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Chapter 5 -- WARNING AGAINST ADULTERY
  

5.1 My son, be attentive to my wisdom, incline your ear to my understanding; that you may keep discretion, and your lips may guard knowledge. For the lips of a loose woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil; but in the end she is as bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.

Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to death; she does not take heed to the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it.

And now, O sons, listen to me, and do not depart from the words of my mouth. Keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house; lest you give your honour to others and your years to the merciless; let strangers take their fill of your strength and your labours go to the house of an alien; and at the end of your life you groan, when your flesh and body are consumed, and you say, "How I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof!"

I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors. I was at the point of utter ruin in the assembled congregation.

  

Sexual indiscretion can ruin presidents and kings, even whole nations it seems. Such is the importance of this subject that Solomon visits it yet again, pointing out more of the pitfalls. Think about them. Let your imagination vividly picture the painful consequences of your actions, he is saying, now, in advance. Build an emotional buffer – feel the pain as well as the pleasure. To be fore-warned is to be fore-armed.

At first the adulteress is as sweet as honey, but in the end, when you want free of her, she comes as bitter and unpleasant as wormwood, and as dangerous as a two-edged sword, one sharpened on both edges so that is can penetrate better and do more damage. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, goes the old saying. She has no conscience, no sense of right and wrong, so keep far away.

The last few lines articulate the emotions of millions of men who now find their bodies being consumed by AIDS. "Give us more drugs and condoms!" they cry. "Change your behavior," says Solomon, but it is too late. Truly successful people impose self-discipline, and develop a burning sense of purpose that helps them resist harmful distractions.

 

5.2 Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Why should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets? Let them be for you alone, and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of your youth, a lovely hind, a graceful doe. Let her affection fill you at all times with delight, be infatuated always with her love.

Why should you be infatuated, my son, with a loose woman and embrace the breasts of an adventuress?

For a man's ways are before the eyes of the Lord, and he watches carefully all you do. The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is caught in the coils of his sin. He dies for lack of discipline, and let himself be led astray into incredible folly.

  

Adultery should not be necessary, says Solomon, if a man has his own wife. But how can a husband and wife remain infatuated with each other? What can be done to inject renewed excitement into a relationship and revitalize it?

The precise meanings of the metaphors Solomon employs here are not immediately obvious, and prudish translators do not help. Adam Clarke, for example, comments: "How delicate and correct is the allusion here. But anatomical allusions must not be pressed into detail in a Commentary on Scripture."

Solomon offers an additional deterrent to adultery by pointing out that God carefully watches all we do, adding also that adultery can become a snare, a compulsion, an unsatisfying addiction.

 
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