Proverbs 9:13 Commentary and Bible Study

The foolish woman is clearly the adulteress of chapter 7 come back again. ‘A foolish woman is clamorous’ – moderns versions say ‘loud’. The word ‘clamorous’ sounds like glamorous, but no, it means making a loud and confused noise. She makes claims; she boasts; she keeps on at you. She enjoys moving in crowds. The world appeals to us to do their thing in a raucous and belligerent way: even their music is loud. She is bustling, pressing; she never thinks, and she does not let you stop to think. She traps the person she seduces, and with all her various arts, tries to enfold that person and drag them into her house before they can think of the consequences, the implications. You might think that this is all the wrong way round. In this ninth chapter you have wisdom calling the people to a great feast in a great house, and then you have the adulteress, the foolish woman, down here in verse 13 on her own, sitting on her seat outside her simple house, calling people in on a much lower scale. So you have depicted the wisdom of God calling a vast number of people into a great palace for a great feast, and the world's system, the adulteress, the sin trap on her own with her humble prostitute's house calling in the people one by one.Now that is in many ways the opposite way round from the normal imagery of the Bible. Normally the world is depicted as taking the crowd, and salvation is depicted as coming one by one to individuals. But here in Proverbs 9 the picture is turned round the other way. The point that is being made here is this: if you are ensnared by the world, by the enemy of human souls, what you are ensnared in is a very individual kind of sin trap. It may be that millions of people are deluded and drawn away from the things of God, but looked at it on another level, individual people are tempted to very individual sins. The temptation of sin is this: for individuals to indulge themselves in individual sensuality, individual sins, to be individually corrupted and to please themselves, and to engage in self-love, self-worship, self-determination. These are not things you can share; you cannot get a great company of people together enjoying in fellowship and in harmony, self-worship, self-love, self-seeking, individual sensual sins, and things of that kind.The point that is being made in this chapter, is that while people do enjoy sinful pleasures together in entertainment and so on, nevertheless, strictly speaking the fall into the trap of sin in this world is a very individual matter. I fall into the trap of pleasing myself, worshipping myself, determining my own affairs; that is a very singular thing. Now, when you come to divine truth, when you come to spiritual awareness, to explore the things of God, then because these things are altogether true, crowds of us can enjoy the same truths. Our hearts can be lifted up by the same glorious things, the same spiritual experiences. And so the imagery is turned round from what you generally find in Scripture when you are talking about salvation and the truth of God. In this way wisdom has built a great house, and the people of God can crowd into this wisdom, and come into this experience and knowledge, and they can exalt in it together. This is ultimately the only true expression of fellowship. Sin is never really an expression of fellowship. Sin and corruption and selfishness are ultimately an individual thing. Only the truth of God can really be shared, and enjoyed by a great number.