Proverbs 5: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

A father urges his son to listen to his wisdom and stay far from the forbidden woman, whose speech is smooth as oil but whose end is bitter and leads down to death. He pictures the son at the end of his life, groaning over ruined health, lost years, and wealth handed to strangers, because he would not listen to his teachers. The father then tells him to drink from his own cistern and to take joy in the wife of his youth instead. The chapter closes by saying the LORD sees every path a person takes, and that a wicked man is caught and held by the ropes of his own sin.

Claim by Claim

1. 5:1
   • The speaker addresses the one he is instructing as his son.
   • The speaker tells his son to pay attention to his wisdom.
   • The speaker tells his son to bend his ear to his understanding.
2. 5:2
   • The purpose of listening is that the son may keep discretion.
   • The purpose of listening is that the son's lips may guard knowledge.
3. 5:3
   • The lips of the strange woman drip flowing honey.
   • Her palate is smoother than oil.
4. 5:4
   • Her end is bitter as wormwood.
   • Her end is sharp as a two-edged sword.
5. 5:5
   • Her feet go down to death.
   • Her steps take hold of Sheol, the realm of the dead.
6. 5:6
   • The path of life is not weighed or considered; the Hebrew leaves unclear whether it is the woman or the son who fails to weigh it.
   • Her ways wander and are unsteady.
   • The wandering of her ways is not known; the Hebrew leaves unclear whether it is the woman or the son who does not know it.
7. 5:7
   • The speaker calls his sons to listen to him now.
   • The speaker tells them not to turn aside from the words of his mouth.
8. 5:8
   • The son is told to keep his way far from her.
   • The son is told not to come near the door of her house.
9. 5:9
   • Going near her risks giving one's vigor to others.
   • Going near her risks giving one's years to a cruel one.
10. 5:10
    • Going near her risks strangers being filled with one's strength.
    • Going near her risks one's earnings ending up in the house of a foreigner.
11. 5:11
    • Going near her risks that the son will groan at his end.
    • At that end his flesh and his body will be consumed.
12. 5:12
    • The son will then say that he hated instruction.
    • The son will then say that his heart despised reproof.
13. 5:13
    • The son will say he did not listen to the voice of his teachers.
    • The son will say he did not incline his ear to those who instructed him.
14. 5:14
    • The son will say he was almost in complete ruin.
    • This came upon him in the midst of the congregation and the assembly.
15. 5:15
    • The son is told to drink water from his own cistern.
    • The son is told to drink flowing water from his own well.
16. 5:16
    • The son's springs are to be scattered outside, and his streams of water in the public squares; the Hebrew does not mark whether this is a statement or a question expecting a denial.
17. 5:17
    • The springs are to belong to the son alone.
    • The springs are not to belong to strangers along with him.
18. 5:18
    • The son's fountain is to be blessed.
    • The son is to rejoice in the wife of his youth.
19. 5:19
    • The wife is a loving doe and a graceful mountain goat.
    • Her breasts are to satisfy the son at all times.
    • The son is to be intoxicated continually with her love.
20. 5:20
    • The speaker asks why his son would be intoxicated with a strange woman.
    • The speaker asks why his son would embrace the bosom of a foreign woman.
21. 5:21
    • A man's ways are before the eyes of the LORD.
    • The LORD weighs all of a man's paths.
22. 5:22
    • A wicked man's own iniquities capture him.
    • He is held fast by the cords of his sin.
23. 5:23
    • He will die for lack of instruction.
    • In the greatness of his folly he will go astray.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

5:1

"My son" is the standard way a teacher addressed a student in ancient wisdom writing. It does not necessarily mean a literal father speaking to his own child; the phrase marks the start of a lesson, and chapters 1–9 of Proverbs are built as a series of them.

5:2

"Discretion" means knowing when to speak, when to stay quiet, and when to walk away.

5:3

The Hebrew phrase behind "forbidden woman" literally means "strange" or "foreign" woman. In Proverbs it covers any woman outside the bounds of a man's own marriage, most often another man's wife, sometimes an outsider to the community. The rendering picks the sense the chapter goes on to develop, but the Hebrew word itself is broader and vaguer.

5:4

Wormwood is a shrub with an intensely bitter taste, used in the ancient world as a stock image for something that looks or starts out pleasant and turns sickening. It is the opposite pole from the honey in the previous line.

5:5

"The grave" translates Sheol, the Hebrew name for the underworld where all the dead were thought to go, not a place of punishment as opposed to reward, but simply the realm of the dead, dark and cut off from life. The King James "hell" carries later associations the Hebrew word does not have.

5:6

This verse is genuinely unclear in Hebrew and translators divide over it. It can mean she gives no thought to the path of life, or that she keeps you from giving it thought; and the last clause can mean either that she does not know where her own paths lead, or that you cannot know. The rendering preserves the wandering, unfixed quality of the image without resolving who is unaware.

5:9

"Honour" here translates a Hebrew word meaning vigor, splendor, or prime, the strength and standing of a man's best years. Who "the cruel" is, is left open: ancient and modern readers have taken it as an outraged husband, a creditor, or simply a hard master into whose power the man falls.

5:10

"Strangers" means outsiders to your own household and family line. In a society where property and reputation passed down within a family, having your wealth end up in an outsider's house was the loss of everything you had worked to hand on.

5:11

"Thy flesh and thy body are consumed" pictures a person worn out early, with nothing left of the health he started with.

5:12

"Reproof" is a correction. It is what someone says to you when you are going wrong, meant to turn you around.

5:14

The "gathered community" is the assembled townspeople. In ancient Israel this body also functioned as the court, meeting publicly to hear cases and pass judgment, so ruin "in front of" it means disgrace and sentence carried out in the open, before everyone he knows.

5:15

Cisterns and wells were private, owned property, a cistern was a pit cut into rock to hold rainwater, dug at real cost and belonging to one household. Drinking from your own is a figure of speech for taking your satisfaction from your own wife, and the water imagery runs through the next four verses.

5:16

The Hebrew has no word for "should," and translators split over whether this is a question (as here) or a statement. As a question it warns against letting what is yours spill out in public; read as a statement it becomes a blessing on offspring spreading widely. The verse has been understood both ways since antiquity.

5:18

"Fountain" continues the water imagery of verse 15 and stands for the wife herself and the family life she gives. "The wife of your youth" means the woman he married early in life, and the phrase carries the weight of long shared years.

5:19

Comparing a woman to a doe was conventional praise in ancient Near Eastern love poetry, evoking grace and beauty rather than timidity. The verb rendered "hold you captive" literally means to reel or stagger, as a person does when drunk, the same verb translated "leads him astray" in verse 23, deliberately reused.

5:20

"The bosom of a stranger" means another man's wife. "Stranger" again means someone outside his own family, not someone unfamiliar.

5:21

"Pondereth all his goings" means God weighs and examines every step a person takes, not just the big ones.

5:22

"Cords" are ropes. The picture is an animal caught in a trap, tangled tighter the more it pulls.

5:23

"Folly" means foolishness. Not a small mistake, but a way of living that refuses to learn.