Proverbs 5:4 - Exposition

The contrast is drawn with great vividness between the professions of the "strange woman" and the disastrous consequences which overtake those who listen to her enticements. She promises enjoyment, pleasure, freedom from danger, but her end is bitter as wormwood. "Her end," not merely with reference to herself, which may be and is undoubtedly true, but the last of her as experienced by those who have intercourse with her—her character as it stands revealed at the last. So it is said of wine, "At the last," i.e. its final effects, if indulged in to excess, "it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder" ( Proverbs 23:22 ). Bitter as wormwood. The Hebrew, laanah, "wormwood," Gesenius derives from the unused root laan, "to curse." It is the equivalent to the absinthium of the Vulgate. So Aquila, who has ἀψίνθιον . The LXX . improperly renders χολή , "gall." In other places the word laanah is used as the emblem of bitterness, with the superadded idea of its being poisonous, also according to the Hebrew notion, shared in also by the Greeks, that the plant combined these two qualities. Thus in Deuteronomy 29:18 it is associated with rosh, "a poisonful herb" (margin), and the Targum terms it, agreeably with this notion, "deadly wormwood." The same belief is reproduced in Revelation 8:11 , "And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and many men died of the waters because they were made bitter" (cf. Jeremiah 9:15 ; Amos 5:7 : Amos 6:12 ). The apostle, no doubt, has it in mind when he speaks of any "root of bitterness," in Hebrews 12:15 . The herb is thus described by Umbreit: "It is a plant toward two feet high, belonging to the genus Artemisia (species Artemisia absinthium ) , which produces a very firm stalk with many branches, grayish leaves, and small, almost round, pendent blossoms. It has a bitter and saline taste, and seems to have been regarded in the East as also a poison, of which the frequent combination with rosh gives an intimation." Terence has a strikingly similar passage to the one before us—

In melle sunt linguae sitae vestrae atque orations

Lacteque; corda felle sunt lita atque acerbo aceto ."

"Your tongues are placed in honey and your speech is milk; your hearts are besmeared with gall and sharp vinegar" ('Trucul.,' 1.11. 75). Sharp as a two-edged sword; literally, as a sword of edges ( kherev piphiyyoth ) , which may mean a sword of extreme sharpness. Her end is as sharp as the sharpest sword. But it seems better to take the term as it is understood in the Authorized Version, which has the support both of the Vulgate, gladius biceps, and the LXX ; μαχαίρα διστόμος , i.e. "a two-edged sword." Compare "a two-edged sword" ( kherev piphiyyoth ) of Psalms 149:6 . The meaning is, the last of her is poignancy of remorse, anguish of heart, and death. In these she involves her victims.