Proverbs 5
Proverbs 5 is the third of the long father-to-son talks that open the book, and like the others it is built around a danger and the wisdom that delivers from it. The danger here is the same figure the earlier chapters have named - the strange woman - and the father takes her up again not to dwell on the sin but to be honest about it: honest about why the wrong road appeals, and honest about where it ends. The chapter opens with a plea for attention - My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding (v. 1) - because what follows is not a rule to be obeyed at arm's length but a matter of life and death the son must take inside.3
The warning is unusually frank, and its frankness is its strength. The father does not pretend the tempting path is grim at the start; he admits that the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil (v. 3). The appeal is real. But he refuses to stop at the mouth of the road and insists on following it to its end: her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell (vv. 4-5). This is the chapter's whole method - not to deny the sweetness at the entrance, but to tell the truth about the destination. And so his counsel is wise and practical: not merely to resist at the last moment but to remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house (v. 8), lest the son mourn at the last over a life and an inheritance spent (vv. 9-14).
But the chapter does not leave the son merely warned away from something. Its true heart, and its surprise, is the good thing the warning has been guarding all along. Faithfulness is not drawn as a cage but as a clear, running spring - drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well (v. 15) - and the father's command to his son about the covenant of marriage is not endure but rejoice: let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth (v. 18). The fidelity the counterfeit imitates is itself a blessing, a gladness, a gift. And over the whole chapter - the secret road and the open one alike - the father sets the steadying truth that finally settles the matter: For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings (v. 21). Nothing is hidden; everything is seen. The son lives, in the dark as in the light, before the eyes of God.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Proverbs 5:1-14Her Lips Drop as an Honeycomb
1My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding: 2That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge. 3For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: 4But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword. 5Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell. 6Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them. 7Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth. 8Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house: 9Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel: 10Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger; 11And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, 12And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; 13And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me! 14I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.
The father begins, as he always does, with a plea for the whole attention of his son: My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding (v. 1). And then he does something striking and wise - he tells the truth about why the wrong road is tempting. He does not pretend it is ugly at the start. For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil (v. 3). The two images are exact. Honey is the sweetest thing the ancient world knew; oil is the smoothest. The danger here is not crude or repellent - it is sweet to the taste and smooth to the touch, and the father says so plainly. Notice that the weapon, once again in these chapters, is speech: it is her lips and her mouth that drip honey and run like oil. Flattery, the words that tell a man exactly what he longs to hear, is the bait. To pretend temptation has no appeal is to be disarmed by it; the father refuses that naïve mistake. He grants the sweetness at the mouth of the road precisely so he can be believed when he tells, in the next breath, where the road actually leads.3
Having granted the sweetness, the father now follows the road to its end - and the contrast could not be sharper. But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell (vv. 4-5). Wormwood was a plant of proverbial bitterness; the honey of verse 3 turns to gall in verse 4. The mouth that was smoother than oil conceals an edge sharp as a twoedged sword. This is the chapter's entire method, and it is worth naming: the father wins the argument not by denying the pleasure at the entrance but by telling the truth about the destination. The sweetness is real; it is also the surface of something that runs steadily downward. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell - the path does not merely risk harm, it descends, step by step, toward the grave. And verse 6 names the cruelest part of the deception: her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them. The road shifts and wanders so that the one walking it never gets a clear look at where he is being taken; he cannot ponder the path of life because the path keeps moving under his feet. Sin's great lie is that it lets you see only the next sweet step and never the whole descending road.
From the warning the father turns to strategy, and his strategy is profoundly practical: Hear me now therefore, O ye children… Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house (vv. 7-8). Notice what he does not say. He does not say, “stand at her door and resist.” He says keep your way - the road of your daily life - far from her, and do not even come nigh the door. This is the wisdom of fighting temptation early, in the choices made long before the moment of crisis, rather than late, in a desperate stand at the threshold when the honey is already on the lips. The battle is far more often won or lost in the steps that lead toward the door than in the moment of standing before it. By the time a man is at the door, the woman's moveable ways have already done half their work. The father's counsel is to make the decision when it is still easy - to route the whole path of one's life away from the danger - rather than to trust one's strength to refuse at the very edge. It is the same wisdom a recovering man learns: do not test how close you can come; remove your way far.3
The father now lets the son hear, in advance, the voice of a man who did not listen - a kind of deathbed regret spoken before the deathbed, so the son need never speak it himself. The cost is counted first in what is lost: thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel… strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger (vv. 9-10). Honour, years, wealth, the fruit of a life's labour - all drained away into other hands. And then comes the mourning itself: 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 (vv. 11-13). It is one of the most poignant moments in Proverbs - a man at the end of a wasted road, looking back and realizing the warnings had all been there. He had teachers; he had reproof; he simply despised it. How have I hated instruction is the cry of someone who sees, too late, that the very thing he resented was the thing that could have saved him. The father's mercy is to make his son rehearse that regret now, while it is still only a warning and not yet a memory - for a regret heard in time is a regret that need never be lived.
Proverbs 5:15-23Rejoice With the Wife of Thy Youth
15Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well. 16Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets. 17Let them be only thine own, and not strangers' with thee. 18Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. 19Let 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. 20And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger? 21For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings. 22His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins. 23He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.
Now the chapter turns, and the turn is everything. Having drawn the bitter road, the father does not leave his son merely frightened away from something; he sets before him the good thing the warning was guarding all along. And he draws it in one of the loveliest figures in the book: clean, running water. Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well (v. 15). In a dry land, a man's own well was a treasure - cool, fresh, reliable water that belonged to him and was always there. The image is of satisfaction found at home: the thirst of a life met fully and freely by what is rightly one's own, rather than stolen from a stranger's spring. There is nothing grim or cold in this picture. Water is delight; a well is life. The father is saying that faithfulness is not deprivation but the deepest kind of refreshment - the difference between drinking from your own clear well whenever you are thirsty and sneaking sips from a poisoned, shifting stream. The counterfeit the first half of the chapter described promised satisfaction and delivered wormwood. Here is the real thing it was only imitating: a spring of one's own, blessed, satisfying, and safe.3
The father presses the picture into a glad and unembarrassed celebration of married love. 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 (vv. 18-19). It is worth letting the warmth of this register. Scripture does not treat the marriage bond as a cold duty grudgingly kept; it commands rejoicing, delight, satisfaction, a love that fills and gladdens a whole life. The phrase the wife of thy youth is tender - it pictures a fidelity that began young and is meant to last, two lives growing old together in a covenant that does not tire. And then comes the question that ties the two halves of the chapter into one: And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger? (v. 20). It is not first a threat but an appeal to good sense, almost an astonishment: why would a man leave his own clear well for a stranger's shifting stream? Why trade the blessed fountain for the bitter one? The whole argument of the chapter rests on this contrast - that what faithfulness offers is not less than the counterfeit but immeasurably more: real, lasting, blessed, and safe, where the other is sweet for a moment and bitter at the last.
The chapter closes by returning to the wicked man and naming, with terrible precision, how his ruin comes about: 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 (vv. 22-23). The image is of a man caught in a net of his own weaving. His sins are not merely punished from outside; they become cords that bind him, ropes he twisted himself, now wrapped around his own arms. This is the deep logic the whole book insists on: sin is not only wrong, it is self-entangling - each indulgence ties another knot, until the man who thought he was free is holden, held fast, by a bondage entirely of his own making. And the last verse names the root of it all: he dies without instruction, perishing for lack of the very thing this chapter has been pressing on the son - teaching he would not receive. He goes astray not for want of a map but in the greatness of his folly, having scorned the wisdom that was held out to him. Set this beside the mourning man of verses 11-14, who cried How have I hated instruction, and the warning is complete: the cords that bind the wicked are the cords he tied while refusing to listen. The chapter that began “attend unto my wisdom” ends by showing what becomes of the one who would not.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Proverbs 5 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for zarah and nokriyah (vv. 3, 20, the “strange woman” and “stranger”), for the noun derek (vv. 8, 21, the “way” both the son and the woman walk), and for the cistern-and-fountain imagery of faithfulness in verses 15-18.
- Proverbs 5 ↔ Matthew 5 · Romans 6 · Hebrews 4 & 13Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Proverbs 5 to the rest of Scripture - the bitter end of the forbidden road (vv. 4-5) set beside the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23), the danger pressed inward to the heart (v. 8) echoed in whosoever looketh… to lust (Matt. 5:28), the goodness of faithful marriage (v. 18) affirmed in marriage is honourable in all (Heb. 13:4), and the all-seeing God of verse 21 in all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him (Heb. 4:13).
- Proverbs 5 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Proverbs 5 - the imagery of honey and oil for flattering speech (v. 3), wormwood and the two-edged sword for the bitter end (v. 4), the meaning of “take hold on hell” (v. 5), the cistern, well, and fountain as figures for marital faithfulness (vv. 15-18), and the watching eyes of the LORD in verse 21.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Her Lips Drop as an Honeycomb
- Romans 6:23For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.The bitter end of verses 4-5 stated plainly - the wages of sin is death, set against the gift of life.
- Matthew 5:27-28whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.The danger of verse 8 pressed inward by the Lord - the guard set not only on the deed but on the heart.
- Proverbs 7:21-27With her much fair speech she caused him to yield... her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.The same flattering lips (v. 3) and downward steps (v. 5) drawn at full length in a later chapter.
- Galatians 6:7-8whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap... he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.The honey-then-wormwood of verses 3-4 as a law of harvest - what is sown to the flesh reaps corruption.
- James 1:14-15every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust... sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.The descending steps of verse 5 traced to their root - desire conceives, and sin full-grown brings forth death.
Rejoice With the Wife of Thy Youth
- Hebrews 13:4Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.The gladness of verse 18 affirmed - the marriage bond called honourable, good, and clean.
- Malachi 2:14-15the LORD hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth... let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.The very phrase of verse 18 - the wife of thy youth - with the LORD Himself standing witness to the covenant.
- Hebrews 4:13all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.The watching God of verse 21 - every way of man laid open before the eyes that see everything.
- Proverbs 15:3The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.The same all-seeing eyes of verse 21 - no road, secret or open, outside the LORD’s sight.
- Ephesians 5:25Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.The faithful love of verses 15-19 raised to its pattern - the steadfast love of Christ for His people.