Proverbs Chapter 5: Polygamy and Sexual Purity



    1: Children give attention to my wisdom and bow thine ear to my understanding 2: That you may observe thoughtfulness and that your lips may guard and protect knowledge 3: For the lips of a strange woman drip as an honeycomb and her mouth is smoother than oil 4: But her end is bitter as wormwood sharp as a two-edged sword 5: Her feet go down to death her steps take hold on hell 6: [to prevent you from] consider[ing] the path of life her ways are unstable [you cannot] know [predict?] them 7: Hear me now therefore O ye children and depart not from the words of my mouth 8: Remove your way far from her and come not near the door of her house 9: Lest you give your honor to others and your years to the cruel 10: Lest strangers be filled with your wealth and your labors be in the house of a stranger 11: And you mourn at the last when your flesh and your body are consumed 12: And say How have I hated instruction and my heart despised reproof 13: And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me 14: I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly 15: Drink waters out of your own cistern and running waters out of your own well 16: Let your fountains be dispersed abroad and rivers of waters in the streets 17: Let them be only your own and not strangers with you 18: Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of your youth 19: Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe let her breasts satisfy you at all times and do not stray from her love[1] 20: And why will you my son go astray with a strange woman and embrace the bosom of a stranger 21: For the ways of iysh are before the eyes of YHWH and he ponders all their goings 22: Their own iniquities shall take the wicked and they shall be held with the cords of their sins 23: They shall die without instruction and in the greatness of their folly they shall go astray


[1] Solomon did not practice what he preached. He did not rejoice in THE WIFE (singular) of his youth. He strayed from her very quickly, lusting after many women and keeping a huge harem. God’s plan was always monogamy (one wife at a time). But, like his father before him, he violated God’s command not to multiply wives to himself. Solomon outdid his father in that respect. He took even more wives and concubines (sex slaves) than David did. Both father and son, suffered consequences for doing so.

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