In Proverbs 5, the father makes clear that adultery, beginning in the mind as sinful desires are entertained, is a pathway to death. Sexual sin destroys one’s strength, life, and has the curious effect of suppressing all truth that was once know as it leads to ruin (read carefully the consequences detailed in Proverbs 5).

Adultery will destroy your life. And, it will destroy a lot of other people’s lives too. This is the testimony of countless people who have testified to its destructive power and how it utterly ruined them. As the statistics go, around 25 percent of men and 15 percent percent of women will commit adultery in the course of their marriage. But this fails to take into account the many other forms of sexual immorality that constitute adultery, especially when considering Jesus’ words that even if a man looks at a woman with lustful intent, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

The fact is that many marriages are crippled with the destructive sin of adultery. It has destroyed homes, livelihoods, causing incalculable damage to children. But why are people willing to throw away everything for a moment of pleasure? And what do the Scriptures say about why people fall into its destructive path? This is what this article explores as we seek for the better solution of love in marriage as God intended between a man and a woman.

Proverbs 5 provides us with great insight into the pathway of adultery.

Adultery, by definition, is the voluntary act of a married person who commits sexual intercourse with someone who is not his or her spouse. Adultery is the ultimate act of betrayal in the great design of marriage that intends for us to love the spouse that we are joined to by God himself.

Proverbs 5 provides us with great insight into the pathway of adultery. As wisdom literature, it comes in the setting of a wise father warning his son against adultery. The son is ready to leave the home and enter into marriage. The father instructs his son to guard and keep the instruction he is receiving as a matter of life and death. He begins by cautioning his son against the “forbidden” woman:

For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey,
and her speech is smoother than oil,
but in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a two-edged sword. (Prov. 5:3)

The father is concerned that in the course of his son’s marriage, the son will be tempted to commit adultery. The father calls the son to keep his heart because, at some point, an enticing, immoral, and forbidden woman will come down his path and lure him away to commit adultery. The language is graphic. He speaks of her lips as dripping honey and her speech as smoother than oil, even though her pathway is one that will destroy the young man’s life.

The imagery in Proverbs 5 provides a close look into the power of sinful desire as it leads to the actual practice of adultery. The author is using the scenario of an unfaithful wife tempting and luring a man to commit adultery to help us understand the power of temptation in the realm of human sexuality and all forms of unchastity that follow. In this way, the forbidden woman represents anything that tempts us away to sexual sin against God’s good design of marriage.

Entertaining sinful desire is the ultimate starting point to all adultery.

But there is a certain psychology provided for us in this story that helps to understand the problem of adultery. Of great importance is the father’s emphasis on the forbidden woman’s speech. Proverbs 7 captures the same imagery as the wisdom writer presents a youth without understanding who is seduced by a married woman as she lies in wait for him, seizing and kissing him. Her words are powerful:

I have come out to meet you, and seek you eagerly… I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. Come, let us take our fill of love till morning; let us delight ourselves with love…with much seductive speech she persuades him; with her smooth talk she compels him. He goes into her committing adultery without knowing it would cost him his life (Prov. 7:1ff).

The father’s purpose is to guard his son’s desires. Entertaining sinful desire is the ultimate starting point to all adultery.

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