Proverbs 5:3-6 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Bible Comments

For the lips of a strange woman, &c. It concerns thee to get and to use discretion, that thou mayest be able to resist those manifold temptations to which thou art exposed; drop as a honeycomb Her words and discourses are sweet, pleasing, and prevalent. But her end is bitter as wormwood Her design, and the effect of that lewdness to which she entices men, are the sinner's destruction. So that the beginning of this intercourse is not so sweet as the conclusion is bitter: after a short pleasure follows long pain, by the impairing men's health, strength, estates, and credit, which they cannot reflect upon without trouble and vexation, remorse of conscience, and anguish of spirit, for, like a sword that cuts on both sides, she wounds both mind and body. Her feet Her course, or manner of life, go down to death Lead those that follow her to an untimely, shameful, and miserable end. Her steps take hold on hell To have any, the least, converse with her, is to approach to certain, inevitable destruction. Lest thou shouldest ponder Though thou mayest think to make a retreat in time: thou wilt be deceived, she having more arts than thou canst ever know, (winding and turning herself a thousand ways,) to keep thee from so much as deliberating about thy return to a virtuous course of life.

Proverbs 5:3-6

3 For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her moutha 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.