Proverbs 2:19 - Exposition

None that go unto her return again. The fate of the companions of the strange woman is described as irrevocable. All who visit her shall not return again. The Targum reads, "They shall not return in peace." The difficulty which they who give themselves up to the indulgence of lust and passion encounter in extricating themselves makes the statement of the teacher an almost universal truth. Hence St. Chrysostom says, "It is as difficult to bring back a libidinous person to chastity as a dead man to life." This passage led some of the Fathers to declare that the sin of adultery was unpardonable. Fornication was classed by the scholastic divines among the seven deadly sins, and it has this character given to it in the Litany: "From fornication, and all other deadly sin." St. Paul says, "No whoremonger nor unclean person … hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God" ( Ephesians 5:5 ; cf. 1 Corinthians 6:9 ; Revelation 22:15 ). The sin which they commit who have dealings with the strange woman is deadly and leads on to death, and from death there is no return, nor laying hold of or regaining the paths of life (see Job 7:9 , Job 7:10 ). Compare the words with which Deiphobe, the Cumaean sibyl, addresses AE neas—

" Tros Anchysiade, facilis descensus Averno

Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras,

Hoc opus, hic labor est ."

(Virgil, ' AE neid,' 6.126-129.)

"O Trojan, son of Anchyses, easy is the path that leads to hell. But to retrace one's steps, and escape to the upper regions, this is a work, this is a task."