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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 5:7 - 5:7
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The eighth discourse springs out of the conclusion of the seventh, and connects itself by its reflective מֵעָלֶיהָ 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 (חֶנֶק). 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 Rechtsaltertümer. 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 וְעַתָּה, 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. מֵעַל, Schultens remarks, with reference to Eze 23:18, crebrum in rescisso omni commercio: מִן denotes the departure, and עַל the nearness, from which one must remove himself to a distance. Regarding הוֹד 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 אַחֵרִים the singulare-tantum אַכְזָרִי (vid., Jer 50:42) has a collective sense; regarding the root-meaning, vid., under Isa 13:9. It is the adj. relat. of אַכְזָר after the form אַכְזָב, which is formed not from אַךְ זָר, but from an unknown verb כָּזַר. 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 הוֹד refers to the person in his stately appearance, but כֹּחַ 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 חַיִל (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. וַעֲצָבֶיךָ (and thy toils) is not, like כֹּחֶךָ, the accusative governed by יִשְׂבְּעוּ; 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 נָכְרִי according to the usage of the language is always personal, so that בֵּית נָכְרִי (cf. Lam 5:2), like מלבושׁ נכרי, Zep 1:8, is to be explained after עִיר נָכְרִי, Jdg 19:12. עֶצֶב (from עָצַב, 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. יִשְׂבְּעוּ and the יִהְיוּ needed to complete 10b are continued in Pro 5:11 in the consec. perf. נָהַם, 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, הָמָה. The lxx, with the versions derived from it, has καὶ μεταμεληθήσῃ, i.e., וְנִחַמְתָּ (the Niph. נִחַם, 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 שְׁאֵר בְּשָׂרוֹ, Lev 18:6; Lev 25:49, these two synonyms show themselves in subordination, as here in close relation. שְׁאֵר appears to be closely connected with שְׁרִירִים, muscles and sinews, and with שֹׁר, the umbilical cord, and thus to denote the flesh with respect to its muscular nature adhering to the bones (Mic 3:2), as בָּשָׂר denotes it with respect to its tangible outside clothed with skin (vid., under Isaiah, p. 418).