Proverbs 23:26 Commentary and Bible Study

Once we start to slide into wrong ways we are rapidly in the grip of sin. ‘For a whore is a deep ditch; and a strange woman is a narrow pit’, which speaks of the depths of the fall into sin of any kind, not just the strange woman, and the tightness of the pit or the well, so that we are helpless to wriggle and climb out once we are in it. If a Christian person gets into anything like pornography, then within no time they are into it deeply and it is tight, it is enfolded round them and they cannot just drop it, and it taints them and hurts them and perverts them. Furthermore, it was all a plot; it was not an accident and the person was taken in by the wiles of the devil – ‘She also lieth in wait as for a prey.’ The demons of darkness were watching, those assigned to your case were observing you. They saw the first signs of weakness or vacillation, and they began to pounce and set up traps for you. It is all in the early chapters of the Book of Proverbs and the youth stumbled foolishly into the snare of the adulteress. She knew what she was doing, but he didn’t have a clue, and that is how it is when the devil ensnares us with things.‘… and increaseth the transgressors among men.’ What an intriguing word, ‘the transgressors’. The Hebrew says, the devious ones. What does that mean? The devil’s great aim is to turn you and me, if he can, into devious hypocrites with secret sins and indulgences that wreck our spiritual life and communion with God, and ruin our instrumentality and usefulness, and nobody knows. We increasingly become deceivers and liars towards fellow Christians that are around us. That is his aim. The devil if he laughs – a cunning horrible laugh – laughs to see it when we are caught out. It is a very solemn warning.