The Forbidden Woman: Some Thoughts on Love, Marriage, and Adultery
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Adultery will destroy your life. And, it will destroy a lot of other people’s lives too. This is the testimony of countless people who have testified to its destructive power and how it utterly ruined them. As the statistics go, around 25 percent of men and 15 percent percent of women will commit adultery in the course of their marriage. But this fails to take into account the many other forms of sexual immorality that constitute adultery, especially when considering Jesus’ words that even if a man looks at a woman with lustful intent, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
The fact is that many marriages are crippled with the destructive sin of adultery. It has destroyed homes, livelihoods, causing incalculable damage to children. But why are people willing to throw away everything for a moment of pleasure? And what do the Scriptures say about why people fall into its destructive path? This is what this article explores as we seek for the better solution of love in marriage as God intended between a man and a woman.
Proverbs 5 provides us with great insight into the pathway of adultery.
Adultery, by definition, is the voluntary act of a married person who commits sexual intercourse with someone who is not his or her spouse. Adultery is the ultimate act of betrayal in the great design of marriage that intends for us to love the spouse that we are joined to by God himself.
Proverbs 5 provides us with great insight into the pathway of adultery. As wisdom literature, it comes in the setting of a wise father warning his son against adultery. The son is ready to leave the home and enter into marriage. The father instructs his son to guard and keep the instruction he is receiving as a matter of life and death. He begins by cautioning his son against the “forbidden” woman:
For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey,
and her speech is smoother than oil,
but in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a two-edged sword. (Prov. 5:3)
The father is concerned that in the course of his son’s marriage, the son will be tempted to commit adultery. The father calls the son to keep his heart because, at some point, an enticing, immoral, and forbidden woman will come down his path and lure him away to commit adultery. The language is graphic. He speaks of her lips as dripping honey and her speech as smoother than oil, even though her pathway is one that will destroy the young man’s life.
The imagery in Proverbs 5 provides a close look into the power of sinful desire as it leads to the actual practice of adultery. The author is using the scenario of an unfaithful wife tempting and luring a man to commit adultery to help us understand the power of temptation in the realm of human sexuality and all forms of unchastity that follow. In this way, the forbidden woman represents anything that tempts us away to sexual sin against God’s good design of marriage.
Entertaining sinful desire is the ultimate starting point to all adultery.
But there is a certain psychology provided for us in this story that helps to understand the problem of adultery. Of great importance is the father’s emphasis on the forbidden woman’s speech. Proverbs 7 captures the same imagery as the wisdom writer presents a youth without understanding who is seduced by a married woman as she lies in wait for him, seizing and kissing him. Her words are powerful:
I have come out to meet you, and seek you eagerly… I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. Come, let us take our fill of love till morning; let us delight ourselves with love…with much seductive speech she persuades him; with her smooth talk she compels him. He goes into her committing adultery without knowing it would cost him his life (Prov. 7:1ff).
The father’s purpose is to guard his son’s desires. Entertaining sinful desire is the ultimate starting point to all adultery. Sometimes people commit adultery due to the desire to fulfill unbridled lust, but more than we often appreciate, adultery occurs because there is a desire entertained due to someone who has taken notice of us, providing an emotional entrapment.
Adultery begins in the heart and the desire imagined is just as powerful (and sinful) as the sexual act itself.
Notice that the temptation is accompanied with the attention that the immoral woman gives to young man with her seductive speech. Her words have flattered the man; he feels noticed, valued, appreciated, and desired. This attention can awaken in him the exciting prospect of a more fulfilling love as he entertains the desire of her offer to enjoy unbridled sex. As a psychologist once said, “the kiss that you imagine making can be just as powerful as the act of kissing itself.” Adultery begins in the heart and the desire imagined is just as powerful (and sinful) as the sexual act itself. And it’s important to observe, there can be a forbidden man who seeks to emotionally entrap a woman in the same way.
Since this woman is forbidden, the father knows his son might easily entertain her proposition, arousing in his heart the acceptance of her lie that she can provide the happiness that he has not pursued with his own wife in the daily hardships of their own marriage.
At our weakest moments, there will be something forbidden that lures us away into sexual sin with the promise of true happiness.
When people commit adultery, they often express a sense of a new vitality to their life. What people are expressing is a short lived dose of pleasure that numbs the pain of the sentence of death that we are all under due to the fall. The mundaneness of marriage, the struggles with raising children, the hardships and discouragements that frequently come, along with the absence of love in marriage, opens the door to that which, with great allure, offers a way to overcome the lifelessness our sin has caused. There is a want for something more fulfilling than what God has provided in marriage to overcome their sense of deadness. This problem lies at the heart of what we have come to designate as a mid-life crises and why there is a search to be alive again.
Proverbs 5 describes this scenario. At our weakest moments, when love is absent in marriage, and struggle characterizes daily life, there will be something forbidden that lures us away into sexual sin with the promise of true happiness. The path of adultery often begins with this kind of unholy desire to become more fulfilled through the love and the attention of someone else who is not our spouse. The wise father prepares the son for what he knows will be one of his son’s biggest tests in life.
Love Your Wife!
In Proverbs 5, the father makes clear that adultery, beginning in the mind as sinful desires are entertained, is a pathway to death. Sexual sin destroys one’s strength, life, and has the curious effect of suppressing all truth that was once know as it leads to ruin (read carefully the consequences detailed in Proverbs 5). As Bruce Waltke observes, “Sexual immorality today…still leads to alimony, child support, broken homes, hurt, jealousy, lonely people and venereal disease.” Adultery destroys everything good in one’s life. It promises happiness and fulfillment but instead it brings ruin and death.
As a much better way, the father provides beautiful and even erotic language as he calls his son to give his love to his wife. The son should always look upon his wife and take delight in her as a gift of God. There is a dignity to his love that only belongs to her. The father speaks pointedly,
Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water bin the streets? Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress. (Prov. 5:15-20).
The father is encouraging his son to enjoy his wife, know her, understand her, and let his love be for her alone. She is beautiful, fascinating, lovely, and God’s gift to you! “Let her breasts fill you with delight,” the father says. God provided for all sexual enjoyment to be fulfilled in marriage as we love our spouses in this good design that he ordained. Our love is not meant for strangers, in the mind, or at the local motel. And this applies to every form of sexual sin that is contrary to God’s will. By God’s grace, the desires of our hearts must be sanctified to love the spouse God has given to us.
In the daily struggles of marriage, sacrificial love has the surprising payoff of providing a fulfilling love.
Yes, as David’s story demonstrates, God has more than enough mercy and grace to forgive the sin of adultery. But this truth doesn’t negate the serious earthly consequences the sin of adultery brings. Adultery is selfish, self-serving, and self-destroying. Adultery is not just an act of betrayal but also one of self-worship. But God intended the institution of marriage to be a source of happiness for us as we enjoy true love with the spouse he specifically chose for us and joined us with. And we are promised much grace in this pursuit.
In the daily struggles of marriage, sacrificial love has the surprising payoff of providing a fulfilling love. To be sure, this will require intentionality, selflessness, and sacrifice. This will require becoming a servant. Yet, to love our spouse as Christ does the church provides a joyful fulfillment that no other fountain can offer.
“Son,” says the father, “keep your heart from adultery.”
When a relationship is fulfilled through a husband and wife actively loving one another, desire is sanctified, we are renewed with a newfound interest in our spouse, and sexual intimacy is rekindled in surprising ways.
Love the wife of your youth, says the father to his son, for she is a graceful ornament around your head. Be enraptured with her love, and see the enticement of the forbidden woman as something that will always make good on the promise to ruin everything that is good in your life. “Son,” says the father, “keep your heart from adultery.”
This article is adapted from “The Forbidden Woman: Some Thoughts on Love, Marriage, and Adultery” at agradio.org.
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