Young Man Passes the Woman's Doorway at DuskBible World
7:12Proverbs 7:12
Now is she without, now in the streets, and lieth in wait at every corner.)
The verse portrays a sexually immoral woman moving about in public, without and in the streets, lying in wait at every corner as a trap to entice a young man from the path of virtue and ensnare others. The woman in Proverbs 7 is not a particular woman but the character of a class of women represented by the woman in Ecclesiastes 7:26. The verse belongs to the warning in the first seven chapters of Proverbs urging the young to heed instruction and choose wisdom, the path of life, rather than be deceived by flattery and suffer the consequences of breaking God's laws. The verse belongs to a warning against the downward path of folly, sexual immorality and libertinism, a path that leads to a horrible fate and to spiritual disease and death unless a person turns away from it.
The vicious life the verse warns against gives only momentary pleasure followed by long years of bitter remorse and is fatal to the health of soul and body. The plain, vivid setting forth of vice and its results is meant to paint vice and its dreadful consequences in true colors without making it attractive, so as to make sexual sin appear exceeding sinful. The verse's image contributes to the characterization of coercive morality as a harlot whose path leads to death. The instruction to which the verse belongs must be read slowly and thought over for its deep wisdom, and though its subject makes it unfit to read aloud in a mixed gathering of men and women, its warning against the sins condemned there ought to take hold on the heart of both men and women.
The verse shows that the strange woman is still present and that temptation in some form lurks everywhere to catch young men, warning them in time to escape the snares thick about their feet. The verse's warning applies to young women who, sent to live and work in cities without knowing the moral dangers around them, may be vulnerable to sexual exploitation and a life of prostitution.
The verse portrays a sexually immoral woman moving about in public, without and in the streets, lying in wait at every corner as a trap to entice a young man from the path of virtue and ensnare others. The woman in Proverbs 7 is not a particular woman but the character of a class of women represented by the woman in Ecclesiastes 7:26. The verse belongs to the warning in the first seven chapters of Proverbs urging the young to heed instruction and choose wisdom, the path of life, rather than be deceived by flattery and suffer the consequences of breaking God's laws. The verse belongs to a warning against the downward path of folly, sexual immorality and libertinism, a path that leads to a horrible fate and to spiritual disease and death unless a person turns away from it.
The vicious life the verse warns against gives only momentary pleasure followed by long years of bitter remorse and is fatal to the health of soul and body. The plain, vivid setting forth of vice and its results is meant to paint vice and its dreadful consequences in true colors without making it attractive, so as to make sexual sin appear exceeding sinful. The verse's image contributes to the characterization of coercive morality as a harlot whose path leads to death. The instruction to which the verse belongs must be read slowly and thought over for its deep wisdom, and though its subject makes it unfit to read aloud in a mixed gathering of men and women, its warning against the sins condemned there ought to take hold on the heart of both men and women.
The verse shows that the strange woman is still present and that temptation in some form lurks everywhere to catch young men, warning them in time to escape the snares thick about their feet. The verse's warning applies to young women who, sent to live and work in cities without knowing the moral dangers around them, may be vulnerable to sexual exploitation and a life of prostitution.