Proverbs 5:7

(h). Eighth Discourse:—Against Adultery, and in Praise of Marriage (Pro_5:7-23).

(7) Hear me now therefore, O ye children.—In this verse Solomon apparently ceases to report the words of his father, and resumes his speech in his own person.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Pro 5:7 Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.

Ver. 7. O ye children.] See Pro 4:1. Shechem, though at ripeness of age, yet is called a child. {Gen 39:19} Neque distulit puer. And the young man, or the child, deferred not to do the thing. A child he is called, that is, a fool, quia non ratione sed affectu rapitur, saith an interpreter, {a} because not reason but lust overruled him. "As for thee, thou shalt be as one of the fools in Israel," said she to her libidinous {b} brother Amnon. {1Sa 23:13}

{a} Pareus.

{b} Of persons, their lives, actions, desires: Given to, full of, or characterized by lust or lewdness; lustful, lecherous, lewd.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Verse 7. Hear me - O ye children] בנים banim, sons, young men in general: for these are the most likely to be deceived and led astray.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

7. ye children] Rather, my sons, R.V., as the same Heb. word is rendered throughout these exhortations.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Hear me now therefore, O ye children,.... Since such is the character, this the wretched end, and these the ways of the adulterous woman; those that are young in years, and liable to be ensnared by her, should hear what Solomon, or Christ, here says, for their caution and instruction; and especially such who are, or profess themselves to be, the children of God and of Christ; and therefore, as dear children, should be followers of them, and not of an harlot;

and depart not from the words of my mouth; the warnings, directions, and exhortations given to avoid the whorish woman; the doctrines of Christ, the truths of the Gospel: these should not be forsaken, but abode by; and also his precepts and ordinances, which should be closely attended unto.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

7. Hear me — Compare Pro_7:24.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vers. 7-14. The ruinous consequences of indulgence in illicit pleasures.

The subject of which the teacher is heating demands the utmost attention of youth. Enough, it might be supposed, had been said to deter from intercourse with the "strange woman." She has been portrayed in her real colours, plunging recklessly into ruin herself, and carrying her victims with her; deceitful, full of intrigues, neither walking in nor knowing the way of life. But the warning is amplified and made more impressive. There is another side of the picture, the complete bodily and temporal ruin of her victim. The argumentum ad hominem is applied. There is an appeal to personal interest in the details which follow, which ought not to fail in holding youth back. The form of the address which is repeated is very similar to that in Pro_7:24. The plural form, "O ye children", (cf. Pro_4:1 and Pro_7:24) immediately passes into the singular for the reason mentioned before, that, though the address is made to all, yet each individually is to apply it to himself.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The eighth discourse springs out of the conclusion of the seventh, and connects itself by its reflective מעליה so closely with it that it appears as its continuation; but the new beginning and its contents included in it, referring only to social life, secures its relative independence. The poet derives the warning against intercourse with the adulteress from the preceding discourse, and grounds it on the destructive consequences.

7 And now, ye sons, hearken unto me,

And depart not from the words of my mouth.

8 Hold thy path far from her neighbourhood,

And come not to the door of her house!

9 That thou mayest not give the freshness of thy youth to another,

Nor thy years to the cruel one;

10 That strangers may not sate themselves with thy possessions,

And the fruit of thy toils come into the house of a stranger,

11 And thou groanest at the end,

When thy flesh and thy body are consumed.

Neither here nor in the further stages of this discourse is there any reference to the criminal punishment inflicted on the adulterer, which, according to Lev 20:10, consisted in death, according to Eze 16:40, cf. John. Pro 8:5, in stoning, and according to a later traditional law, in strangulation (חנק). Ewald finds in Pro 5:14 a play on this punishment of adultery prescribed by law, and reads from Pro 5:9. that the adulterer who is caught by the injured husband was reduced to the state of a slave, and was usually deprived of his manhood. But that any one should find pleasure in making the destroyer of his wife his slave is a far-fetched idea, and neither the law nor the history of Israel contains any evidence for this punishment by slavery or the mutilation of the adulterer, for which Ewald refers to Grimm's Deutsche Rechtsaltertmer. The figure which is here sketched by the poet is very different. He who goes into the net of the wanton woman loses his health and his goods. She stands not alone, but has her party with her, who wholly plunder the simpleton who goes into her trap. Nowhere is there any reference to the husband of the adulteress. The poet does not at all think on a married woman. And the word chosen directs our attention rather to a foreigner than to an Israelitish woman, although the author may look upon harlotry as such as heathenish rather than Israelitish, and designate it accordingly. The party of those who make prostitutes of themselves consists of their relations and their older favourites, the companions of their gain, who being in league with her exhaust the life-strength and the resources of the befooled youth (Fl.). This discourse begins with ועתּה, for it is connected by this concluding application (cf. Pro 7:24) with the preceding.

Pro 5:8-9

In Pro 5:8, one must think on such as make a gain of their impurity. מעל, Schultens remarks, with reference to Eze 23:18, crebrum in rescisso omni commercio: מן denotes the departure, and על the nearness, from which one must remove himself to a distance. Regarding הוד gn (Pro 5:9), which primarily, like our Pracht (bracht from brechen = to break) pomp, magnificence, appears to mean fulness of sound, and then fulness of splendour, see under Job 39:20; here there is a reference to the freshness or the bloom of youth, as well as the years, against the sacrifice of which the warning is addressed - in a pregnant sense they are the fairest years, the years of youthful fulness of strength. Along with אחרים the singulare-tantum אכזרי (vid., Jer 50:42) has a collective sense; regarding the root-meaning, vid., under Isa 13:9. It is the adj. relat. of אכזר after the form אכזב, which is formed not from אך זר, but from an unknown verb כּזר. The ancients referred it to death and the devil; but the אכזרי belongs to the covetous society, which impels ever anew to sin, which is their profit, him who has once fallen into it, and thus brings bodily ruin upon him; they are the people who stand far aloof from this their sacrifice, and among them are barbarous, rude, inexorably cruel monsters (Unmenschen) (Graecus Venetus, τῷ ἀπανθρώπῳ), who rest not till their victim is laid prostrate on the ground and ruined both bodily and financially.

Pro 5:10

This other side of the ruin Pro 5:10 presents as an image of terror. For הוד refers to the person in his stately appearance, but כּח to his possessions in money and goods; for this word, as well as in the strikingly similar passage Hos 7:9, is used as the synonym of חיל (Gen 34:29, etc.), in the sense of ability, estate. This meaning is probably mediated by means of a metonymy, as Gen 4:12; Job 31:39, where the idea of the capability of producing is passed over into that of the produce conformable to it; so here the idea of work-power passes over into that of the gain resulting therefrom. ועצביך (and thy toils) is not, like כּחך, the accusative governed by ישׂבּעוּ; the carrying over of this verb disturbs the parallelism, and the statement in the passage besides does not accord therewith, which, interpreted as a virtual predicate, presents 10b as an independent prohibitive clause: neve sint labores tui in domo peregrini, not peregrina; at least נכרי according to the usage of the language is always personal, so that בּית נכרי (cf. Lam 5:2), like מלבושׁ נכרי, Zep 1:8, is to be explained after עיר נכרי, Jdg 19:12. עצב (from עצב, Arab. 'aṣab, to bind fast, to tie together, then to make effort, ποιεῖν, laborare) is difficult work (Pro 10:22), and that which is obtained by it; Fleischer compares the Ital. i miei sudori, and the French mes sueurs.

Pro 5:11

The fut. ישׂבּעוּ and the יהיוּ needed to complete 10b are continued in Pro 5:11 in the consec. perf. נהם, elsewhere of the hollow roaring of the sea, Isa 5:30, the growling of the lion, Pro 28:15, here, as also Eze 24:23, of the hollow groaning of men; a word which echoes the natural sound, like הוּם, המה. The lxx, with the versions derived from it, has καὶ μεταμεληθήσῃ, i.e., ונחמתּ (the Niph. נחם, to experience the sorrow of repentance, also an echo-word which imitates the sound of deep breathing) - a happy quid pro quo, as if one interchanged the Arab. naham, fremere, anhelare, and nadam, poenitere. That wherein the end consists to which the deluded youth is brought, and the sorrowful sound of despair extorted from him, is stated in 11b: his flesh is consumed away, for sensuality and vexation have worked together to undermine his health. The author here connects together two synonyms to strengthen the conception, as if one said: All thy tears and thy weeping help thee nothing (Fl.); he loves this heaping together of synonyms, as we have shown at p. 33. When the blood-relation of any one is called שׁאר בּשׂרו, Lev 18:6; Lev 25:49, these two synonyms show themselves in subordination, as here in close relation. שׁאר appears to be closely connected with שׁרירים, muscles and sinews, and with שׁר, the umbilical cord, and thus to denote the flesh with respect to its muscular nature adhering to the bones (Mic 3:2), as בּשׂר denotes it with respect to its tangible outside clothed with skin (vid., under Isaiah, p. 418).

Keil & Delitzsch — Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1861–1891) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API. (Old Testament only.)

Now

Here the teacher shifts from warning about the adulteress to giving advice.

listen to me ... do not turn away from listening

These two phrases express the same idea to make the student pay attention. (See: Parallelism)

do not turn away from listening

The writer speaks of stopping an action as if the person physically turned away from it. AT: "do not stop listening" (See: Metaphor)

the words of my mouth

Here the word "mouth" represents the person who is speaking. AT: "my words" or "what I am saying" (See: Synecdoche)

Keep your path far away from her

Here the word "path" represents the person's daily conduct and circumstances. AT: "Keep yourself far away from her" or "Stay away from her" (See: Metonymy)

do not come near the door of her house

Here "the door of her house" represents the house itself. It may be more appropriate to use the word "go" instead of "come" since the latter might imply that the speaker is at the door of her house. AT: "do not go near the door of her house" or "do not even go near her house" (See: Synecdoche and Go and Come)

translationWords

turn

word

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.