Avoid Adultery
Opening Prayer
Lord, help me to hold Your teaching close to my heart, around my neck, day and night, for it is life.
Read Proverbs 6:20–35
20 My son, keep your father’s command
and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.
21 Bind them always on your heart;
fasten them around your neck.
22 When you walk, they will guide you;
when you sleep, they will watch over you;
when you awake, they will speak to you.
23 For this command is a lamp,
this teaching is a light,
and correction and instruction
are the way to life,
24 keeping you from your neighbor’s wife,
from the smooth talk of a wayward woman.
25 Do not lust in your heart after her beauty
or let her captivate you with her eyes.
26 For a prostitute can be had for a loaf of bread,
but another man’s wife preys on your very life.
27 Can a man scoop fire into his lap
without his clothes being burned?
28 Can a man walk on hot coals
without his feet being scorched?
29 So is he who sleeps with another man’s wife;
no one who touches her will go unpunished.
30 People do not despise a thief if he steals
to satisfy his hunger when he is starving.
31 Yet if he is caught, he must pay sevenfold,
though it costs him all the wealth of his house.
32 But a man who commits adultery has no sense;
whoever does so destroys himself.
33 Blows and disgrace are his lot,
and his shame will never be wiped away.
34 For jealousy arouses a husband’s fury,
and he will show no mercy when he takes revenge.
35 He will not accept any compensation;
he will refuse a bribe, however great it is.
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Meditate
Assuming their parents are morally upright, how many young people have gotten ensnared in sexual trouble because they disregarded parental advice along these very lines?
Think Further
Critics of this passage complain that we do not hear the woman’s voice (though it is heard in chapter 7); that the author shows no compassion for the woman’s life situation or for the cuckold’s anguish. They complain of the man-centered values and a racist attitude to the danger of exogamy (marrying outside of one’s own clan or tribe). I use this moment to think about the lust in my own heart (25); to think of the people I know with broken marriages; and to pray for my own society and its attitude towards adultery. Derek Kidner says, “Condonation, as distinct from forgiveness, only proves the adulterer to be part of a general decadence,” and he compares it to the degradation described in Jeremiah 5:7–9 (Proverbs, 71). As I continue to meditate on this passage, I hold in my mind also the famous story in John 8:1–12. The Hebrew text of verse 24 talks about an “evil woman” and an “alien woman” or an “adventuress.” It is not clear that she is a foreigner, but she has certainly stepped outside the covenant (cf. Prov. 2:16,17); also, verses 26 and 32 (and chapter 7) make it clear that she is another man’s wife.
Do we disregard warning signs? A man is boiled to death in a hot spring in
Yellowstone Park. Thirty youngsters walk under the cliffs of Dover at night
and have to be rescued when trapped by the rising tide. Did they not see the signs? I ponder the warning signs in today’s reading which follow the abruptness of verse 25. Adultery hunts your precious soul (26b, literally).
You will be burned (27,28). You will be bankrupted (30,31). It is idiotic to
destroy yourself (32) so needlessly. Blows, disgrace and shame will follow and you will make a vengeful, implacable enemy (33–35), i.e., the angry husband. These are common-sense recommendations; there are no appeals to God or to moral theology. This teaching is down-to-earth, direct, unambiguous and commonsensical.
Apply
Pray for yourself and for young people in your society, subject to huge temptations and to exploitation and bullying in the real and in the electronic world.
Closing prayer
Lord, place within me a spiritual alarm system designed to go off loudly when I venture too close to this particular land mine.
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