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Chapter 5: Rejecting Lady Folly

8th Speech from Father to Son

There is a character in Proverbs, the adulteress, who we have only had brief encounters with so far (2:16-19). Now in chapters 5-7, we get a much closer look at this woman and it’s not pretty. This lady is a sham and will do you no good.

This speech is frightening. The father calls the adulteress the “forbidden woman.” As the word “forbidden” implies, she is already a married woman. Beware! She might be persuasive, with a mouth that “drips honey” and words that are “smoother than oil,” but in reality she is barbed and bitter. Follow her and she will take you down with her “straight to the grave.”

The father goes on to use a contrasting set of images: the house of the adulteress is the root of destruction, but the home of your bride is the fruit of life. The father’s speech flows with words comparing the wife to that of water (a “cistern” and “fountain”). Water in the Near East was particularly gratifying due to extremely high temperatures. Likewise, the father implies, a man’s wife is water to his soul. The sexually thirsty man should always drink of his wife’s body and be intoxicated with her love, and never partake from another woman.

The father tells his son to “rejoice in the wife of your youth” (18). This is a call to enjoy sexual intimacy with your spouse. Drink from the pure waters of marriage, and let the polluted waters of the adulteress go trickling by. If you are married, give thanks for your spouse as you read this chapter, and ask yourself how you can rejoice greater in your love for each other. If you are not married, ask God to give you patience for pure water.