Like An Ox To The Slaughter Series

Last week we looked at Proverbs 9 in which Solomon contrasts Lady Wisdom with Lady Folly. Solomon attempts to make the choice between Wisdom and Folly as clear and as obvious as possible in the hopes of helping us to make the right choice. Would that it were that simple, amen, as making such an obvious choice between Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly as Solomon described them in Proverbs 9? Sometimes the choice is that obvious, as the Apostle Paul pointed out in Romans 7: “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (v. 17). In other words, he knows the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do but he struggles with making the right decision. But Solomon also knows and tries to warn us that we can be totally hijacked and taken unawares by sin. [Read Proverbs 7.]

So many of the commentaries and articles that I read suggest that the young man hanging out in a group of other “simple ones” was somehow hanging around the edges of the group and wanders off in the hopes of running into this mysterious and exotic woman. I don’t think so. Solomon describes him as hanging out in a group when he wanders off … clueless. In the Hebrew, the language that Solomon uses suggests that he has just wandered off from the group and is ‘sauntering’ or ‘strolling’ down the street … totally unaware of where he is going … just mindlessly wandering down this street and that until he finds himself on the street where a married woman is lying in wait. Solomon says that he passes along the street near her corner, “taking the road to her house” (Proverbs 7:8) but one could argue whether or not he knew that or he just happened to wander blindly onto the street where she happens to live. The fact that he is “simple” … the fact that he is just mindlessly wandering away from the group … suggest to me that he just happened to make a wrong turn without realizing it … which is often how we accidentally wander into sin, amen? Just sauntering along, strolling through life, when we blindly or accidentally find ourselves in a situation we neither expected nor were we prepared for.

We’ve all watched those nature shows and channels on TV and the internet, haven’t we, and watched lions hunting. They lie in hiding, waiting for their unsuspecting prey to get close enough for them to strike. I love how Solomon sets up the scene. The narrator is looking out the window of his or her house. The window is covered with lattice, which allows the narrator to look out his or her window and observe what was about to take place without the principal players in this drama being able to see him or her. The simple young man doesn’t know who lives on this street or the danger that’s about to pounce on him but the person looking out the window does and he or she knows what’s about to happen to this poor unsuspecting victim. “I observed among the youths, a young man without sense” … in other words … someone without a clue as to the danger he is in … “passing along the street near her corner” (Proverbs 7:8). Where do prostitutes hang out? On corners? Why? So they can call to and attract as many customers as possible … and I imagine that the person looking out the window has seen this woman standing on the corner many, many times and watched her lure many simple, innocent young men into her trap. Remember how Solomon describes Lady Folly in Proverbs 9: “The foolish woman is loud; … she sits at the door of her house, on a seat at the high places of the town, calling to those who pass by …’You who are simple, turn in here!’” (vv. 13-16).

Right on cue, the woman comes out of her house and begins her “sales pitch.” Like Lady Folly in Proverbs 9, she is loud … decked out like a prostitute … wily of heart … restless … her feet do not stay at home … now in the street, now in the squares, and at every corner she lies in wait (Proverbs 7:10-12). It’s funny but so many commentaries and articles point out that she uses words to entice the simple young man but here she does more than just use words … she uses her body … she dresses suggestively … she seizes him and kisses him (Proverbs 7:13) … and then invites him into her bedroom to make love. Sin begins with words, with thoughts, with an invitation but almost always ends in us taking some kind of physical action, amen? The thought of stealing a candy bar leads to the act of stealing the candy bar … or, as Jesus pointed out, thoughts of lust lead to actual acts of adultery (Matthew 5:27-28). “With much seductive speech she persuades him,” says Solomon, “with her smooth talk, she compels him. Right away, he follows her” (Proverbs 7:21-22). Right away … without a whimper or a word of protest … without a moment of doubt or hesitation … without a trace or hint of suspicion … he follows her … again, clueless to the danger that awaits him once he enters her bedroom … which Solomon describes aa trap where he will be slaughtered like an ox or a deer or a bird caught in a hunter’s snare.