Proverbs 9:13 - Meaning and Application

We have heard what Christ says to draw our hearts to God and a godly life. You might think everyone would follow him, but Proverbs also shows how hard the tempter works to pull careless souls into sin. Many are still won over, and Wisdom’s call does not always succeed.

First, we see who the tempter is. She is a foolish woman, Folly itself, set against Wisdom. Here this likely points especially to bodily pleasure, because that is such a strong enemy of virtue and such a wide doorway to sin. It stains and corrupts the mind, dulls the conscience, and puts out the sparks of conviction more than almost anything else.

This tempter is very ignorant. She is simple and knows nothing, meaning she has no solid reason to give. When she gains control of a soul, she drives out all knowledge of holy things, and they are soon lost and forgotten. Sexual sin, wine, and strong drink take away good sense, and they make people act like fools.

She is also very pushy. Since she has little that is reasonable to offer, she presses harder and uses boldness to carry the day. She is loud and noisy, always hanging around young people with her temptations. She sits at the door of her house, watching for victims, unlike Abraham, who stood at his tent door looking for a chance to do good.

She sits on a seat, really a throne, in the high places of the city, as if she had the right to make laws. She acts as though people owe it to the flesh to live for the flesh. She also acts as if she were respected and honorable, worthy of the city’s high places. Often she wins more people by pretending to be fashionable than by pretending to be pleasant. She says, in effect, “Don’t people of rank and status give themselves more freedom than strict virtue allows? Why should you lower yourself and let old rules hold you back?” So the tempter tries to seem both kind and important.

Second, we see who is being tempted. These are young people who have been well taught, the very ones she hopes most to ruin. They are described as passengers going straight on their way, meaning they have been trained in religion and virtue and began well. They seemed set for good, and they are not, like the young man in Proverbs 7:8, heading toward her house. She targets such people, lays traps for them, and uses every charm she has to turn them aside. If they keep going straight and will not look her way, she still calls after them, so urgent are these temptations.

She also misrepresents them. She calls them simple and lacking understanding, and then invites them to her school, as if she could free them from the limits and “formalities” of religion. The stage often does the same thing, and it is a close picture of this passage. There the sober young man, raised with good morals, is treated as the fool in the play, and the plot aims to make him far worse than his openly sinful companions, all while claiming to polish him, refine him, and turn him into a clever and stylish man. What sin and ungodliness rightly call folly, in Proverbs 9:4, is unfairly thrown back on virtue here. But time will show who the real fools are.

Third, we see what the temptation offers. “Stolen waters are sweet.” It offers water and bread, while Wisdom offers the meat she has prepared and the wine she has mixed. Bread and water are simple enough for those who are hungry and thirsty, but here they are presented as extra sweet because they are stolen and eaten in secret, with the fear of being found out. The pleasures of forbidden lust are praised as better than lawful love, and dishonest gain is treated as better than honest gain.

This shows bold contempt, even open defiance, of God’s law, because the waters seem sweeter just because they were stolen and got by breaking God’s fence. We are naturally drawn to what is forbidden. That stubborn pull came from our first parents, who saw the forbidden tree as especially desirable. It also shows contempt for God’s judgment. The bread is eaten in secret because the sinner fears discovery and punishment, yet takes pride in having so silenced his conscience that he dares to go on and thinks secrecy will keep the matter hidden forever. Pleasure is the bait, but even by the tempter’s own words it is such a poor and foolish bait that it is hard to see how anyone who thinks clearly could be drawn by it.

Last, Solomon gives a strong warning against the temptation. Anyone who lacks understanding enough to be led away by these enticements is being led, without realizing it, into certain ruin. He does not know, will not believe, or does not stop to think, and the tempter does not let him remember, that the dead are there. Those who live for pleasure are dead while they live, dead in sin. The terrors that belong to death itself follow these pleasures.

The giants are there, the Rephaim, and that reminds us of the sinners of the old world, the giants who were on the earth in those days. Her guests, who are fed by those stolen waters, are not just on the road to hell or standing at its edge. In a real sense, they are already in its depths, under sin’s power, taken captive by Satan as he pleases, and often tormented by their own consciences, which make a kind of hell on earth. The depths of Satan are the depths of hell. Hard, unrepented sin is hopeless ruin, the bottomless pit already. Solomon shows the hook so that those who trust him will not touch the bait.