Proverbs 5
What Happens in This Chapter
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.
My son, pay attention to my wisdom. Bend your ear toward what I understand.
1My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding:
"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.
2Then you will hold on to good judgment, and your words will guard what you have learned.
2That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.
3The lips of the forbidden woman, a woman who is not your wife, drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil.
3For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:
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.
4But in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a sword with two cutting edges.
4But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.
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.
5Her feet go down to death. Her steps take hold of the grave.
5Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.
"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.
6She gives no thought to the path of life. Her ways wander from place to place, and she does not know it.
6Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.
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.
7So listen to me now, my sons, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth.
7Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.
8Keep your path far away from her. Do not even go near the door of her house.
8Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house:
9If you do, you will hand your strength and honor over to other people, and your years over to someone cruel.
9Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel:
"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.
10Strangers will fill themselves with your wealth, and everything you worked for will end up in a stranger's house.
10Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger;
"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.
11At the end of your life you will groan, when your flesh and your body are worn away.
11And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,
12You will say, "How I hated being taught! My heart refused to take a warning."
12And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;
13"I did not listen to the voice of my teachers. I did not pay attention to the people who instructed me."
13And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!
14"I came to the edge of complete ruin, right in front of the whole gathered community."
14I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.
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.
15Drink water from your own cistern, fresh running water from your own well.
15Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.
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.
16Should your springs spill out into the street, your streams of water into the public squares?
16Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets.
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.
17Let them belong to you alone, and never be shared with strangers.
17Let them be only thine own, and not strangers’ with thee.
18May your fountain be blessed. Take joy in the wife you married when you were young.
18Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
"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.
19She is a loving doe, a graceful mountain goat. May her breasts satisfy you at all times. May her love always hold you captive.
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.
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.
20So why, my son, would you be held captive by a foreign woman? Why hold a stranger close?
20And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?
21For a person's ways are in plain sight of the LORD, and he weighs every path a person walks.
21For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings.
22A wicked man's own sins catch him. He is held tight by the ropes of his own sin.
22His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.
23He dies because he would not be taught, and his own great foolishness leads him astray.
23He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.
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