Proverbschapter 5
23 verses · Solomon and others · 10th to 5th century BC · Wisdom and poetry
May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth:
Introduction
Solomon and others, Wisdom and poetry, Proverbs Overview.
This chapter is one of the father's lessons that open Proverbs, and the book's heading gives it to Solomon. It speaks to young men who are married or about to be. It is the first long warning in the book against adultery, and it answers that danger with a picture of a well kept household. Listen for the pictures of water, cisterns and springs, which carried great weight in a dry country. Notice the costs the father counts out, to a man's strength, his wealth and his name. Read it as a lesson on where a man's delight belongs, and on the eyes that see his ways.
Context
- Who
- Young married men, and men about to be married
- What
- A father's warning against the adulteress, weighing the cost of adultery and calling a son to find his joy in his own wife.
- Where
- A town in Judah, where houses shared walls and each household drew its water from its own cistern.
- When
- The reign of Solomon, about 970 to 931 BC, by the heading at Proverbs 1:1; the book reached its final form later, since Proverbs 25:1 names the men of Hezekiah as copyists.
- Why
- To guard a young man from adultery by showing its cost and by setting faithful married love before him as the better good.
Historical context
The chapter's central picture is water rights. Judah gets no rain from May to September, so a household cut a cistern in the rock under or beside the house, plastered it, and fed it from the roof through a channel. That water was private property, guarded, and rationed. "Drink waters out of thine own cistern" is not poetry to people who lived that way; it is the difference between having water and begging for it.
Show the rest of the historical context, 3 more paragraphs
"Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad" turns the picture around, water running out into the street is water wasted, spilled where anyone can take it. In a dry country that image carried real disgust.
The consequences named are legal and financial, not only moral. An adulterer could lose his "honour" and his "years unto the cruel", the wronged husband and his clan had standing to pursue him, the Law made adultery a capital matter, and a settlement could strip a man's estate and hand "thy labours" to a stranger's house.
"Her lips drop as an honeycomb" and "her end is bitter as wormwood" pair the sweetest and the bitterest things in the local pantry. Wild honey was the region's only concentrated sweetener; wormwood was a scrubby desert plant so bitter it became the standard word for what poisons a good thing.
Significance
Hearers in a small town understood the arithmetic instantly: everyone would know, and the cost would be paid in front of the whole assembly.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
But the chapter's strongest note is not the threat. It is the command to rejoice in the wife of your youth, a settled, warm, lifelong delight held up as the actually better deal, in a culture where a man with means could easily have arranged otherwise.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
No part of this chapter is read in the synagogue year. The site's own table in src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts printed parashot total 0 and haftarah uses total 0 for Proverbs, and no festival reading.
The chapter is met in study through Midrash Mishlei, which the corpus cites here eight times, at 5:1, 5:2, 5:3, 5:7, 5:8, 5:9, 9:4 and 31:5. Under the seventeenth verse it also carries Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Terumah 7:1 and Midrash Tanchuma, Ki Tisa 35:1, both portions in the site's table.
How it is read
Rashi is the commentator on this chapter whose English the corpus carries, quoted here from The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, which Sefaria reports as CC-BY. The sixth verse carries his longest note, and he sets two readings side by side. The Sages, citing Tanhuma Ekev 2, read it as a teaching about the commandments. God did not make known the reward of each commandment, so that a person would not cling to the ones with the great reward and leave the others. Rashi calls this the Midrash Aggadah. He then reads the verse by its place in the chapter, where the section on the harlot has not yet ended. There it warns a man not to weigh the path of life against her path (Rashi on Proverbs 5:6:1).
The same care shows at the nineteenth verse. Rashi reports that Rabbi Moshe Hadarshan read the word as an Arabic term for being busy with business, and adds, "but I do not know where it is stated" (Rashi on Proverbs 5:19:1). He follows the Sages, who read it as intoxication, being so taken with love of her that a person is heedless of his other affairs. He tells of Rabbi Eleazar the son of Pedath, who was teaching in the lower market while his cloak lay in the upper market, and a man found a snake coiled on it.
The allegory of the first chapter governs the rest. The cistern a man is to drink from is the Law of Moses, given to him for his share (Rashi on Proverbs 5:15:1). The wife of his youth is the Torah he learned in his youth (Rashi on Proverbs 5:18:1). The springs that spread abroad are the disciples he will acquire and the decisions he will give in public (Rashi on Proverbs 5:16:1). The glory given to others is the heart turned to other gods, and the strangers who are filled are the prophets of Baal (Rashi on Proverbs 5:9:1 and 5:10:1). At the fourteenth verse he carries a line from Rabbi Joseph Kara, that the speaker came near all evil because he did not obey his instructors (Rashi on Proverbs 5:14:1).
The corpus carries nine further notes on this chapter without an English text, each marked linked because Sefaria holds no English version of the ref. Four stand cited and unquoted at Ibn Ezra on Proverbs 5:1:1, 5:2:1, 5:7:1 and 5:20:1. Three stand at Metzudat David on Proverbs 5:4:1, 5:8:1 and 5:12:1, one at Malbim on Proverbs 5:13:1, and one at a further note of Rashi on Proverbs 5:1:1.
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries forty rabbinic locators on this chapter and the text of none, so each is cited here rather than quoted. On the fifth verse it holds Bamidbar Rabbah 9:12 and 13:16 with Shemot Rabbah 16:2. On the sixth, the hidden reward, it holds Devarim Rabbah 6:2 with Ein Yaakov at Moed Katan 1:8 and the Glick Edition at 1:5. On the eighth it holds Avodah Zarah 17a:3, Avot DeRabbi Natan 2:7 and Avot DeRabbi Natan, Recension B 3:4.
The end of the one who strays draws the next run. On the eleventh verse the corpus holds a passage of Otzar Midrashim from The Book of Gehinnom, at 7. On the thirteenth it holds Eikhah Rabbah 3:6, and on the fourteenth Aggadat Bereshit 41:4 and Tractate Semachot 12:13.
The cistern and the springs carry the rest. On the fifteenth verse the corpus holds Avodah Zarah 19a:13, Avot DeRabbi Natan 3:6 and Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Tractate Shirah 6:18. On the sixteenth it holds Avot DeRabbi Natan 14:3, Bamidbar Rabbah 13:20 and Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Taanit 1:21. On the eighteenth it holds the Glick Edition of Ein Yaakov at Sanhedrin 2:17 and Yevamot 6:11. On the nineteenth it holds Aggadat Bereshit 83:1 and Bamidbar Rabbah 12:4, and on the twenty-first Midrash Tehillim 9:2. One locator, from Sifrei Zuta, stands in the file under a thirty-fourth verse this chapter does not have, and it is left out here. What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and is reported as theirs wherever this site quotes one. The quotations wait on a fetch that carries the text.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on Proverbs 5:3:1 to 5:23:1, The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, reported CC-BY, and Rashi on Proverbs 5:1:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra on Proverbs 5:1:1, 5:2:1, 5:7:1 and 5:20:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; Metzudat David, Metzudat David on Proverbs 5:4:1, 5:8:1 and 5:12:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; Malbim, Malbim on Proverbs 5:13:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/proverbs/5.json, the 40 Talmud and Midrash locators of this chapter; The site's own files, src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, printing no portion, no Haftarah and no festival reading for this book, with Terumah and Ki Tisa in its PARASHOT table.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Honeyed Lips, and an End Bitter as Wormwood
Proverbs 5:1-6
pay attention to my wisdom; incline your ear to my insight: The son is told to “maintain discretion” before the warning names its subject, because the danger of “the forbidden woman” begins with pleasant speech. Her end reverses her opening, “bitter as wormwood, sharp as a double-edged sword,” a taste that shows only after the sweet one has worked.
Proverbs 5:1
“My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my prudence, that thou mayest guard thy thoughts. For, indeed, nothing is more fugitive than the heart, which deserts us as often as it slips away through bad thoughts. For hence the Psalmist says, My heart hath failed me. Hence, when he returns to himself, he says, Thy servant hath found his heart to pray to Thee. When, therefore, thought is kept under guard, the heart which was wont to fly away is found.”
Gregory the Dialogist · written before 604 · The Book of Pastoral Rule, Part 3, Chapter 14patristic
1 more voice on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Proverbs 5:1
“This connection of wisdom and understanding is frequent (Pr 2:2; 3:7); the first denotes the use of wise means for wise ends; the other, the exercise of a proper discrimination in their discovery.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
that you may maintain discretion: Discretion is mezimmah again, as at 2:11. John Gill notes that the Vulgate reads keep the thoughts, and the Septuagint good thoughts. Lips that preserve knowledge stand against the lips of the forbidden woman in verse 3.
Proverbs 5:2
“That thou mayest regard discretion,.... Observe it; retain it in thine heart, as Aben Ezra adds, and use it; think, speak, and act discreetly, and so avoid the bad woman afterwards described: the Vulgate Latin version is, "that thou mayest keep the thoughts"; and so Gersom interprets the word; "good thoughts", according to the Septuagint version; the thoughts of the heart are to be observed.”
her speech is smoother than oil: Forbidden woman renders zarah, a woman who belongs to another, whether Israelite or foreign, as Adam Clarke reads it. Honey and oil picture speech that goes down easily. Psalm 55:21 describes words softer than oil that were drawn swords.
Proverbs 5:3
“The lips of a strange woman - One that is not thy own, whether Jewess or heathen. Drop as a honey-comb - She uses the most deceitful, flattering, and alluring speeches: as the droppings of the honey out of the comb are the sweetest of all.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
Proverbs 5:3
“Even when the sinner looks for gratification, he doesn't find the fruit of his sin pleasant. As the wisdom of God says in another place, "Bread of deceit is pleasant to a man, but after he eats it, his mouth will be filled with gravel." And, "Honey drips from the lips of an adulteress, and for a time it tastes sweet, but in the end you will find it more bitter than gall and sharper than a two-edged sword." So he eats and is quite pleased for a little while.”
Athanasius of Alexandria · written before 373 · LETTER 7:5patristic
Proverbs 5:3
“For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb,.... "Mulsa dicta", "honey words", as is Plautus's (e) expression.”
in the end she is bitter as wormwood: Origen of Alexandria turns the verse around: righteousness tastes bitter at the start and sweet in the end, the reverse of the forbidden woman. Hebrews 12:11 says the same of discipline. In the end is the hinge of the verse.
Proverbs 5:4
"In the end," [Solomon] says, "you will find what seemed sweet in the beginning to be more bitter than gall and sharper than the edge of a sword." But the nature of righteousness is the opposite: In the beginning, it seems more bitter, but in the end, when it produces fruits of virtue, it is found to be sweeter than honey.
Origen of Alexandria · written before 253 · Homilies on Joshua 14:2patristic
1 more voice on this verse
Proverbs 5:4
“Bitter as wormwood - כלענה Kelanah, like the detestable herb wormwood, or something analogous to it: something as excessive in its bitterness, as honey is in its sweetness.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
her steps lead straight to Sheol: Proverbs 7:27 calls her house the road to Sheol, the grave. John Gill notes that the Septuagint reads the feet of folly, setting her against wisdom. Her path runs one way, down to death.
Proverbs 5:5
“Her feet go down to death,.... The ways in which she walks, and in which she leads others, issue oftentimes in corporeal death; and always in eternal death, if grace prevent not; and unless men are brought to a sense of sin, to repent of it and leave it. The Septuagint and Arabic versions render it, "the feet of imprudence" or "folly", in opposition to wisdom; that is, the feet of the foolish woman, such an one the harlot is; and such is the whore of Rome, notwithstanding all her boasted knowledge and wisdom.”
her ways are unstable: tracks that wander with no fixed line. Bede applies the verse to heresy, whose ways shift from one denial of Christ to another. The path of life lies unconsidered while her feet go down to death.
Proverbs 5:7-11
do not turn aside from the words of my mouth: The counsel turns practical, “Keep your path far from her; do not go near the door of her house,” making distance the safeguard. The losses named are severe and public, “your years to one who is cruel,” and “your labors” spent to “enrich the house of a foreigner”.
Proverbs 5:7
“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 · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
do not go near the door of her house: Ambrose of Milan praises this kind of flight, the eye that turns away from the stranger so the tongue can keep the truth. The door of her house is where the young man of 7:8 went wrong. Distance keeps the path safe.
Proverbs 5:8
“Your flight is a good one if your heart does not act out the counsels of sinners and their designs. Your flight is a good one if your eye flees the sight of cups and drinking vessels, so that it may not become envious as it lingers over the wine. Your flight is good if your eye turns away from the woman stranger, so that your tongue may keep the truth. Your flight is a good one if you do not answer the fool according to his folly.”
Ambrose of Milan · written before 397 · Flight from the World 9:56patristic
lest you concede your vigor to others: Vigor translates hod, the splendor of youth, the word Daniel 10:8 uses of the strength that drained from him. Albert Barnes reads the cruel one as whoever takes the years of the man enslaved by lust and shows no mercy. Youth is the price.
Proverbs 5:9
“Give not thine honour unto aliens and thy years unto the cruel, lest haply strangers be filled with thy wealth, and thy labours be in the house of a stranger, and thou moan at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed. For who are aliens from us but malignant spirits, who are separated from the lot of the heavenly country? And what is our honour but that, though made in bodies of clay, we are yet created after the image and likeness of our Maker?”
Gregory the Dialogist · written before 604 · Pastoral Rule, Part 3, Chapter 12patristic
1 more voice on this verse
Proverbs 5:9
“Thine honor - i. e., “The grace and freshness of thy youth” (compare Hos 14:6; Dan 10:8). The thought of this is to guard the young man against the sins that stain and mar it. The slave of lust sacrifices “years” that might have been peaceful and happy to one who is merciless.”
lest strangers feast on your wealth: Albert Barnes reads the strangers as a whole gang who live off the exposed adulterer, and notes that the death penalty gave way to extortion. Labors are the fruit of hard work. They feed a foreigner's house.
Proverbs 5:10
“Strangers - The whole gang of those into whose hands the slave of lust yields himself. The words are significant as showing that the older punishment of death Deu 22:21; Eze 16:38; Joh 8:5 was not always inflicted, and that the detected adulterer was exposed rather to indefinite extortion. Besides loss of purity and peace, the sin, in all its forms, brings poverty.”
At the end of your life you will groan: Groan translates naham, the growl of a lion or the roar of the sea, as Adam Clarke notes. The word for body means what is left, the remnant of a spent frame. The honey of verse 3 ends in that sound.
Proverbs 5:11
“When thy flesh and thy body are consumed - The word שאר shear, which we render body, signifies properly the remains, residue, or remnant of a thing: and is applied here to denote the breathing carcass, putrid with the concomitant disease of debauchery: a public reproach which the justice of God entails on this species of iniquity. The mourning here spoken of is of the most excessive kind: the word נהם naham is often applied to the growling of a lion, and the hoarse incessant murmuring of the sea.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Proverbs 5:11
“And thou mourn at the last,.... Or roar as a lion, as the word (s) signifies; see Pro 19:12; expressing great distress of mind, horror of conscience, and vehement lamentations; and yet not having and exercising true repentance, but declaring a worldly sorrow, which worketh death.”
Proverbs 5:12-14
A man near ruin confesses, “How I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof!” in a speech the father stages so the son can hear his future regret now. The words “I am on the brink of utter ruin in the midst of the whole assembly” name a public fall.
Proverbs 5:12
“And say, how have I hated instruction,.... To live virtuously, and avoid the adulterous woman; this he says, as wondering at his stupidity, folly, and madness, that he should hate and abhor that which was so much his interest to have observed.”
2 more voices on this verse
Proverbs 5:12
“More bitter than slavery, poverty, disease, will be the bitterness of self-reproach, the hopeless remorse that worketh death.”
Proverbs 5:12
“Why did I hate instruction? etc. He calls the instruction of ecclesiastical faith; the reproaches by which heretics are rebuked, why they withdrew from the Church, he refers to them. It is evident concerning fornicators.”
Bede · written before 735 · Commentary on Proverbspatristic
the voice of my teachers: The confession remembers the voice of the teachers who spoke all along, the father who told his sons to listen in verse 7. Incline the ear repeats his command at 5:1, now recalled as refused. Paul at 2 Corinthians 7:10 names this worldly sorrow.
Proverbs 5:13
“Note, Those who have had a good education and do not live up to it will have a great deal to answer for another day; and those who will not now remember what they were taught, to conform themselves to it, will be made to remember it as an aggravation of their sin, and consequently of their ruin.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
The whole assembly is Israel gathered, the body that heard serious cases, and utter ruin before it meant public shame. Adam Clarke notes that an old English Bible rendered the words church and synagogue. The ruin is public.
Proverbs 5:14
“I was almost in all evil - This vice, like a whirlpool, sweeps all others into its vortex. In the midst of the congregation and assembly - In the mydel of the Curche and of the Synagoge - Old MS. Bible. Such persons, however sacred the place, carry about with them eyes full of adultery, which cannot cease from sin.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Drink Waters Out of Thine Own Cistern
Proverbs 5:15-17
Drink water from your own cistern: Against the stranger's well the father sets the son's own cistern, married love pictured as water rightly his. “Drink water from your own cistern” is the positive form of the warning before it. “Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers” returns the point to its center.
Proverbs 5:15
“And I hope, O man, that you imitate the example of this kind, so that you yourself may bear fruit of joy and delight! The sweetness of your grace is within yourself, it sprouts from you, it remains in you, it is within you, that is, the joy of your conscience is to be sought within yourself. Therefore, it says: Drink water from your own vessels, and from the fountains of your own wells (Prov., V, 15).”
Ambrose of Milan · written before 397 · The Six Days of Creationpatristic
2 more voices on this verse
Proverbs 5:15
By figures, in which well, cistern, and fountain [Pr 5:15, 18] represent the wife, and rivers of waters [Pr 5:16] the children, men are exhorted to constancy and satisfaction in lawful conjugal enjoyments. In Pr 5:16, fountains (in the plural) rather denote the produce or waters of a spring, literally, "what is from a spring," and corresponds with "rivers of waters."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Proverbs 5:15
“The teacher seeks to counteract the evils of mere sensual passion chiefly by setting forth the true blessedness of which it is the counterfeit. The true wife is as a fountain of refreshment, where the weary soul may quench its thirst. Even the joy which is of the senses appears, as in the Song of Solomon, purified and stainless (see Pro 5:19 marginal reference).”
Why should your springs flow in the streets: The Hebrew line has no question word, and the Berean supplies why should, so that verse 17 keeps the waters at home. Bede reads the springs flowing in the streets as sons and daughters given in marriage openly before many witnesses. Both readings keep the springs pure.
Proverbs 5:16
"Let your fountains be dispersed abroad," etc. Give your son and daughter in marriage to others, and do this openly with many witnesses.
Bede · written before 735 · Commentary on Proverbspatristic
Let them be yours alone: Adam Clarke reads the waters as children born of the marriage, the family that belongs to husband and wife alone. Strangers have no share in it. Genesis 2:24 makes the two one flesh.
Proverbs 5:17
“Let them be only thine own - The off-spring of a legitimate connection; a bastard brood, however numerous, is no credit to any man.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Proverbs 5:18-19
may you rejoice in the wife of your youth: The chapter's positive command is plain: marriage set forward as the answer to the forbidden woman. The images, “A loving doe, a graceful fawn,” come from courtship language. The son is to be satisfied “always” and “captivated by her love forever,” beyond the years of youth.
Proverbs 5:18
“Ye wives, be subject to your own husbands, and have them in esteem, and serve them with fear and love, as holy Sarah honoured Abraham. For she could not endure to call him by his name, but called him lord, when she said, "My lord is old." In like manner, ye husbands, love your own wives as your own members, as partners in life, and fellow-helpers for the procreation of children. For says He, "Rejoice with the wife of thy youth.”
Apostolic Constitutions · written before 380 · Constitutions of the Holy Apostles Book 6patristic
1 more voice on this verse
Proverbs 5:18
“Let thy fountain be blessed - יהי מקורך ברוך yehi mekorecha baruch. Sit vena tua benedicta. Thy vein; that which carries off streams from the fountain of animal life, in order to disperse them abroad, and through the streets. How delicate and correct is the allusion here! But anatomical allusions must not be pressed into detail in a commentary on Scripture.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Albert Barnes notes that the doe and the fawn stood for beauty, and that Tabitha and Dorcas at Acts 9:36 both mean gazelle. Captivated by her love translates a verb for reeling as if drunk. Verse 23 uses it of the fool led astray by his folly.
Proverbs 5:19
“Better, “A loving hind (is she) and pleasant roe.” As in the whole circle of Arab and Persian poetry the antelope and the gazelle are the chosen images of beauty, so they served with equal fitness for the masculine and feminine types of it. (Compare the names Tabitha and Dorcas Act 9:36.”
1 more voice on this verse
Proverbs 5:19
“He shows also, by the mention of the creature (the hind), the purity of that pleasure; and by the roe he intimates the quick responsive affection of the wife. And whereas he knows many things to excite, he secures them against these, and puts upon them the indissoluble bond of affection, setting constancy before them. And as for the rest, wisdom, figuratively speaking, like a stag, can repel and crush the snaky doctrines of the heterodox. Let her therefore, says he, be with thee, like a roe, to keep all virtue fresh.”
Hippolytus of Rome · written before 235 · Hippolytus Exegetical Fragmentspatristic
Proverbs 5:20-23
embrace the bosom of a stranger?: The father's question, “Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress,” borrows the word given to married love and turns it against misdirected desire. In the last verses “the cords of his sin entangle him,” sin's own discipline, the trap a man ties for himself.
Proverbs 5:20
“When Scripture says, "Do not keep going steady with a foreign woman," it is advising us to make use of secular education but not to settle there permanently. Each generation received beneficial gifts at the appropriate points, but they were in preparation for the Word of the Lord.”
Clement of Alexandria · written before 215 · The Stromata Book 1patristic
the LORD examines all his paths: Examines is the verb of verse 6, where the forbidden woman does not consider the path of life. Albert Barnes marks the turn: she weighs nothing, and the LORD weighs every step. Hebrews 4:13 lays all things bare before His eyes.
the cords of his sin entangle him: Charles Spurgeon pictures a net: the wicked man first takes sin as bait for its pleasure, and the cords of his sin hold him fast. What first drew him later entangles him. Entrap recalls the bird and the net of 1:17.
Proverbs 5:22
“He shall be holden with the cords of his sins - Most people who follow unlawful pleasures, think they can give them up whenever they please; but sin repeated becomes customary; custom soon engenders habit; and habit in the end assumes the form of necessity; the man becomes bound with his own cords, and so is led captive by the devil at his will.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
Proverbs 5:22
Clothed as you are in the rotten garments of your offenses and "held fast in the meshes of your own sins," listen to the prophet's voice saying, "Wash yourselves clean! Put away the misdeeds of your souls from before my eyes," that the angelic choir may chant over you: "Happy [are] they whose faults are taken away, whose sins are covered."
Cyril of Jerusalem · written before 386 · Catechetical Lecture 1:1patristic
Proverbs 5:22
“THE first sentence has reference to a net, in which birds or beasts are taken. The ungodly man first of all finds sin to be a bait, and, charmed by its apparent pleasantness he indulges in it, and then he becomes entangled in its meshes so that he cannot escape. That which first attracted the sinner, afterwards detains him.”
He dies for lack of discipline: Lack of discipline is the end of the man who hated discipline in verse 12. Albert Barnes sets that end beside 4:18, the path that could have grown brighter until midday. Folly has the last word.
Proverbs 5:23
“The end of the sensual life: to “die without instruction,” life ended, but the discipline of life fruitless; to “go astray,” as if drunk with the greatness of his folly (the same word is used as for “ravished” in Pro 5:19, see marg.), even to the end. This is the close of what might have gone on brightening to the perfect day Pro 4:18.”
Keep studying
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869); Ambrose of Milan, FLIGHT FROM THE WORLD 9:56; Bede, Commentary on Proverbs; Charles Bridges, An Exposition of the Book of Proverbs; Charles Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 915: “Sinners Bound with the Cords of Sin” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition); Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Proverbs of Solomon; John Gill; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible and Origen of Alexandria, HOMILIES ON JOSHUA 14:2.