Scripture Daily

Context No. 554 of 4322 · Proverbs

Context · Reflection

Proverbs 5:1-16: in context

1My son, pay attention to my wisdom. Turn your ear to my understanding, 2that you may maintain discretion, that your lips may preserve knowledge. 3For the lips of an adulteress drip honey. Her mouth is smoother than oil, 4but in the end she is as bitter as wormwood, and as sharp as a two-edged sword. 5Her feet go down to death. Her steps lead straight to Sheol. 6She gives no thought to the way of life. Her ways are crooked, and she doesn’t know it. 7Now therefore, my sons, listen to me. Don’t depart from the words of my mouth. 8Remove your way far from her. Don’t come near the door of her house, 9lest you give your honor to others, and your years to the cruel one; 10lest strangers feast on your wealth, and your labors enrich another man’s house. 11You will groan at your latter end, when your flesh and your body are consumed, 12and say, “How I have hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof. 13I haven’t obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor turned my ear to those who instructed me! 14I have come to the brink of utter ruin, among the gathered assembly.” 15Drink water out of your own cistern, running water out of your own well. 16Should your springs overflow in the streets, streams of water in the public squares?

A father warns his son here about the seductive woman, the adulteress, and what strikes you first is how honestly he describes the deception. Her lips drip honey, he says, her speech is smoother than oil. He does not pretend the temptation is unappealing; he admits it tastes sweet and goes down easy. But then he follows it past the first taste to where it actually leads: in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword, and her path goes straight down to death. And he tallies the specific cost, honor given away to others, years handed to the cruel, wealth that ends up enriching a stranger's house, and finally an old man groaning, how I hated correction, how my heart despised reproof, now I am at the brink of ruin.

Then, having exposed the lie, the father offers the antidote, and it is not mainly a rule but a redirection of desire. Drink water from your own cistern, he says, running water from your own well. The counter to the lure of the forbidden is delight in what is already, rightfully yours. The adulteress works by advertising herself as the sweetness you are missing, and the trap is that I look longingly outside at what is forbidden while overlooking the real, God-given goodness already in my own yard, the spouse, the life, the blessings I have stopped tasting because familiarity dulled them. The forbidden always markets itself as the thing I lack. The father says the well is already in your own courtyard; go drink there.

That is a searching redirection, because the pull of the forbidden almost always feeds on a neglected gratitude for what is mine. I let the good already given me go stale and unsavored, and in that dullness the honeyed lie of something else, someone else, somewhere else, does its work. Where am I gazing longingly at a forbidden sweetness that advertises itself as what I am missing, while neglecting the genuine, God-given good already mine, and what would it take to go drink, with gratitude, from my own well?

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