BOOK 20 OF 66 · WISDOM & POETRY · KING JAMES BIBLE

Proverbs 5

Proverbs book home•Chapter 5 of 31•23 verses

Chapter overviewAt a glance + deeper study

REVIEWED OVERVIEW

Proverbs 5 Overview

The father warns against the flattering strange woman and her bitter end, tells the son to stay far from her door, and positively commands rejoicing in one's own wife before reminding that God sees every path.

ProverbsBook

5Chapter

23Verses

PoetryDivision

Before you read Proverbs 5

Coming from

Proverbs 4 emphasized guard the heart and stay on wisdom's straight path. Because many proverbs are individual sayings rather than a continuous argument, the chapter-to-chapter connection is thematic rather than narrative.

In this chapter

Leads into

Proverbs 6 turns to wisdom about debt, diligence, destructive character, and adultery, expanding wisdom into another set of choices, contrasts, and observations.

Key understandingExplore deeper

The “strange woman” is an immoral/adulterous woman in the wisdom setting, not a statement that foreign ethnicity is inherently immoral. Proverbs uses compact wisdom sayings to train judgment. Its normal patterns describe how God’s moral order ordinarily works; they are not mechanical guarantees that remove human freedom, suffering, or providence.

Major truths in this chapterExplore deeper

Central truth

Marital faithfulness against the ruin of adultery.

Sexual Purity truth

In Proverbs 5, sexual choices are treated as morally serious because they affect covenant faithfulness, character, and life.

Marriage truth

In Proverbs 5, marriage is presented as a proper setting for faithful affection, delight, responsibility, and protection from adultery.

Connections to the rest of ScriptureExplore deeper

Sexual Purity connection

1 Corinthians 6:18 commands believers to flee fornication. This connection helps frame Proverbs 5.

Marriage connection

Hebrews 13:4 honors marriage and requires the marriage bed to be undefiled. This connection helps frame Proverbs 5.

What is clear, and where care is neededExplore deeper

Keep sexual purity in context

Keep the moral responsibility of every participant clear in Proverbs 5; warnings about seduction never excuse the person who knowingly consents to sin.

Keep marriage in context

The marital wisdom in Proverbs 5 honors covenant faithfulness; do not turn poetic or household details into identical requirements for every marriage.

Read Proverbs 5 watching for…

lips honey.

end bitter.

remove way from her.

drink own cistern.

rejoice wife youth.

Chapter outline2 sections

1-14Attend to wisdom and avoid the flattering strange woman whose path leads to death 15-23Rejoice in one’s own wife, knowing that all ways are before the LORD

My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding:

That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.

For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:

But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword.

Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.

Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.

Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.

Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house:

Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel:

Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger;

And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,

And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;

And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!

I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.

Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.

Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets.

Let them be only thine own, and not strangers' with thee.

Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.

Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.

And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?

For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings.

His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.

He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.

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Proverbs 5:11

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