¹My son, give attention to my wisdom, incline your ear to my understanding; ²that you may observe discretion and your lips may reserve knowledge. ³For the lips of an adulteress drip honey and smoother than oil is her speech; ⁴but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. ⁵Her feet go down to death, her steps take hold of Sheol. ⁶She does not ponder the path of life; her ways are unstable, she does not know it.

Sexual temptation is now further examined (as it will be again in chapter seven), both as a ubiquitous arena for the struggle of lust and intimacy, and as a supremely compelling illustration of the battle for choosing wisdom over foolishness. The problem of sex is universal, and the illicit enticement of lust is experienced with varying intensities. That which God designed for human enjoyment and fulfillment became the object of a never-ending quest to satisfy the flesh. The natural tendency is to fulfill one’s desires through selfish means rather than living in the fear of the Lord, which is not only the beginning of wisdom and knowledge but also the trailhead for the path toward genuine fulfillment of all we were created to be as God’s image bearers.

In our passage, the teacher of wisdom continues in the persona of a father teaching his son. We can imagine the two, standing face to face, with the father’s hands at arm’s-length, resting on the son’s shoulders as he looks his son straight in the eyes. If there is one thing that can destroy a young man’s life, it is giving in to sexual temptation, so the father warns the son. He refuses to downplay the struggle, nor does he sugarcoat his admonition. This is serious business, and it has the power to affect everything else, like a fork in the road which determines a person’s destiny.

Possibly the adroit treatment of this passage reflects Solomon’s experience as one who used his position of power to satisfy his own quest for sex—he amassed seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines (pseudo-wives but of lesser social status). To be sure, Solomon had political alliances involved in at least some of his marriages, but these women were all at his disposal. God allowed him the freedom of choice but had long ago warned the king of Israel, “… he shall not multiply wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away” (Deut. 17:17). We find that is precisely what happened:

For when Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart away after other gods; and his heart was not wholly devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. (1 Kings 11:4)

We should pause and consider the power of foolishness very seriously. We have Solomon, a man of incredible godly wisdom who is the author of this inspired book of wisdom, falling to the foolish choice, against all wisdom, of giving in to the desires of his flesh. His own assessment is to the point:

Then I became great and increased more than all who preceded me in Jerusalem. My wisdom also stood by me. All that my eyes desired I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart was pleased because of all my labor and this was my reward for all my labor. Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun. (Eccl. 2:9–11)

He retained the knowledge of wisdom to the end of his life, but he did not practice discretion. He discovered the bitter truth that having self-pleasure as your “reward” in life was consummate foolishness because, in the end, it is vanity; he found his life to be vacuous. He failed to keep the first and defining character of true, godly wisdom, namely the fear of the Lord (Prov. 1:7, 9:10).

Sex, originally designed to be beautiful and satisfying, is a powerful attractant to bind a man and woman uniquely together. It is more than a path to self-pleasure, but a sharing of intimacy, which the Bible calls “one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). Since the Edenic fall, sex has become a battleground of the soul, epitomizing the choice between God and ourselves. Without the fear of the Lord God and His wisdom, we have little control over our fleshly impulses. The ungodly mind (which is foolish in its orientation) justifies unbiblical sexual expressions with all kinds of rationalizations that give leave from following God’s design, distorting sex into something that destroys rather than fulfills (see Rom 1:18ff).

Solomon’s illustration focuses on a young man’s side of the struggle, probably because he, as a man, projects himself (as all men can easily do) into this very relatable story. Women may have differing experiences with sexual temptation and its related desire for intimacy. Still, Solomon’s overriding picture coveys well the choices we all face between wisdom and the foolishness of giving in to temptation. Wisdom warns us about what experience entraps us with.

Finally, when we fall to temptation, we suspend all rational thought and wise fore-planning; we choose to follow in the way of one who “does not ponder the path of life” (vs. 6). The gap between experiencing temptation and giving in to it is where the foolish decision is made, rational thinking is suspended, and sensible farsightedness is abandoned. Moral instability and ignorance flood into the soul. Only the fear of God can empower our wisdom to make the right choices against otherwise insurmountable temptations of the flesh.

Lord, I don’t want to be just a “hearer of the word and not a doer.” So I confess to times when I failed to act wisely when You clearly warned me against foolish temptations. I renew and reaffirm Your Lordship in my life and choose to not just know wisdom but to be a “doer” of wisdom.