Today we begin an extended section on sexual
misconduct, adultery. He deals with two different women involved in sexual
misconduct with men: the neighbor’s wife and the prostitute (v24). Both are
just as deadly to soul, family, and life itself. As I have noted before, the
structure of the Hebrew poetry ties these two together. It is not that they are
one and the same, that every neighbor’s wife ends up as a wayward woman, but
that a subcategory, the category the writer focuses on in this passage, is a
prostitute.
Verse 25 gives us a very simple command. We
must keep from lusting and not allow her to use her eyes to entrap us. From
movies we know how eyes can be used to lure. Think of a bar scene in a movie
where a hookup happens. It is the glance across the room that begins the
journey. The man checks out the woman, then the woman connects with her eyes. Things
between men and women have not changed very much over the millennia!
The most basic food in that culture was
bread (v26). Carbs! Here the man is trading life’s essential as the fee paid
for sex. Unfortunately, too many men still do that today, trading their family’s
life for an orgasm. It might not take place with a physical person, the
internet providing the portal into other places and events, but life gets
expended, time gets stolen, affections get redirected.
The writer gives a great illustration
demonstrating that you can’t get away with this type of behavior without
negative consequences. Now before you try to come up with some exception, like
wearing asbestos pants or the fire walking seminar people, hear what the writer
has to say.
Committing adultery is like choosing to put
hot BBQ briquettes in your lap. Just let them sit there! Are you going to get
away without them burning your clothes or something even more personal? Of
course not! As soon as the coals are placed you will react and do whatever is
needed to get the heat away from you. You can’t just leave the there.
And you can only walk on hot coals in very
carefully controlled circumstances. Everything is carefully scripted to
maximize the possibility of not being sued! And of course to enable you to tell
all your friends about the fabulous seminar you attended and how they should
attend also, next time the medicine man comes through. All for a price, of
course.
There is a cost to adultery. Punishment will
come. You might think you got away with it, but it waits around the next
corner.