THE warning of Chapter Two against the strange woman is in this portion reverted to, and additional instruction given. It is a subject of deep solemnity if this unholy siren be seen to picture false religion, with its snares and seductions; while, of course, looked at in its simple, primary meaning, it is of great importance. If any are entrapped, it is not for lack of warning, but for willful neglect of instruction.
1 My son, attend unto my wisdom,
And bow thine ear to mine understanding;
2 That thou mayest regard discretion,
And that thy lips may keep knowledge.
Throughout the book, the need of more than casual attention to the words of wisdom is enforced. To hear with no thought of heeding, is not what is contemplated; but the bowing of the ear to understanding, in order that discretion may be regarded and knowledge kept. That servant which knew his Lord’s will and did it not was to be beaten with many stripes. When God stoops to make known His will, it should be esteemed, not merely as duty, but as privilege, to obey.
3 For the lips of a strange woman drop as a honeycomb,
And her mouth is smoother than oil:
4 But her end is bitter as worm-wood,
Sharp as a two-edged sword.
5 Her feet go down to death;
Her steps take hold on sheol.
6 Lest thou ponder the path of life,
Her ways are moveable that thou canst not know them.
Fair and plausible are the words of the stranger-temptress; dark and terrible the ending of association with her. She plies her awful avocation today as of old, and thousands are her victims. Like the harlot-church of the closing book in our Bibles, she seduces and deceives, turning the heart away from the simplicity of the paths of truth, and leading to death and sheol. Many are her devices to delude the unwary; movable her ways, that their evil direction may not be known. Nothing is more attractive to the refuser of Wisdom’s words than the specious pleas of this deceptive system. The only safety is in cleaving to the words of God; hence the admonition in the verses that follow.
7 Hear me now therefore, O ye sons,
And depart not from the sayings of my mouth.
8 Remove thy way far from her,
And come not nigh the entrance of her house:
9 Lest thou give thine honor unto others,
And thy years unto the cruel ones:
10 Lest strangers he filled with thy wealth;
And thy labors be in the house of a stranger;
11 And thou mourn at the last,
When thy flesh and thy body are consumed,
12 And say, How have I hated instruction,
And my heart despised reproof;
13 And have not harkened to the voice of my teachers,
Nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!
14 1 was almost in all evil
In the midst of the congregation and assembly.
To learn by painful experience, if the word of God is not bowed to, is a bitter and solemn thing. God is not mocked; what is sown must be reaped. The unsteady hand, the confused brain, the bleared eye, premature age and weakened powers; with days and nights of folly to look back on with regret that can never be banished from the memory: such are a few of the results of failing to heed the advice of wisdom in the natural world. And in the spiritual we have what answer to all these—inability to try the things that differ, weakened spiritual susceptibilities, unsteadiness of behavior, loss in time and loss at the judgment seat of Christ; such are some of the sad effects of refusing the path of separation from apostate religion in this day of Christ’s rejection.
Throughout this collection of Proverbs, the strange woman is looked upon as an intruder from the outside, not a daughter of Israel who has been betrayed from the path of virtue. The law declared there was to be no harlot among the woman of the chosen people. It was from the surrounding countries the temptresses entered to seduce the young men of the separated nation. Hence the “strange woman”: not “strange” in the sense of peculiar; but the stranger-woman who plied her meretricious arts to deceive those who should be holy to the Lord. But so low had become the moral state of Israel, that even the daughters of the people of God had fallen into the degradation of the heathen, as is evident from the words already noticed in chapter 2:17. Though called a “stranger” or “foreigner,” she had “forsaken the guide of her youth, and forgotten the covenant of her God.” Hence she is viewed as an outsider, having no place in the congregation of the Lord.
Sanctified wedded love, in contrast to the loose and godless ways of what has been presented, we now have brought before us.
15 Drink waters out of thine own cistern,
And running waters out of thine own well.
16 Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad
And rivers of waters in thy streets
17 Let them be only thine own,
And not strangers’ with thee.
18 Let thy fountain be blessed;
And rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
19 Let 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.
20 And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman,
And embrace the bosom of a stranger?
For us, marriage represents the mystic union between Christ and the Church. Every Christian home should be a little picture of the relationship of our glorified Head with the members of His body. How holy then is that earthly association which speaks of such exalted heavenly mysteries. “Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled: but fornicators and adulterers God will judge” (Heb. 13:44Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge. (Hebrews 13:4)). How much precious teaching in the New Testament, particularly the epistolary portion of it, flows from this truth. Husbands and wives are urged to dwell together according to knowledge that their prayers be not hindered. (See 1 Peter 3:1-71Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; 2While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear. 3Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; 4But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. 5For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands: 6Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement. 7Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered. (1 Peter 3:1‑7)). What a test is this! When husband and wife are so living before each other that with joy and confidence they can kneel and pray together, the home will be what God desires; but where the ways and words of either or both hinder such seasons of communion ‘with each other and the Lord, there is something radically wrong.
21 For the ways of man are before the eyes of Jehovah,
And He pondereth all his goings.
This fact is just what the soul needs to keep in mind, to realize the solemnity of being in this world for God. His eyes are on all our ways. Nothing escapes that holy gaze. All is naked and open before Him with whom we have to do. He weighs and ponders every thought and word and action. Nothing is too insignificant for His notice; nothing too great for His attention. At the judgment-seat of Christ He will make manifest His estimate of it all. In that day how many of us would give worlds, did we possess them, if we had only been more truly faithful in all our ways in this scene!
22 His own iniquities shall take the lawless himself,
And he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.
23 He shall die without instruction;
And in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.
Certain retribution will follow the lawless. The very sins in which he now delights are the links he is forging to make the chain that shall bind him forever. Having refused instruction in life, he shall die without it; left to go astray in the folly his soul loved. Dying in his sins, he goes out into the darkness, where the light he refused in time shall never shine upon him again!