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wormwood road

Proverbs 5:1-23 (JDV).

Proverbs 5:1 My son, pay attention to my wisdom; bend your ear to my understanding
Proverbs 5:2 so that you may maintain discretion and your lips safeguard knowledge.
Proverbs 5:3 Though the lips of the forbidden woman drip honey and her words are smoother than oil,
Proverbs 5:4 in the end she’s as bitter as wormwood and as sharp as a double-edged sword.
Proverbs 5:5 Her feet go down to death; her steps head straight for Sheol.
Proverbs 5:6 She doesn’t consider the path of life; she doesn’t know that her roads are unstable.
Proverbs 5:7 So now, sons, listen to me, and don’t turn away from the words from my mouth.
Proverbs 5:8 Keep your road far from her. Don’t go near the door of her house.
Proverbs 5:9 Otherwise, you will give up your vitality to others and your years to someone cruel;
Proverbs 5:10 strangers will drain your resources, and your hard-earned pay will end up in a foreigner’s house.
Proverbs 5:11 At the end of your life, you will lament when your physical body has been consumed,
Proverbs 5:12 and you will say, “How I hated correction, and how my heart despised it when I was corrected.
Proverbs 5:13 I didn’t obey my teachers or listen closely to my instructors.
Proverbs 5:14 I am near complete ruin before the entire community.”
Proverbs 5:15 Drink water from your own cistern, water flowing from your own well.
Proverbs 5:16 Should your springs flow in the streets, streams in the public squares?
Proverbs 5:17 They should be for you alone and not for you to share with strangers.
Proverbs 5:18 Let your fountain be blessed and take pleasure in the wife of your youth.
Proverbs 5:19 A loving deer, a graceful doe — let her breasts always satisfy you; get lost in her love forever.
Proverbs 5:20 Why, my son, would you lose yourself with a forbidden woman or embrace a strange woman?
Proverbs 5:21 Because a man’s roads are before Yahveh’s eyes, and he considers all his paths.
Proverbs 5:22 A wicked man’s violations will trap him; he will become tangled in the ropes of his own failure.
Proverbs 5:23 He will die because there is no correction and be lost because of his great stupidity.

wormwood road

Two possible paths of sexuality. One leads to a lifetime of joy with one spouse, no sorrow, no shame. The other leads to shame in the assembly, the torment of body and mind, and early death. The problem is that the first option looks and sounds so tempting. The wise father’s advice is to stay away from the front door – don’t look, don’t click, don’t surf. Keep your way far from her.

LORD, give us wisdom to stay away from temptation.