chapter v

. 3. _She carries her victims beyond hope of recovery._ There are no rules without exceptions. We know that there are those who have for a time been under the influence of such characters, and have returned to the paths of virtue and honour. But these are rare exceptions. In the main, it is, alas! true that "none that go unto her return again." A vessel founders at sea, and we say that the crew is lost, although one survivor may have been rescued. We speak of an army being destroyed if one escapes to tell the tale. Where one who has taken hold on her paths struggles back to life and purity, thousands go down with her to death, bodily, social, and spiritual.

_OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS._

Verse 12. To _snatch_ (see "Critical Notes"). "The way of evil." The terms begin gently. It is only the gentle aspects that are dangerous at first. These are so fascinating that it requires us to be _snatched_ to keep us out of the ways of darkness.--_Miller._

Verse 13. Among the pests of men, none are such virulent pests of everything that is good as those that once made a profession of religion, but have _left the way of uprightness._ The stings of conscience which such persons experience, instead of reclaiming them, tend only to irritate their spirits, and inflame them into fierce enmity against religion.--_Lawson._

Darkness, as thus set in contrast with uprightness, may be interpreted as descriptive both of the _nature_ of the ways, and of their _tendency_ and _end_. The man who walks in uprightness walks in light. His eye is "single." There is "none occasion of stumbling in him." He has but _one_ principle; his "eyes look right on, his eyelids look straight before him." He is not always looking this way and that, for devious paths that may suit a present purpose, but presses on ever in the same course; and this all is light, all plain, all safe. "The ways of darkness" are the ways of concealment, evasion, cunning, tortuous policy and deceit. He who walks in them is ever groping; hiding himself among the subtleties of "fleshly wisdom": and being ways of false principle and sin, they are ways of danger, and shame, and ruin.--_Wardlaw._

There is a strictly casual and reciprocal relation between unrighteous deeds and moral darkness. The doing of evil produces darkness, and darkness produces the evil doing. Indulged lusts put out the eye-sight of the conscience; and under the darkened conscience the lusts revel unchecked.--_Arnot._

The light stands in the way of their wicked ways as the angel did in Balaam's way to his sin.--_Trapp._

Verse 14. Though it be wormwood which they drink (Lam. iii. 15), yet being drunk with it, they perceive not the bitterness thereof, but like drunken men rejoice in their shame and misery.--_Jermin._

Better is the sorrow of him that suffereth evil than the jollity of him that doeth evil, saith St. Augustine.--_Trapp._

Here is a note of trial to discern our spiritual estate. Wicked men rejoice in sin; good men sorrow more for sin than for troubles. . . . Many triumph in their evil deeds because they have no good to boast of. And men are naturally proud and would boast of something.--_Francis Taylor._

Verse 16. There is no viler object in nature than an adulteress. Though born and baptised in a Christian land, she is to be looked upon as a heathen woman and a stranger, and as self-made brutes are greater monsters than natural brute beasts, so baptised heathens are by far the worst of pagans.--_Lawson._

This strange woman is an emblem of impenitence. The passage 16-19, means the seductiveness and yet the betraying wretchedness of impenitence. The woman who has left her husband has also left her God; and the _nulla vestigia retrorsum_ witnessed in her dupes is the warning for the saint by which he keeps clear of her undoing. No man would err who would treat of adultery as having its lessons here. But no man would understand the passage who did not understand it further as a great picture of impenitence. The warnings are two: (1) the un-stopping-short character of sin; she who wrongs her husband will be seen universally wronging God: and (2) the unrecuperative history of the lost.--_Miller_

Twice Solomon uses a similar expression, "the strange woman (even) the stranger," to impress more forcibly on the young man the fact _that her person belongs to another._ The literal and spiritual adulteress are both meant. The spiritual gives to the world her person and her heart, which belong by right to God. In this sense the foreign women who subsequently drew aside Solomon himself, were "strange women," not so much in respect to their local distance from Israel, as in respect to being utterly _alien to the worship of God._ Lust and idolatry were the spiritual adultery into which they entrapped the once wise king. How striking that he should utter beforehand a warning which he himself afterwards disregarded.--_Fausset._

We are not to forget that the accomplished seducer has herself perhaps been seduced. The fair and flattering words, the endless arts of allurement, are on both sides.--_Wardlaw._

One who is as it were, a stranger to her own house and husband by faithlessness (Hitzig), and hence a type of anything that is false and seductive in doctrine or practice. . . . By God's goodness Solomon's words in this Divinely inspired book were an antidote to the poison of his own vicious example.--_Wordsworth._

Verse 17. False doctrine and false worship are in Scripture compared to harlotry and adultery. (Numb. xiv. 33; Judges ii. 17; viii. 33; Psa. cvi. 39; Rev. xvii. 1, 2; xviii. 3.)--_Wordsworth._

It is God that is the guide of her youth, whoever may be under Him; it is God's covenant that is made, whosoever may be the contractor in it. It is God who is first _forsaken,_ then _forgotten;_ forsaken in the beginning of wickedness, forgotten in the hardened practice of it. God hath appointed guides for youth--to stay the weakness of it, and to which, as unto God, youth ought to yield obedience. For elder years He hath appointed covenants as bonds and chains to hold them sure.--_Jermin._

There is no trusting them that will fail God and their near friends. If they fail God, they will fail men for their advantage. If they fail friends--much more strangers.--_Francis Taylor._

Verse 18. When you get into the company of the licentious, you are among the dead. They move about like men in outward appearance, but the best attributes of humanity have disappeared--the best affections of nature have been drained away from their hearts.--_Arnot._

Her house is not a building reared up, but inclined and bowed down, and she who dwelleth in it will, by her life, bring thee to the dead. . . . Death is here twice mentioned to show that it is a double death, a temporal death, and an eternal death, to which she bringeth men.--_Jermin._

Verse 19. Who would cast himself into a deep pit in the hopes of coming out alive, when almost all that fell into it were dashed in pieces.--_Lawson._

It is as hard to restore a lustful person to chastity as it is to restore a dead person to life.--_Chrysostom._

A sin which, I am verily persuaded, if there be another that slays her thousands, may with truth be affirmed to slay its _ten_ thousands.--_Wardlaw._

Verse 20. Here follows the whole ground of the exhibition: "That," _for the very purpose_ that "_thou_ mayest walk in the way of good men." This is a grand, pregnant doctrine. This bad life was abandoned to its worst partly as a lesson.--_Miller._

It is not enough to shun the evil way, unless man walk in the good way.--_Muffet._

He that walks in the way of good men shall meet with good men, and that shall keep him from the company of evil men and women. The paths of the righteous are too narrow for such: he shall not be troubled with them.--_Jermin._

_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 21-22.

THE CONTRAST IN THE END FROM THE CONTRAST IN THE WAY.

If men walk in two directly opposite directions they cannot possibly arrive at the same goal. +I. The historic illustration of this truth.+ The first inhabitants of Canaan were allowed to dwell in the land until they defiled it to so great an extent by their sins that they were "rooted out," to be replaced by the Hebrew people. These, in their turn, became "transgressors" of God's law, and consequently forfeited their inheritance. +II. The reasonableness of this dealing.+ Uprightness leads to industry, and the land which is industriously cultivated fulfils the end for which God gave it to the children of men. Uprightness leads to the rightful dividing of the land or of its produce among all its inhabitants. It is God's will that none of his creatures should suffer bodily want: if all men were truly upright and godly, the poor and needy, if they did not cease out of the land (Deut. xv. 2) would have a much larger share of its good things than they at present enjoy. The Hebrew civil and social laws show us what God's intentions are in this matter. Therefore none ought to complain if they are deprived of a gift which they have mis-used. +III. The typical suggestion of the subject.+ Dwelling in the land of Canaan was typical of the eternal dwelling in the heavenly country. Some of the first inhabitants of _that_ country have been "rooted out" because of sin (2 Pet. ii. 4), others have dwelt safely there for ages, because they are, literally, _perfect_. This is the destined home of all just men made perfect (Heb. xii. 23; xi. 13-16. Matt. xxii. 32).

_OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS._

Verse 21. The Israelite was, beyond the power of natural feeling, which makes home dear to every one, more closely bound to his ancestral soil by the whole form of the theocracy: torn from it he was in the inmost roots of his life itself, strained and broken.--_Elster._

As surely as a righteous man hath this right unto temporal things which a wicked man hath not, that God doth account him to be worthy of them . . . . Wherefore it is observed, that in Scripture, although the wicked are said to possess the things of the earth, they are never said to inherit them; but the godly are said to inherit the good things of the earth as receiving them from the love of their heavenly Father.--_Jermin._

Verse 22. The very earth casts out the wicked. . . . The whole has a typical meaning. This earth, many conjecture is to be restored as heaven. In that event, the old Canaan types will be very perfect.--_Miller._

Must not the righteous leave the earth too? Yes; but the earth is a very different thing to the righteous and to the wicked. To the latter it is all the heaven they will ever have; to the righteous it is a place of preparation for heaven.--_Lawson._

The event seemeth to be contrary to the promise here made, for the earth commonly is possessed by those who take evil ways, whilst in the mean season the godly are tossed up and down with many afflictions. But we must consider for our comfort that, the wicked wrongfully and unlawfully as usurpers, possess the earth and the goods of this world; and again, that by many troubles, and by death in the end, they are put out of possession at last. As for the godly, they, by right, inherit the earth, so that, as Abraham was the heir to the land of promise even when he had not a foot of ground therein, in like manner all the godly are heirs of this world, according to the saying of the apostle, that all things are theirs (1 Cor. iii. 22); howsoever often here they possess little or nothing. In right they are heirs, and in part possessors, looking for a new heaven and a new earth, wherein the just shall dwell (2 Pet. iii. 13).--_Muffet._

Suddenly, when they have feathered their nests and set up their rest, the wicked may die sinning. The saints shall not die till the best time--not till the time when, if they were rightly informed, they would desire to die.--_Trapp._

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