Chapter 5
Lesson 1, Reader, listen well. Then avoid the lips of a forbidden (strange) woman. They lead to destruction and death. Then a second admonition to listen, followed by the results of consorting with strange women. It leads to dissipation, failure, mental and physical ruin, and an old age filled with regret.
Lesson 2, Admonition to "drink from your own cistern" and be satisfied with the wife of your youth. Doing so leads to a good life. We should live this kind of life because God sees our choices, sees the paths we take. The wicked die for lack of discipline.
(10/5/19 - Advice for young men. First, evaluate a woman you are attracted to by the criteria in vss 1-14. Do the characteristics of the forbidden woman sound like this woman you are interested in? Test her, ask questions, listen to her answers, and find out if she "ponders the path of life" or instead is just bouncing along on the current. Reacting, not acting. Then in vss 15-23, learn how to live with the wife you are with. Stay faithful is the first thing, only to her. This is fundamental. Don't look around, don't "dream of what might have been", or of "what might be". This is your wife, she is all you will ever need if you focus and make it so.
Shouldn't churches teach this? To young men starting at about age 15, and on through about age 35???)
(1/5/21 - These warnings against foreign/strange women appear over and over in Proverbs. Perhaps these warnings are about the injunction in Mosaic Law to NOT intermarry with the women of other nations! These are about keeping the nation of Israel pure - marrying only wiht other Jews - and not about prostitutes and loose women at all. I will read these many proverbs this way from now on and see if they make better sense in context than they have up to now. Just off the top of my head they sure seem to. As in vs 10 here: 10 lest strangers take their fill of your strength, and your labors go to the house of a foreigner, [Pro 5:10 ESV] Surely this really means "foreign", as contrasted with Israel. The inheritance you leave, in such a case, might be to a Moabite or Edomite. There would certainly be a foreign claim on Isreali land in such a case. I bet this is what this has meant all along!)
2021 - I read this today through the lens of the three FB posts I found in the last chapter. The pattern here in 5 is much like chapter 4, except there is only one lesson. There is an injunction to listen to the advice about to be offered, there is the advice, in vss. 3, 4; 3 For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, 4 but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. [Pro 5:3-4 ESV]. Then the characteristics of this woman are listed - and they have nothing to do with her being foreign, so I think that possible meaning is just interpretation rather than translation, same as the "or brothers and sisters" after so many verses. This is about a deceitful, willing adulteress. Her characteristics are given, and the results of "jumping into bed with her" for a lifetime are given. Then, if we still aren't sure whether this is a foreign woman or an adulteress, we get the contrasted look at what a good woman is like, what a proper wife is like, and why a relationship with this second kind of woman is far better. I have so very often wondered if foreign or adulteress was the right translation, and today I think it is very obvious. It almost makes me angry that the distracting footnote is even here. It is not about all foreigners! What about Ruth??? What about Hagar???
This might be a FB post, but I think is more likely a bit longer lesson for young men.