Chapter 6
2021 -This chapter also starts with "My son...", again offering advice to a young man on how best to live a life. In 4 we saw the three foundational axioms. In 5 we see the contrast between a good woman, the wife of our youth, that we should honor and love and the adulteress, the skanky woman that will be a temptation to us. And now we get to 6, and see what kind of advice will be there. Also, I note for the record that Chapters 1-3 also started with "my son". (In 1 it comes after the general introduction. I really should go back and pick up the advice in those three to establish the continuity that I'm sure is embedded.
1-5, Never put up security for your neighbor. It is always a bad idea. If you do it, then work day and night to get out of it. It is not specific as to how. Seems you are on the hook until your neighbor discharges the debt that you secured. Urge your neighbor to pay off the debt early, so you can be released. Maybe wart him until he pays as much to get rid of your nagging as to discharge the debt.
2021-This advice takes a different form that what was in 4 and 5. There is no urgent plea for the son to listen. No list of the benefits of taking the advice. Instead, it starts right off in vs 1 with a two verse if, followed by a long 1 verse then, and then two verses of hurry up and do it now. This is about dealing with neighbors. Not sure how broad that category might be. I think it is saying never to enter into a business partnership with your neighbor, especially do not fund the neighbor's venture. MSB note says the idea is more like "Don't co-sign for your neighbors loans". It is better to give to the poor, or if you really want to help your neighbor, then YOU loan him the money at 0 interest. This is the better way. If you can afford to lend the money yourself, and do so, and the neighbor defaults, you lost your money. But if you co-sign and he defaults, the creditor might take all your assets to repay the loan, especially if the neighbor has lost all that he had and there is nothing left there to use for repayment. This makes better sense.
So the three fundamentals, how to choose a wife and stay loyal to her, and now how to conduct business affairs.
2025 - In vs 3, the NASB95 CSV and KJV say "humble yourself", the ESV says "plead urgently", NLT says "swallow your pride" when you go to your neighbor to try and extricate yourself from this mess. I think the idea is that your neighbor came to you as the one who had money, as someone further up the food chain, and possibly the pride of this is what got you into trouble in the first place. Now it has turned out that your pride has you in a very vulnerable spot with the bank on the loan for which you co-signed. So eschew that pride, and go beg your neighbor to take your name off the loan, even to the point of loaning him your own money. This is a serious situation. Look at the way "escape" from this loan is couched...like a gazelle delivered from the hunter...
6-15, Don't be lazy. Don't spend your time sleeping, laying on your bed. If you do, poverty is the result.
2021 - I can now see this as continued advice about commerce, about running your business affairs. You can't be lazy. You need to keep your head in the game.
12-15, Characteristics of wicked men detailed. Also the prediction that their end will suddenly overtake them, and they won't be able to recover.
2021 - Some insight into recognizing those you want to avoid in business?
16-19, Seven things abominable to God:
haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, hurrying to evil, a false witness, stirring up trouble among brothers.
2021 - Add'l business advice, but I would think this is also about choosing our friends. If God hates them, they are poor prospects for us to love. They will not make great friends. These should be avoided in both business and personal life.
20-23, Urges the reader to listen. A lesson is coming up. The lesson is to avoid "the evil woman", from the "adulteress". Some notes in TCR say the first is the wife of a neighbor, and the second is a foreign woman. Maybe foreign women tended to be prostitutes? Or had different standards of purity? vs 26 seems to say that prostitutes are bad enough, and leave you with almost nothing, but another man's wife can cost you your whole life. I think that's what it's saying. This is because that woman's husband will never forgive, never stop, never think justice is done and you can be left alone. Your reputation will mean nothing to that man.
2021 - Admonishment to listen to the wisdom of our parents. It doesn't say to listen to college professors, politicians, or business men. It says listen to parents. That is interesting. Perhaps because our parents know us best, understand our weaknesses best, and since they know where we come from, they know how to direct us forward.
2022 - There is a MSB footnote to vs 24 that "re-vocalizes" it to say "from the wife of a neighbor". Then this is corroborated in vs 26, showing us that this little passage is not really about prostitutes so much as about adulterous women - women who do this for fun, for adventure, out of boredom, out of anger at their own husbands. Prostitutes are bad, we see that in vs 26, but these verses are contrasting prostitutes with married but adulterous women...and the married women are far worse to mess with than the prostitutes...despite what we saw about prostitutes already in chapter 5!
2023 - Got hung up here again on the "revocalization" of the phrase in vs 24. The word is "issa", pronounced "ish-shaw". It has a multitude of possible meanings, all around it being the feminine of words that mean man, mankind, male animals....this is opposite of that. I went and looked up a number of the places where the word is translated. There are 780 of them. In the early part of Genesis, they almost always are about Eve - and up through Noah's wife - the word is always translated either wife, or in Eve's case, "the woman". I am not going to look up all 780 of the places it is used. I will say that based on the uses I did check, the usage here is probably not "female stranger". I believe it implies a close, perhaps even a loved woman. Wife is probably best - an evil wife being what is in view - but it could be an evil girlfriend, a fiance'....someone to whom you are emotionally attached. Vs 26 seems to corroborate this translation, but ONLY because it is the same word. ESV is consistent about translating it the same way in both 24 and 26. The words for adulteress and prostitute in these two verses are different from issa, and different from each other. So...three kinds of women. Two invariably of low morals, but the one that is the real subject here is of a kind with them, though not in their profession. Wow. That sort of makes it even worse for the "wife" that is in view here. Kingly advice to the princes that will be pursued by ambitious women...makes very good sense in that context.
So chapter 4 is about staying far from the wicked, who practice violence, and crave disorder.
Chapter 5 is about avoiding "strange" women, who disperse your energy, your focus, your direction, your accomplishment.
Chapter 6 is about dealing with everyday life through vs 19. The rest of the chapter is about staying away from other men's wives. Seems to be different than Chapter 5, which was about foreigners. This is about neighbors.
2021 - Vss 20-35 follow the pattern of chapter four. There is the long plea that the hearer will heed this advice. The results of heeding the advice are discussed, especially vs 24. Then beginning in 25, we get the advice, and the consequences of not heeding the advice are listed. In vs 26, I think the writer lets us know that we are no longer talking about the woman in Chapter 5. This woman is not one that we are considering for marriage. This one is later in life, after marriage. This is about women who move in our circle, but who have perhaps the disposition of a prostitute, though they are married. These are women who, because of their circumstances, lead us to presume they have integrity. In fact they do not. The contrast in vs 26 between a prostitute and this kind of woman says the married one is far more likely to cause us harm.