Proverbs 5:1-6 My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding: (2) That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge. (3) For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: (4) But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword. (5) Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell. (6) Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.
A long and sobering warning; but who is the woman? Is this warning related to sexual sins or is it the simile of a deeper truth? Maybe it is both. Let us now unravel together the principles of this analogy.
The way of the Lord in our lives is not always easy. It is rough at times. It is lonely. It seems to take more than it gives. Sometimes we are even tempted to let the seeming security of the physical take over the reality of the spiritual. At times we hunger and thirst for the ‘easy’ path.
It is in those moments that the ‘woman’ comes to us. Her lips drip with honey-like sweet flatteries. Her words denote of the easy smooth flow of oil. “Here is the other way,” she says, “my way is easier; it is soft and sweet”. “Trust in me” she says while she coils her drippy tentacles around our neck and brings us down to the hellish pit that is the place of her hellish conception. For all the promises of ease the devil would bring, a sting of wormwood like bitterness plunges into our heart and draws us closer to the pits of hell.
We do not know ‘her’ way. We are not able to decipher and see ‘her’ when she comes to us. We sometimes mistake her for the ‘blessing’ of God; but she is a wolf in sheep clothing.
Our safety therefore lays in the clinging to God’s Words. We need to bow our ear to His understanding. We must attend to His wisdom. God’s Word teaches us the ways of God, and at the same times, it protects us from the evil distraction that daily seeks to destroy us.
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