Solomon encourages his son, “My son, attend unto [pay attention to] my wisdom, and bow [incline] thine ear to my understanding; that thou may regard discretion.”
Then he tells him where this wisdom is most useful, “For the lips of a strange [immoral] woman drop as a honeycomb [drip honey], and her mouth is smoother than oil: But her end is bitter as wormwood [in the end she is bitter], sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.
He continues, “Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth. Remove thy way far from her, and come not near the door of her house: Lest…
(a) …thou give thine honor unto others, and thy years unto the cruel: (you lose your usefulness and lifework)
(b) …strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labors be in the house of a stranger (financial loss and possible ruin)
(c) …And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed (physical weakness from a possible venereal disease)
(d) And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me! (regret and mental anguish for not having listened to wise counsel)
(e) I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assemble (almost losing social standing)
Then Solomon tells his son where to get his needs met—-with his wife. “Let thy fountain be blessed; and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind [deer] and pleasant [graceful] roe; let her breast satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished [intoxicated] with her love.”
He ends by questioning the rationale of sexual immorality, “for the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders all his goings.”
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