Proverbs 5:12

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 spec…

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.