The All-Too-Common Sin: Walking Through Proverbs 5

The Book of Proverbs is filled with encouragement and truths about God, but Proverbs 5 takes a turn and offers a serious warning. Proverbs 4 explains that there are two paths we can take in life, one is righteous and the other is wicked. God’s wisdom will guide us down the righteous path, but there are temptations waiting along our journey. Proverbs 5 discusses one such temptation. Adultery.

Why Does Proverbs 5 Focus On Adultery?

Proverbs 1 and 2 explain why we ought to seek God’s wisdom and the value it has in our lives. Proverbs 3 tells us the blessings that come with wisdom, and Proverbs 4 describes the paths we can take in life: The path of righteousness and the way of the wicked. However, it isn’t until Proverbs 5 that we finally have one particular sin emphasized so heavily. But why adultery?

Everyone Cheats

To be fair, the heading for this section isn’t completely accurate. On the other hand, all kinds of people commit adultery (betraying one’s spouse with a sexual relationship outside of the marriage covenant). Happy and miserable spouses. Men and women. Christian and not Christian. Upper class, middle class, and lower class. College educated and high school dropouts. I could go on. Faithfulness is a struggle for all of us.

According to the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, approximately 15% of women and 25% of men in long-term relationships have been physically intimate with someone else while still in the relationship. When we include emotional affairs, the statistics increase to 35% and 45%, respectively. That’s just one study. Some suggest rates as high as 60% because extramarital affairs are, generally speaking, something one tries to hide and rarely admits freely. This leads most researchers to assume the rates are higher than reported. Plus, who doesn’t have anecdotal evidence to contribute to the discussion?

Unfaithfulness Didn’t Start With Us

Adultery isn’t a modern problem. King Solomon had many wives and concubines (around 1,000), and it never satisfied him. Ultimately, these hundreds of wives led him away from God and brought judgment to his reign.

Abraham, in line with man’s wisdom and at Sarah’s suggestion, took Hagar, Sarah’s servant, as a concubine to have children. If you need a reminder, read Genesis 16. It didn’t go well. Jealousy flared and no one walked away from the situation unscathed.

Of course, I can’t talk about adultery in the Bible without bringing up King David. The shepherd boy who defeated Goliath. The future king who showed mercy to the bloodthirsty King Saul. David, the man after God’s own heart. He infamously committed adultery with Bathsheba. That act led to her pregnancy and his decision to have her husband killed to cover his sin. Adultery is ugly stuff, and Proverbs 5 is a clear warning against it because it destroys marriages and families, tarnishes the picture of Christ and His Bride (Ephesians 5:22-32), and leads to more sin. But there’s more.

Believers Are Unfaithful To God

Throughout the Bible, God likens adultery to spiritual unfaithfulness. Yes, you read that correctly. We can cheat on God. The Lord commands us to not have any other Gods, yet we put so many other people and things on his throne. We deprioritize Him, possess little to no gratitude for all He does for us, choose which elements of the His Word we’ll apply to our lives, and we sometimes live as if He doesn’t even exist. Other things, some good and some bad, draw us away from Him. We are like an unfaithful spouse whose affection and attention are applied to another. We are unfaithful.

Need an example of unfaithful people? Turn to the Old Testament and read through Israel’s history. They followed God and worshiped Him until they became discontent with what God had given them and adopted idols into their lives. Eventually, they found themselves in some sort of trouble such as being taken captive. Then, they remembered God and cried out to Him. Unlike us, He is faithful and drew them near again. But then… The cycle went on.

The Bible Doesn’t Really Call Us Adulterers, Does It?

Most people understand committing adultery is one of the wost things you can do in a relationship. That betrayal is difficult to come back from, and it’s on many married people’s zero-tolerance list. The marriage, for many, is over if someone enters an adulterous relationship. So, would God really say we treat Him so heinously? Yes.

“My people inquire of a piece of wood, and their walking staff gives them oracles. For a spirit of whoredom has led them astray, and they have left their God to play the whore.”

Hosea 4:12

Hosea was a prophet who God told to stay with his adulterous wife, Gomer. This verse is God describing His people’s adulterous behavior toward Him. It’s harsh language but accurate.

“The Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah: “Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore? And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me,’ but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore. Because she took her whoredom lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree.”

Jeremiah 3:6-9

In these verses God describes the faithlessness (i.e., whoredom) of Israel, and He notes that Judah did not learn from Israel’s sin. Instead, she followed suit.

So, as you can see in God’s Word, we can, as an adulterous wife, be unfaithful to the One True God.

Proverbs 5: A Quick Look

Hopefully, it makes sense why God addresses adultery so strongly in Proverbs. Let’s take a quick look at the warnings in Proverbs 5.

“For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.” Proverbs 5:3-4

People don’t commit adultery while thinking it’s a bad idea. They don’t say to themselves, “This is going to hurt me and leave me desperately unsatisfied. Yeah, I better move forward on this.” The forbidden woman is sweet and smooth like honey on your tongue. She tempts with her promise of satisfaction and a taste of something delicious, but she deceives.

The image in verse 4 of being bitter makes me think of the twisted up face someone makes when they taste something they expect to be sweet but is bitter and assaulting to the tastebuds. The two-edged sword draws to mind the promise of something good resulting in severely painful and destructive consequences.

“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.” Proverbs 5:5-6

The forbidden woman won’t lead to happily ever after or even consequence-free fun. Adultery may not literally kill you, but it’s destructive. She is not on a path to righteousness. Verse 5 tells us she doesn’t even consider a better way to live. Frankly, she’s not a thinker. Rather, the forbidden woman is led by her desires, and she doesn’t even know what she’s in for, let alone care what will happen to her lover.

“Keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house, lest you give your honor to others and your years to the merciless, lest strangers take their fill of your strength, and your labors go to the house of a foreigner, and at the end of your life you groan, when your flesh and body are consumed,” Proverbs 5:8-11

This passage warns us to stay away from this woman. Don’t even go near her door. This seems like an obvious way to stay out of trouble. It’s common sense, right? Take a look around, though, and you might notice how many married people don’t keep appropriate boundaries with the opposite sex. Friendships and work relationships can take a sudden turn if we’re not careful. Listen to the wisdom in Proverbs. Don’t even go near this woman.

Falling into sexual immorality costs us our honor and reputation. Not to mention, adultery is literally costly. A lover expects gifts and hiding an affair can be quite an expense. This forbidden woman becomes more than a diversion. She’s another bill to pay. With a modern eye, we ought to also acknowledge that adultery often ends in divorce. Say “goodbye” to the life you know and “hello” to alimony, child support, and legal fees.

With time, maybe this adultery will seem insignificant or even like a fun memory? No. We will bitterly regret the devastation we caused if we seek to fulfill our lusts outside of our marriage beds.

“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 am at the brink of utter ruin in the assembled congregation.’” Proverbs 5:12-14

We can spare ourselves this trouble and protect our marriages. The man who chooses sexual immorality refused to hear truth. He wouldn’t be disciplined or reproved. Wise mentors tried to instruct him, but he wouldn’t listen. Humility and teachability can be the difference between a God-serving and loving marriage and a shattered one that leaves destruction in its wake.

“Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets? Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.” Proverbs 5:15-19

Want your spouse. Choose your spouse. Be exclusively sexual with your spouse. We need to keep all of our sexual energy, flirtations, and desires aimed at the person we married. And just that person. I love the final line of this passage. Be intoxicated always in her love. For that to be possible, though, we need to keep our eyes from roaming.

Let’s live in reality. Other people are attractive. We will meet people we may have pursued had we met when we were single, but that door closes when we get married. Intimacy in marriage can be enough. In fact, it should be. Pursue your person, and leave behind the notion that sexual immorality can do anything but destroy.

“For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders all his paths. The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.” Proverbs 5:21-22

We can’t leave Proverbs 5 without this final reminder. God sees you. Even if someone manages to fool his wife and successfully carry on in an adulterous relationship without being caught, God knows and will hold you responsible. And he shouldn’t be surprised to discover that he gets caught up in his sins. Sin leads to more sin. Inevitably, the immoral choices and lies will lead to self-destruction. Sin can only harm us and those around us, and it’s so hard to stop once we’ve created a life dependent on it.

Final Thought

Critics tend to look at the Bible as a dusty old book with irrelevant lessons, but y’all, Proverbs never stops instructing us on relevant topics. Adultery has only become more prevalent if you consider pornography, the normalization of work spouses, and the increase in immoral relationships such as open marriages. In a world that treats marriage like a temporary game of House, heed the warnings in Proverbs 5 and protect your marriage with all your strength.

Have you seen someone fall into the trap of a forbidden woman? What was the consequence?

Image courtesy of Ilona Panych via Unsplash.