Proverbs
7
Verse 7:1 opens with a statement to his son:
My son, live according to what I am
telling you;
guard my instructions as you would a treasure deep within
you.
Solomon wants to make sure his son follows the righteous path
and not drift like grandpa. I thought of his later drifts in life and figured
it was the “do as I say, not as I do” proverbs. Also, I was hoping we would
move away from the evils of deceiving women, unfortunately that is not the
case.
Verse 7:5 starts the warnings:
And they will keep you from the
arms of another woman—
protect you from the enchantress who
entices men into her bed.
I think as men we don’t take these serious as a threat to
our families and faith. Granted I lived most of my life in ignorance of
potential advances. One instance early on in my marriage I was left a note. It
was talking about a song by Heart and ended in XOXO. I showed it to Katy and
asked what it meant. She explained the song was about two people in
relationships that just wanted to mess around and the XOXO was “hugs and
kisses.”
We had a good laugh over that, but at the same time it was
disturbing that someone would make that suggestion. When you look at the
statistics, affairs break up marriages more than anything else except maybe
money. So although Solomon’s advice is repetitive,
there is a reason for this we men need it drilled into our heads.
The second best advice I have heard was expounding on 1
Corinthians 6:18 and telling us to run from sin. In the example PK gave he had
a women come into his office to discuss marital problems and made an advance.
His response was to drop everything and run home, literally. He did not stop or
say why he was leaving, he just ran away.
Solomon gives an example of a married woman enticing a young
man into her arms for the rest of the chapter. It drives home how everyone
needs to avoid sin and when faced with temptations like this to run away.
Unfortunately later in life Solomon did not do this and got sucked into a
vortex of worshiping lesser gods. So we need to learn from both Solomon’s words
and his actions.
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