The mouth of the adulteress is a deep pit that captures the man whose life is already drifting from the LORD.
A blunt warning about a particular trap lands in Proverbs 22:14: The mouth of an adulteress is a deep pit, he who is cursed of the LORD will fall into it (v. 14). Solomon names what kind of opening the words make.
The mouth of an adulteress is named because the trap begins with speech. The Strange Woman of Proverbs 7 talks her victim into the act before she touches him. The mouth shapes the opening; the body comes after. The man who is captured has already been moved by what he heard.
A deep pit is what Solomon calls that opening, because the man who falls in cannot easily climb out. The verse adds a sober second line: he who is cursed of the LORD will fall into it. The phrase does not deny human responsibility; it names the parallel reality that the man whose life is already moving away from God is the man most likely to be caught. The verse tells the reader to keep his ear, his heart, and his life close to the LORD so that the pit, when it appears, does not find him standing at its edge.
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Proverbs 22:14 meaning
A blunt warning about a particular trap lands in Proverbs 22:14: The mouth of an adulteress is a deep pit, he who is cursed of the LORD will fall into it (v. 14). Solomon names what kind of opening the words make.
The mouth of an adulteress is named because the trap begins with speech. The Strange Woman of Proverbs 7 talks her victim into the act before she touches him. The mouth shapes the opening; the body comes after. The man who is captured has already been moved by what he heard.
A deep pit is what Solomon calls that opening, because the man who falls in cannot easily climb out. The verse adds a sober second line: he who is cursed of the LORD will fall into it. The phrase does not deny human responsibility; it names the parallel reality that the man whose life is already moving away from God is the man most likely to be caught. The verse tells the reader to keep his ear, his heart, and his life close to the LORD so that the pit, when it appears, does not find him standing at its edge.