This chapter is Proverbs’ first sustained warning against sexual unfaithfulness, and its frankest — naming both the danger plainly and the alternative just as plainly: not mere restraint, but a marriage actually worth being satisfied in.
A study in Proverbs 5 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 13 min read
My Son, Attend Unto My Wisdom
“My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding: that thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.”
Proverbs 5:1-2
“Thy lips may keep knowledge” is a small detail worth noticing before the chapter’s subject even arrives — this instruction is framed as protecting speech itself, not only conduct, as if the temptation ahead begins with words before it ever reaches action.
For The Lips Of A Strange Woman Drop As An Honeycomb
“For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: but her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword.”
Proverbs 5:3-4
Sweetness and bitterness are held in the same two verses on purpose — this chapter never pretends the temptation is unappealing at first. It names exactly how attractive it is, and then names exactly where it actually leads.
“The lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: but her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 461
White quotes this verse in a chapter tracing the “fearful degeneracy” sexual sin brings on both individuals and society — consequences, she writes, that may be concealed from other people but never actually escaped, since “beyond this life stands the tribunal of the judgment.”
“Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell. Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.”
Proverbs 5:5-6
“Ways are moveable” describes a path that will not hold still long enough to be examined — part of the danger named here is that this road resists the very kind of steady pondering the rest of this book keeps recommending.
Remove Thy Way Far From Her
“Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth. Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house.”
Proverbs 5:7-8
“Come not nigh the door” asks for distance, not merely willpower at the last moment — the safest response to this temptation, this proverb insists, is staying far enough away that the final decision never has to be made under pressure.
“Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house: lest thou give thine honor unto others, and thy years unto the cruel.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 461
White continues quoting straight through this same warning a few verses later on the same page — part of a longer chain of texts she draws together showing that this particular sin, more than almost any other named in Scripture, carries consequences its victims rarely see coming in full.
“Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel: lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger.”
Proverbs 5:9-10
Honor, years, wealth, and labor are named as four separate losses — this chapter counts the actual cost in plain, practical terms rather than leaving the danger as a vague moral abstraction.
“And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, and say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!”
Proverbs 5:11-13
The chapter imagines the regret in advance, in the man’s own future voice — not a warning delivered only from outside, but a confession this proverb predicts he will eventually make about himself.
“I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.”
Proverbs 5:14
“Almost” is the word this whole warning has been building toward — a man of previously public standing, brought to the very edge of open ruin, saved only by whatever margin still separated him from the very worst outcome.
Drink Waters Out Of Thine Own Cistern
“Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well. Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets. Let them be only thine own, and not strangers’ with thee.”
Proverbs 5:15-17
This chapter’s answer to temptation is not simply restraint — it is a genuinely positive picture, a person’s own household compared to fresh, abundant water, worth drawing from precisely because it actually belongs to him.
“Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.”
Proverbs 5:18-19
“The wife of thy youth” names a real, specific marriage, not a general principle — Scripture is entirely unembarrassed here about naming delight within that marriage as the actual, God-given antidote to the temptation this chapter has just spent seventeen verses describing.
The Ways Of Man Are Before The Eyes Of The LORD
“And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger? For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings.”
Proverbs 5:20-21
The same word “ravished” used approvingly of marriage in verse 19 reappears here as a warning — the very intensity a marriage is meant to hold safely is exactly what this chapter says must never be given away outside it.
“The ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and He pondereth all his goings.”
Ellen G. White · The Ministry of Healing, p. 433
White quotes this verse among a chain of texts on God’s total knowledge of the universe — the same all-seeing attention already explored at length in Psalm 139 is, in this chapter, applied directly and specifically to the one temptation Proverbs 5 has spent its whole length warning against.
“His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins. He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.”
Proverbs 5:22-23
“Cords of his sins” closes the chapter with an image of self-made captivity — no outside enemy binding this man, only the accumulated weight of choices he made freely, one at a time, each one adding another cord to the same rope.
