CHAPTER 5

Drink From Your Own Well

The father's warnings now turn specifically to sexual temptation, and the chapter is structured as a contrast: the honeyed but deadly path of the 'strange woman' versus the deliberately celebrated joy of faithfulness to 'the wife of thy youth.' Proverbs never treats fidelity as mere restraint — here it is framed as the better pleasure, not just the safer one.

1 ‘My son, attend unto my wisdom; incline thine ear to my understanding:’ — ‘Attend unto my wisdom... bow thine ear to my understanding’ opens the chapter with the same posture of attentive listening used throughout the book — this subject, more than most, requires the reader to actually be listening before the warning lands.

2 ‘That thou mayest preserve discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge’ — discretion is introduced as the specific virtue needed here; this chapter is less about raw willpower than about perceiving danger early enough to act on it.

3 ‘For the lips of a strange woman drop honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil:’ — the danger is named as attractive on purpose. Proverbs refuses to pretend temptation is obviously repulsive; if it were, no warning would be needed.

4 ‘But in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword’ — the pivot from honey to bitterness in a single verse is the chapter's central rhetorical move: sweetness at the entrance, a blade at the end.

5 ‘Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on Sheol;’ — the destination is stated flatly, without euphemism. This is the same blunt strategy chapter 1 used with the violent gang: name the actual ending before the appeal can take hold.

6 ‘So that she findeth not the level path of life: her ways are unstable, and she knoweth it not’ — a haunting detail: she herself may be unaware how far off course she has drifted, which is exactly the danger warned against for the reader as well.

7 ‘Now therefore, my sons, hearken unto me, and depart not from the words of my mouth’ — the appeal restarts with fresh urgency, signaling that what follows is the practical instruction, not just the diagnosis.

8 ‘Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house;’ — as in chapter 4, the counsel is physical distance, not proximity managed by self-control. Wisdom consistently prefers not being tested at all.

9 ‘Lest thou give thine honor unto others, and thy years unto the cruel;’ — the cost is named in terms of reputation and time, not only guilt; consequences here ripple outward into a person's whole future.

10 ‘Lest strangers be filled with thy strength, and thy labors be in the house of an alien,’ — a warning that a lifetime's work can end up funding someone else's household entirely, a picture of ruin that is financial as much as moral.

11 ‘And thou mourn at thy latter end, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,’ — the warning reaches forward to old age, insisting that some choices made young are still being paid for decades later.

12 ‘And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;’ — The imagined future regret speaks in the first person: ‘How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof.’ Proverbs frequently uses this device — letting the fool's own future voice make the case against the fool's present choice.

13 ‘Neither have I obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!’ — the regret is specifically about having been teachable and refusing it, tying this warning back to the whole book's opening emphasis on receiving instruction.

14 ‘I was well-nigh in all evil in the midst of the assembly and congregation’ — the shame is public, not merely private; sin of this kind rarely stays contained to the individual who commits it.

15 ‘Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well’ — the metaphor shifts abruptly to the positive alternative: marital faithfulness pictured as drawing satisfaction from a source that is rightfully, exclusively one's own.

16 ‘Should thy springs be dispersed abroad, and streams of water in the streets?’ — read with verse 17, this pictures the fruit of a faithful marriage (children, legacy) benefiting the wider community, not the danger of infidelity as some translations imply.

17 ‘Let them be for thyself alone, and not for strangers with thee’ — ‘Let them be only thine own, and not strangers' with thee’ — exclusivity is stated as the point, not a limitation on it: what is shared within marriage is not meant to be divided outside it.

18 ‘Let thy fountain be blessed; and rejoice in the wife of thy youth’ — marriage is called a blessing to be actively enjoyed, not merely a boundary to be kept. The command is to rejoice, not simply to refrain.

19 ‘As a loving hind and a pleasant doe, let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love’ — one of the most openly romantic verses in the Old Testament. Proverbs' answer to the pull of illicit passion is not less passion but rightly placed passion, sustained deliberately over a lifetime.

20 ‘For why shouldest thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a foreigner?’ — the question is almost incredulous: why trade something already described as satisfying for something already shown to be lethal?

21 ‘For the ways of man are before the eyes of Jehovah; and he maketh level all his paths’ — the chapter's turn toward its conclusion begins with a reminder that nothing described so far, in either direction, has been unseen.

22 ‘His own iniquities shall take the wicked, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sin’ — sin is pictured as self-binding; the trap is not sprung by an outside enemy but constructed, cord by cord, by the very choices being warned against.

23 ‘He shall die for lack of instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray’ — the chapter's final verdict lands on a cause, not just an outcome: not merely folly, but instruction refused — tying the whole chapter back to its opening call to listen.