5 My son, be attentive to my wisdom;
incline your ear to my understanding,
2 that you may keep discretion,
and your lips may guard knowledge.
3 For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey,
and her speech is smoother than oil,
4 but in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a two-edged sword.
5 Her feet go down to death;
her steps follow the path to Sheol;
6 she does not ponder the path of life;
her ways wander, and she does not know it.
It is interesting to note in this picture that it is the man that is being led astray. But what is said surely applies equally the other way round. Is it unknown for a girl to be completely fooled by a specious philanderer, and for the same reasons? 'Her end' in 4 refers to the inevitable 'afterwards' of such an involvement. Kidner has an interesting comment here: 'The first simile of 4 helps us to recognise even marginal unchastity, by its bad aftertaste to the conscience; the second shows that there is more than disen- chantment to he faced. This becomes explicit in 5'. This will bear thinking about. Some- times young folk ask, 'What is wrong with 'kissing' or 'petting'? Well, what does this passage seem to suggest, in its emphasis on 'lips', if not that this is where all the trouble starts? The meaning of 6 (following the AV which scholars think is more faithful to the original than the RSV) seems to be that the seductress's ways are 'moveable', i.e. slip- pery and unstable in order to keep serious thought at bay. Always the play on emotions and feelings rather than thought. She knows, and the devil knows, that when the mind is in control, the temptation is going to be foiled. The RSV rendering - 'her ways wander, and she does not know it' bears witness to something all too common in spiritual life. There is the kind of person who flits from one thing to the next in spiritual things; they never settle down, there is always some new thing, and they are victims of every im- pulse, leading themselves and others a merry dance, which they generally blame on the Spirit of God, 'God guided me to do this, God guided me to do that'. They must have a very strange God. Such people are rarely mature. And they are a potential menace to those with whom they come in contact.