Proverbs 5:3-6 (ESVST)
For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, 4 but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two- edged sword. 5 Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol; 6 she does not ponder the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it.
I am sure you wondering what I am on about. Well, today we talk about what I believe is the root cause of societal decay in our time. Adultery. Adultery is nowadays publicly encouraged, admired and desired. There is more justification why adultery must be permitted than why it should not. You watch television these days and 80% of the so called entertaining things that are being played, depict and encourage adultery. When you watch music videos these days, I ask myself, don’t these women have any decency left? They might as well dance naked. These music videos push the boundaries of immorality as much as they can and the more they do, the more we as society encourage it. Sex and violence are probably the biggest forms of marketing than any other thing.
Most music videos, movies or any other form of entertainment shown on television contains explicit and immoral scenes of sex and violence and we wonder why our society is as immoral as it is today where adultery is in fashion.
I know that the passages I will be using mostly refers to a woman as an adulterer but, I can assure you that it includes men as well. It takes two to commit adultery. I suppose one can understand why only a woman was used in these passages. These scriptures were written by men. Proverbs was written by Solomon, the son of David. If I was in Solomon’s shoes, I suppose I would have also used a woman for the simple reason that, I don’t see myself describing a man’s lips as dripping with honey. Never, never, never!
Who is this adulterer?
Verse 3 calls her a forbidden woman. This is a woman who is not available, who you are not supposed to be with. Forbidden means out of reach. Not to be taken. Not for you. Not now and not ever. Verse 3 continues to say that her lips drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil. This is what she uses to attract men to herself. This is what she uses to entice and entrap even those men who would not have necessarily have committed adultery. Like a mouse to a trap, these men will fall and succumb to her spell. She is very very irresistible.
However, verse 4 says that in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two- edged sword. A wormwood is a woody shrub that is very bitter and in the past was considered to be poisonous. When this verse was written it was understood that it is poisonous. Like a mouse to a trap, all the mouse can see is the cheese, the sweet delicious looking cheese but, the poor mouse fails to see the steel jaws that will pounce on its tiny body and crush every bone it touches and every organ it touches until there is no more life left in it. The more the mouse tries to escape, the deeper the steel jaws sink. Likewise, a man that sees only the honey dripping from the forbidden woman’s lips and listens to her smooth speech, does not see how bitter and how sharp she really is until it is too late.
Verse 5-6 says that Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol, she does not ponder the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it. She is on her way to death and looks forward to hell. She is not on the path of life but to death and even, she does not know it. If you as a man should join with her, you, just like her, will also be on your way to death and hell.
So what must men do to refuse her.