Proverbs 5:12 注釈

The scope of this chapter is much the same with that of ch. 2. To write the same things, in other words, ought not to be grievous, for it is safe, Phi 3:1. Here is, I. An exhortation to get acquaintance with and submit to the laws of wisdom in general (Pro 5:2). II. A particular caution against the sin of whoredom (Pro 5:3-14). III. Remedies prescribed against that sin. 1. Conjugal love (Pro 5:15-20). 2. A regard to God's omniscience (Pro 5:21). 3. A dread of the miserable end of wicked people (Pro 5:22, Pro 5:23). And all little enough to arm young people against those fleshly lusts which war against the soul.

INTRODUCTION TO PROVERBS 5 The general instruction of this chapter is to avoid whoredom, and make use of lawful marriage, and keep to that. It is introduced with an exhortation to attend to wisdom and understanding, Pro 5:1; one part of which lies in shunning an adulterous woman; who is described by her flattery, with which she deceives; by the end she brings men to, which is destruction and death; and by the uncertainty of her ways, which cannot be known, Pro 5:3. Wherefore men are advised to keep at the utmost distance from her, Pro 5:7; lest their honour, strength, wealth, and labours, be given to others, Pro 5:9; and repentance and mourning follow, when too late, Pro 5:11. And, as a remedy against whoredom, entering into a marriage state is advised to, and a strict regard to that; allegorically expressed by a man's drinking water out of his fountain, and by his wife being as a loving hind and pleasant roe to him, the single object of his affections, Pro 5:15. As also the consideration of the divine omniscience is proposed, to deter him from the sin of adultery, Pro 5:20; as well as the inevitable ruin wicked men are brought into by it, Pro 5:22.

And say, how have I hated instruction,.... To live virtuously, and avoid the adulterous woman; this he says, as wondering at his stupidity, folly, and madness, that he should hate and abhor that which was so much his interest to have observed. Gersom interprets it of the instruction of the law; but it is much better to understand it of the instruction of the Gospel; which the carnal mind of man is enmity unto, and which they are so stupid as to abhor; when it is of so much usefulness to preserve from error and heresy, superstition, will worship, and idolatry; and my heart despised reproof; for following the whorish woman; and which was secretly despised in the heart, and heartily too, if not expressed with the mouth: it is one part of the Gospel ministry to reprove for false doctrine and false worship, though it generally falls under the contempt of the erroneous and idolatrous.

Why did I hate instruction? etc. He calls the instruction of ecclesiastical faith; the reproaches by which heretics are rebuked, why they withdrew from the Church, he refers to them. It is evident concerning fornicators.

A warning against the seductive arts of wicked women, enforced by considering the advantages of chastity, and the miserable end of the wicked. (Pro. 5:1-23) This connection of wisdom and understanding is frequent (Pro 2:2; Pro 3:7); the first denotes the use of wise means for wise ends; the other, the exercise of a proper discrimination in their discovery.

The ruined sinner vainly laments his neglect of warning and his sad fate in being brought to public disgrace.

The poet now tells those whom he warns to hear how the voluptuary, looking back on his life-course, passes sentence against himself. 12 And thou sayest, "Why have I then hated correction, And my heart despised instruction! 13 And I have not listened to the voice of my teachers, Nor lent mine ear to my instructors? 14 I had almost fallen into every vice In the midst of the assembly and the congregation!" The question 12a (here more an exclamation than a question) is the combination of two: How has it become possible for me? How could it ever come to it that.... Thus also one says in Arab.: Kyf f'alat hadhâ (Fl.). The regimen of איך in 12b is becoming faint, and in 13b has disappeared. The Kal נאץ (as Pro 1:30; Pro 15:5) signifies to despise; the Piel intensively, to contemn and reject (R. נץ, pungere). Pro 5:13 שׁמע בּ signifies to cleave to anything in hearing, as ראה ב is to do so in seeing; שׁמע ל yet more closely corresponds with the classic ἐπακούειν, obedire, e.g., Psa 81:9; שׁמע בּקול is the usual phrase for "hearken!" Pro 5:14 כּמעט with the perf. following is equivalent to: it wanted but a little that this or that should happen, e.g., Gen 26:10. It is now for the most part thus explained: it wanted but a little, and led astray by that wicked companionship I would have been drawn away into crime, for which I would then have been subjected to open punishment (Fl.). Ewald understands רע directly of punishment in its extreme form, stoning; and Hitzig explains כל־רע by "the totality of evil," in so far as the disgraceful death of the criminal comprehends in it all other evils that are less. But בּכל־רע means, either, into every evil, misfortune, or into every wickedness; and since רע, in contradistinction to לב (Hitzig compares Eze 36:5), is a conception of a species, then the meaning is equivalent to in omni genere mali. The reference to the death-punishment of the adulteress is excluded thereby, though it cannot be denied that it might be thought of at the same time, if he who too late comes to consider his ways were distinctly designated in the preceding statements as an adulterer. But it is on the whole a question whether בכל־רע is meant of the evil which follows sin as its consequence. The usage of the language permits this, cf. Sa2 16:8; Exo 5:19; Ch1 7:23; Psa 10:6, but no less the reference to that which is morally bad, cf. Exo 32:22 (where Keil rightly compares with Jo1 5:19); and הייתי (for which in the first case one expected נפלתּי, I fell into, vid., Pro 13:17; Pro 17:20; Pro 28:14) is even more favourable to the latter reference. Also בּתוך קהל ועדה (cf. on the heaping together of synonyms under 11b), this paraphrase of the palam ac publice, with its בּתוך (cf. Psa 111:1; Ch2 20:14), looks rather to a heightening of the moral self-accusation. He found himself in all wickedness, living and moving therein in the midst of the congregation, and thereby giving offence to it, for he took part in the external worship and in the practices of the congregation, branding himself thereby as a hypocrite. That by the one name the congregation is meant in its civil aspect, and by the other in its ecclesiastical aspect, is not to be supposed: in the congregation of the people of the revealed law, the political and the religious sides are not so distinguished. It is called without distinction קהל and עדה (from יעד). Rather we would say that קהל is the whole ecclesia, and עדה the whole of its representatives; but also the great general council bears sometimes the one name (Exo 12:3, cf. 21) and sometimes the other (Deu 31:30, cf. 28) - the placing of them together serves thus only to strengthen the conception.