what can so easily destroy it, and has done so reliably since the dawn of human civilization. It's because of how frequent, how damaging, these acts are that they get so much emphasis.
Later in Proverbs, Solomon will discuss other details, other dynamics, but it's important not to miss the significance that in the first discussion of marriage dynamics, he emphasizes the need to avoid adultery, to appreciate what you have and not lust after what only appears desirable, but in fact leads to destruction.
3.4.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 5:1-6
My son, pay attention to my wisdom;
Lend your ear to my understanding,
That you may preserve discretion,
And your lips may keep knowledge.
For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey,
And her mouth is smoother than oil;
But in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
Sharp as a two-edged sword.
Her feet go down to death,
Her steps lay hold of hell.
Lest you ponder her path of life—
Her ways are unstable;
You do not know them.
Proverbs 5:1-6 (NKJV).
Temptation is desirable. This might be obvious, but really ponder on how you cannot be tempted by that which you do not desire. Why, then, do we so often hear it taught that what we desire is, somehow, inherently always good for us? Why does "pursuing your heart" lead to "good" outcomes ever?
Put differently, if you're only ever tempted by what you want, how do you know that the opportunity to get what you want is temptation or not?
Notice how Solomon reinforces this short-term allure in the description of the immoral woman. Honey is tasty. A "smooth mouth" is referring to flattery. In short, that Solomon is describing her as desirable, both in what she offers physically and verbally to entice a man.
And then the "but". In the end, despite this superficial attractiveness, actually deciding to partake of her company leads to destruction. The short-term attraction leads to long-term pain and suffering, both for you and her, and thus you've got the basic dynamics of every temptation laid out before you.
Temptation is always about a shortcut, you getting what you want, but on terms which disagree with God's wisdom and desire for your life. This isn't about God not wanting you to experience "good" things, but that so often in the pursuit of "good" we make ourselves or other finite beings into "gods", driving our behavior in a way that only God deserves.
This is why men succumb to adultery. It's not because sexual desire is "bad", but because they turn the "good" of pleasure through sex into a god which grants them permission to violate their promises before God. Men genuinely feel pleasure, but it's the long-term consequences, not the short-term ones, that make something like adultery so abhorrent to God. Instead of finding their pleasure in their wife, they find it in a "strange woman", and anecdotally speaking, has that ever turned out well?
Among r-strategists, promiscuity is common, so with our modern society so heavily tilted towards r-selection due to resource abundance, socially we've become numb to the consequences of hedonistic pursuits. We've become so exposed to stimuli of various types that we have to keep pushing the envelope, upping the stakes, adding more and more arbitrary requirements to pretend that the skill and talent required represent something about us, as opposed to the reality of us just getting bored with our dopamine receptors burned out.
Men are then pushed to not consider the long-term consequences of their actions, and neither are women, but until the past century or so, women did not wield social, political, or economic power in the same manner that men did, so when you sought to correct the direction of a people, you instructed the men, and the information would then flow down into their "tribe", to their families, and so on.
In that light, while Solomon does reference a gender here, specifically women, as the immoral one to be avoided, snake oil salesmen offer just as sweet a temptation to women as the immoral woman would be to a man, though obviously the dynamics are different as to what men or women desire.
Look at the deceit that Satan used in the garden to cause Eve to desire the forbidden fruit, to pursue the short-term benefits while disregarding the long-term consequences. It wasn't about a pursuit of pleasure, it was about a pursuit of power. This is how each gender is most easily led astray (look at Adam and Eve for the prime examples):
Men by pleasure, women by power.
So as to the earlier question on how to tell whether an opportunity is a temptation or not, first ask yourself whether it's about pleasure, if you're a man, or about power, if you're a woman. Search the scriptures to determine if what you desire has an appropriate manifestation or not. If not, then you can safely dismiss the opportunity as sinful. If there is an appropriate manifestation, then keep digging, keep searching, to find out all the pertinent details and understand whether your circumstances match.
On a time crunch and can't "afford" to do the research? Then simply say no.
There are no important decisions that you need to make in life which cannot wait for you to make a better decision, and time and again when pressured to complete a decision without careful thought, it's because those trying to sell know that spending more time weighing options will not end in their favor.
Solomon warns of the dangers of pursuing what we desire, and in wisdom we should understand that it's not because what we desire is inherently bad, but because the conditions, the timing of things, makes it so. For the same reason we distinguish between self-defense and murder, between adultery and marital sex, between worship of God and of idols, it's not in the actions themselves that sin exists, but in who is glorified or denounced by when and why a particular action has been taken.
Understand this, and you are embracing wisdom.
Lend your ear to my understanding,
That you may preserve discretion,
And your lips may keep knowledge.
For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey,
And her mouth is smoother than oil;
But in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
Sharp as a two-edged sword.
Her feet go down to death,
Her steps lay hold of hell.
Lest you ponder her path of life—
Her ways are unstable;
You do not know them.
Proverbs 5:1-6 (NKJV).
Temptation is desirable. This might be obvious, but really ponder on how you cannot be tempted by that which you do not desire. Why, then, do we so often hear it taught that what we desire is, somehow, inherently always good for us? Why does "pursuing your heart" lead to "good" outcomes ever?
Put differently, if you're only ever tempted by what you want, how do you know that the opportunity to get what you want is temptation or not?
Notice how Solomon reinforces this short-term allure in the description of the immoral woman. Honey is tasty. A "smooth mouth" is referring to flattery. In short, that Solomon is describing her as desirable, both in what she offers physically and verbally to entice a man.
And then the "but". In the end, despite this superficial attractiveness, actually deciding to partake of her company leads to destruction. The short-term attraction leads to long-term pain and suffering, both for you and her, and thus you've got the basic dynamics of every temptation laid out before you.
Temptation is always about a shortcut, you getting what you want, but on terms which disagree with God's wisdom and desire for your life. This isn't about God not wanting you to experience "good" things, but that so often in the pursuit of "good" we make ourselves or other finite beings into "gods", driving our behavior in a way that only God deserves.
This is why men succumb to adultery. It's not because sexual desire is "bad", but because they turn the "good" of pleasure through sex into a god which grants them permission to violate their promises before God. Men genuinely feel pleasure, but it's the long-term consequences, not the short-term ones, that make something like adultery so abhorrent to God. Instead of finding their pleasure in their wife, they find it in a "strange woman", and anecdotally speaking, has that ever turned out well?
Among r-strategists, promiscuity is common, so with our modern society so heavily tilted towards r-selection due to resource abundance, socially we've become numb to the consequences of hedonistic pursuits. We've become so exposed to stimuli of various types that we have to keep pushing the envelope, upping the stakes, adding more and more arbitrary requirements to pretend that the skill and talent required represent something about us, as opposed to the reality of us just getting bored with our dopamine receptors burned out.
Men are then pushed to not consider the long-term consequences of their actions, and neither are women, but until the past century or so, women did not wield social, political, or economic power in the same manner that men did, so when you sought to correct the direction of a people, you instructed the men, and the information would then flow down into their "tribe", to their families, and so on.
In that light, while Solomon does reference a gender here, specifically women, as the immoral one to be avoided, snake oil salesmen offer just as sweet a temptation to women as the immoral woman would be to a man, though obviously the dynamics are different as to what men or women desire.
Look at the deceit that Satan used in the garden to cause Eve to desire the forbidden fruit, to pursue the short-term benefits while disregarding the long-term consequences. It wasn't about a pursuit of pleasure, it was about a pursuit of power. This is how each gender is most easily led astray (look at Adam and Eve for the prime examples):
Men by pleasure, women by power.
So as to the earlier question on how to tell whether an opportunity is a temptation or not, first ask yourself whether it's about pleasure, if you're a man, or about power, if you're a woman. Search the scriptures to determine if what you desire has an appropriate manifestation or not. If not, then you can safely dismiss the opportunity as sinful. If there is an appropriate manifestation, then keep digging, keep searching, to find out all the pertinent details and understand whether your circumstances match.
On a time crunch and can't "afford" to do the research? Then simply say no.
There are no important decisions that you need to make in life which cannot wait for you to make a better decision, and time and again when pressured to complete a decision without careful thought, it's because those trying to sell know that spending more time weighing options will not end in their favor.
Solomon warns of the dangers of pursuing what we desire, and in wisdom we should understand that it's not because what we desire is inherently bad, but because the conditions, the timing of things, makes it so. For the same reason we distinguish between self-defense and murder, between adultery and marital sex, between worship of God and of idols, it's not in the actions themselves that sin exists, but in who is glorified or denounced by when and why a particular action has been taken.
Understand this, and you are embracing wisdom.
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