vi. 20-35 particularly urged a contending against the inner roots and
germs of the sin of unchastity, our passage dwells with special fulness upon the temptations from without to the transgression of the sixth commandment. It also sets for the folly and the ruinous consequences of yielding to such temptations, by presenting an instructive living example. . . . Aside from the fact that it is nocturnal rambling that delivers the thoughtless idle youth into the hands of temptation (verse 9), and aside from the other significant feature that after the first brief and feeble opposition, he throws himself suddenly and with the full energy of passion into his self-sought ruin (verse 22, comp. James i. 15), we have to notice here chiefly the important part played by the luxurious and savoury feast of the adulteress, as a co-operating factor in the allurement of the self-indulgent youth (verse 14 seq.). It is surely not a feature purely incidental, without deeper significance or design, that this meal is referred to as preceding the central or chief sin; for, that the tickling of the palate with stimulating eats and drinks prepares the way for lust is an old and universal observation (comp. Exod. xxxii. 6, 1 Cor. x. 17, as also similar passages from the classical authors).--_Lange's Commentary._
Apart from the external blandishments which are portrayed in this passage, there belongs to them a power of internal deception the most fallacious and insinuating--and this not merely because of their strength, and of their fitness to engross the whole man when once they take possession of him, and so to shut out all reflection and seriousness--those counteractives to evil passions; but because of their alliance with, and the affinity which they bear to, the kindly and benevolent and good feelings of our nature. As the poet says--himself a wild and wayward, and most dangerously seductive writer--the transition is a most natural one, from "loving much to loving wrong." Let all such affections be sedulously kept at bay, and the occasions of them shunned and fled from, rather than hazarded and tampered with. Let them never be wilfully encountered, or presumptuously braved and bid defiance to, lest the victory be theirs; and no sooner do they win the heart than they war against the soul.--_Chalmers._
Verse 5. This woman not only represents the harlot and the adulteress literally, but it is also a figure of whatever seduces the soul from God, whether in morals or religion, and whether in doctrine and practice, or in religious worship.--_Wordsworth._
_Strange,_ indeed, if she alienate us from the very God that made her, and stir the jealousy of the very Being that gives us our power to love her. (Hosea ii. 8.)--_Miller._
Verse 6. God is ever at His window, His casement is always open to see what thou dost.--_Jermin._
Verse 8. Circumstances which give an occasion to sin are to be noticed and avoided. They who love danger fall into it. The youth (as verse 21 shows) did not go with the intention of defiling himself with the "strange woman," but to flatter his own vanity by seeing and talking with her, and hearing her flatteries. It is madness to play with Satan's edged tools.--_Faussett._
_The beginning of the sad end._ The loitering evening walk, the unseasonable hour (Job xxiv. 15; Rom. xiii. 12, 13); the vacant mind. "The house was empty," and therefore ready for the reception of the tempter (Matt. xii. 44, 45), and soon altogether in his possession. How valuable are self-discipline, self-control, constant employment, active energy of pursuit, as preservatives under the Divine blessing from fearful danger.--_Bridges._
Verses 7-9. The first character appears on the scene, young, "simple" in the bad sense of the word; _open_ to all impressions of evil, empty-headed and empty-hearted; lounging near the place of ill-repute, not as yet deliberately purposing to sin, but placing himself in the way of it; wandering idly to see one of whose beauty he has heard, and this at a time when the pure in heart would seek their home. It is impossible not to see a certain symbolic meaning in this picture of the gathering gloom. Night is falling over the young man's life as the shadows deepen.--_Plumptre._
Verse 9. He thought to obscure himself, but Solomon saw him; how much more God, before whom night will convert itself into noon, and silence prove a speaking evidence. Foolish men think to hide themselves from God, by hiding God from themselves.--_Trapp._
Verse 10. A careless sinner shall not need to go far to _meet_ with temptation. The first woman met with it almost as soon as she was made, and who meets not everywhere with the woman Temptation?--_Jermin._
Verse 14. Though I indulge in amours, do not think I am averse to the worship of God; nay, I offer liberally to Him: He is now therefore appeased, and will not mind venial offences.--_Cartwright._
It is of course possible that the worship of Israel had so degenerated as to lose for the popular conscience all religious significance; but the hypothesis stated above (see note at the beginning of the chapter), affords a simpler explanation. She who speaks is a foreigner who, under a show of conformity to the religion of Israel, still retains her old notions, and a feast-day is nothing to her but a time of self-indulgence, which she may invite another to share with her. If we assume, as probable, that these harlots of Jerusalem were mainly of Phœnician origin, the connection of their worship with their sin would be but the continuation of their original _cultus._--_Plumptre._
An awful portraiture of the mystery of iniquity. It is applicable also to corrupt churches, especially to the spiritual harlot described by St. John in the Apocalypse. She professes zeal for God's house and service, while she is offending Him by heretical doctrine, and insulting Him by the fascinations of idolatrous worship, with which she beguiles unwary souls to commit spiritual fornication with her. (See Rev. xvii. 1-5; xviii. 9.) As Bede says, following in the steps of Basil and others: All the description which is here given is true, in a literal sense, of the meretricious allurements of an adulteress; but it is to be interpreted also spiritually. False doctrine tricks herself out with the embellishments of worldly rhetoric and spurious philosophy, and is ever lurking at the corners of the streets, to allure and deceive the simple, and to caress them with her embraces; and she makes religious professions. She has her couch adorned with heathen embroidery, and yet sprinkles with the odours of spiritual virtues; but Christ says of her in the Apocalypse, "I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into the great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds" (Rev. ii. 22).--_Wordsworth._
_The immoral devotionist._ 1. The absurd conduct of those who indulge in immorality, and think to compound with God for so doing, by paying Him outward forms of worship. 2. All external observances vain and useless unless they are accompanied with purity of heart, and real goodness of life. True religion is an end, and all external observances are only means leading to that end. (See Micah. vi. 5.) Agreeably to this St. Paul assures us that the end of the Christian revelation is to teach men to "live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world" (Titus ii. 12). And Christ assures us that no ceremonious method of atonement without practical goodness will entitle us to the rewards of Christianity (Matt. vii. 21). All duties enjoined by God can be enjoined by Him only for the good they do us. "Can a man be profitable unto God, as he that is wise is profitable to himself?" (Job xxii. 2). And in which way can we possibly conceive how an immoral man can reap any benefit from the mere forms and ceremonies of religion? Is there any reason to think that God will accept this religious flattery instead of purity of life? No, rather it is an aggravation of his crimes. (See Isa. i. 11.)--_N. Ball._
Verse 15. O how diligent is wickedness, thinking that thing never done soon enough which is too soon done at any time! O how diligent a helper is Satan of wickedness, administering all opportunities for it! And, therefore, as the harlot seeketh diligently, so she findeth readily. Which is the shame of religion in many that profess it, and who are so slow in the performance of religious duties, as if they were both servants and masters, and had the commandments of God at their own command, to do them at their pleasure; which is a great reason that they are so ill observed. But if they would use their own diligence, they should find God much more diligent to give a blessing to it.--_Jermin._
Verse 16. Her coverings of tapestry could not cover her naughtiness, her carved work could not embellish her own deformed work, her white Egyptian linen could not make white her black Egyptian soul.--_Jermin._
Verse 17. This might have minded the young man that he was going to his grave, for the bodies of the dead were so perfumed. Such a meditation would much have rebated his edge--cooled his courage.--_Trapp._
Verse 18. But what if death draw the curtains, and look in the while? If death do not, yet guilt will.--_Trapp._
Verse 19. Instead of saying, "_My_ husband," she contemptuously calls him "_the_ goodman," as though he were unconnected with her.--_Fausset._
Man may not be at home, but God is always at home, whose house is the world: man may be gone a far journey, but God's journey is at once to be everywhere; His farthest off, to be present always. . . . She talketh that the goodman was not at home, but the good woman was not at home either; she saith that her husband was gone a far journey, but she herself was gone much farther from her duty. If she had been at home, to have heard her conscience the home reprover of wickedness, the goodman, though not at home, had not been so much wronged; if she had not gone far from her covenant, her husband, though gone far, had still been near and present in her heart.--_Jermin._
Our hearts must be guarded against the admission of sin by stronger motives than the fear of detection and disgrace, for artful solicitors to evil will easily baffle such restraints as these. Joseph might have expected his master's favour by complying with the wishes of his mistress, but the motive that induced him to decline her company was irresistible,--"How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?"--_Lawson._
Verse 22. He goeth to the slaughter when he thinketh he goeth to the pasture; or as those oxen brought forth by Jupiter's priests, with garlands unto the gates, but it was for a slain sacrifice (Acts xiv. 13).--_Trapp._
The butcher's yard would show the meaning of this first similitude. In every sort of way the ox may be coaxed, and apparently to no purpose. But though he may stand, ox-like, like a rock, yet the experienced herdman knows that he will suddenly start in. This is his nature. One inch may cost a hurricane of blows; but at a dash, as the butcher expects, he will suddenly rush in to his doom.--_Miller._
Verse 25. Cut off the beginnings of desire. The first trickling of the crevasse is the manageable, and therefore, more culpable, period of the difficulty.--_Miller._
Verse 26. As Solomon himself subsequently was (Neh. xiii. 26). So Samson and David previously. It is better to learn by the awful example of others than by our own suffering. Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.--_Fausset._
The house of the harlot had been compared before to the grave, to the world of the dead; now it is likened to a battle-field strewn with the corpses of armed men. The word speaks rather of the multitude than of the individual strength of those who have perished.--_Plumptre._
In a figurative sense, some of the greatest teachers of Christendom have been seduced by the allurements of heresy, and have been cast down from their place in the firmament of the Church, like stars falling from heaven.--_Wordsworth._
The valour of men hath oft been slaved by the wiles of a woman. Witness many of your greatest martialists, who conquered countries, and were vanquished of vices. The Persian kings commanded the whole world, and were commanded by their concubines.--_Trapp._
The secret thought that one can saunter toward her house (verse 8), and at any time turn back, is cruelly met by most discouraging examples. The whole passage is the more impressive, if we consider it as a warning against confidence in strength, and particularly grand, if we mark the second clause. . . . All men are strong, and strong in the most substantial sense. All men, saved, are princes (Rev. i. 6); and they are offered the second place in God's kingdom (Isa. lxi. 7.) All men are bone of Christ's bone; all men are born with a birthright to be kings and priests, if they choose to be, and brothers of Emmanuel.--_Miller._
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