Warning Against Adultery and the Call to Faithful Love.

Proverbs 5 is a solemn warning against sexual sin, especially the seduction of the strange woman, whose words may seem sweet at first but lead to bitterness, shame, ruin, and death. The chapter teaches that sin is deceptive because it appeals to desire while hiding its end, and it shows that unfaithfulness destroys honor, strength, peace, and substance. In contrast, the passage calls a man to rejoice in the wife of his youth and to live in faithful covenant love rather than wandering desire. The chapter also reminds the reader that no path is hidden from the Lord, for He sees all a man’s ways and weighs his steps. Its purpose is to train the heart in purity, restraint, and covenant faithfulness before God.

Proverbs 5:1 – 5:23

  1 My son, attend unto my wisdom, [and] bow thine ear to my understanding:
  2 That thou mayest regard discretion, and [that] thy lips may keep knowledge.
  3 For the lips of a strange woman drop [as] an honeycomb, and her mouth [is] smoother than oil:
  4 But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword.
  5 Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.
  6 Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, [that] thou canst not know [them].
  7 Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.
  8 Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house:
  9 Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel:
  10 Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours [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 obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!
  14 I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.
  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 the 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?
  21 For the ways of man [are] before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goings.
  22 His own iniquities shall take the wicked 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.