The Unblinking Eye and the Self-Made Noose Text: Proverbs 5:21-23
Introduction: The Cosmic Surveillance State
We live in an age that is terrified of being watched. Men rig up tape over the cameras on their laptops. They fret about their digital footprint. They are concerned, and sometimes rightly so, that some government agency or massive corporation is compiling a dossier on them. They fear a surveillance state that tracks their every move, purchase, and private message. But this modern anxiety is a pale, distorted shadow of a much deeper and more fundamental reality. The great irony is that men who fear the prying eyes of the NSA live as though the eyes of Almighty God are fast shut.
The wicked man's essential problem is not that Big Brother is watching. His problem is that the Holy Father is watching, and He never blinks. Our text today is a stark and solemn reminder of this truth. It is a warning shot across the bow of every man who thinks his sin is a private affair, a secret little garden where he can cultivate his transgressions without consequence. The book of Proverbs, and these verses in particular, come to us with the bracing realism of a splash of cold water to the face. They tell us that there is no such thing as a secret sin, that every transgression is a thread in a rope of our own making, and that a life lived without divine discipline is a life staggering toward its own destruction.
This passage concludes a chapter dedicated to warning a young man against the allure of the adulteress. The father has laid out the practical, earthly consequences: loss of honor, wealth, and years. But now, he lifts his son's gaze from the horizontal plane to the vertical. It is not just that your neighbors will find you out; it is that God sees you now. The consequences are not just social and financial; they are cosmic and inescapable. Sin is not just a bad investment; it is a self-executing death sentence. Let us therefore attend to this word, for it is a word of life for those who hear, and a word of judgment for those who will not.
The Text
For the ways of a man are before the eyes of Yahweh,
And He watches all his tracks.
His own iniquities will capture him who is the wicked one,
And with the cords of his sin he will be held fast.
He will die for lack of discipline,
And in the abundance of his folly he will stumble in intoxication.
(Proverbs 5:21-23 LSB)
The Omniscient Witness (v. 21)
The foundation of this entire warning is the absolute, unblinking omniscience of God.
"For the ways of a man are before the eyes of Yahweh, And He watches all his tracks." (Proverbs 5:21)
The word "for" connects this statement directly to the preceding warnings about adultery. Why should you avoid the strange woman? Why should you find satisfaction in your own wife? Because God is watching. This is not the detached observation of a scientist studying ants under glass. This is the intense, personal gaze of the Judge of all the earth. The phrase "the eyes of Yahweh" denotes covenantal oversight. This is the God who has entered into relationship with His people, and He is watching to see if they will be faithful to that covenant.
Notice the comprehensiveness of His watch. It is "the ways of a man," his entire course of life, his habits, his patterns. And it is "all his tracks," every single footstep, every decision, every detour into the thicket. The Hebrew for "watches" can also mean to weigh or to level. God is not just seeing; He is evaluating. He is assessing the moral weight of every action. There is no corner of life that is off the record. The thought in the mind, the glance of the eye, the whispered word in the dark, all are as plain as day to Him with whom we have to do.
Our secular world has inverted this. It lives by the creed, "If no one sees it, it didn't happen." Or perhaps, "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." The Bible's creed is the polar opposite: "Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account" (Hebrews 4:13). This truth is either a profound comfort or a terrifying threat, depending entirely on what your tracks look like. For the man walking in righteousness, the Father's watchful eye is a protection and a delight. For the man sneaking off to the house of the adulteress, it is the promise of certain exposure.
The Self-Made Trap (v. 22)
The consequences of sin are not arbitrary penalties imposed from the outside. They are the natural, organic fruit of the sin itself. Sin is its own punishment.
"His own iniquities will capture him who is the wicked one, And with the cords of his sin he will be held fast." (Proverbs 5:22 LSB)
The image here is of a hunter being caught in his own trap. The wicked man thinks he is pursuing a pleasure, but in reality, he is being pursued by his own transgressions. His iniquities are personified as the hunter that will "capture him." He is not just caught for his sin; he is caught by his sin.
The second line gives us the mechanism of the trap: "with the cords of his sin he will be held fast." Every act of sin is like spinning a thread. At first, it seems insignificant, easy to break. A lustful thought, a deceptive word, a secret indulgence. But acts become habits. And habits weave threads into cords. The cords are braided into a rope. And one day, the man who thought he was a free agent, indulging his appetites, wakes up to find himself bound hand and foot by a rope of his own making. He is no longer choosing to sin; he is simply a slave to it. He is "held fast."
This is the terrible logic of addiction, of habitual sin. The pleasure diminishes, but the compulsion increases. The man who starts with a drink to relax ends up a man who cannot function without a drink. The man who starts with a flirtatious glance ends up a man whose life is a tangled mess of deceit and broken relationships. He set out to be a master of his pleasures, and he has become a slave to his passions. This is not God being mean; this is God being just. He has built the universe in such a way that sin inevitably consumes the sinner. The wages of sin is death because sin is, by its very nature, a process of disintegration and decay.
The Undisciplined Death (v. 23)
The final verse pronounces the verdict and gives the cause of death. The coroner's report on the wicked man's life is stark and simple.
"He will die for lack of discipline, And in the abundance of his folly he will stumble in intoxication." (Proverbs 5:23 LSB)
He dies "for lack of discipline." The word for discipline here is musar. It means instruction, correction, chastening, education. This is the loving correction of a father, the instruction of wisdom. The man perishes not because God was cruel, but because he refused to be taught. He stiffened his neck at reproof (Proverbs 29:1). He hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord (Proverbs 1:29). His destruction is a direct result of his unteachability. He would not have the Father's discipline, so he gets the hangman's rope instead.
And what is the manner of his end? "In the abundance of his folly he will stumble in intoxication." The word for "stumble in intoxication" can also be translated as "led astray." He is so drunk on his own foolishness that he cannot see the cliff edge in front of him. Folly is not just a lack of information; it is a moral and spiritual stupor. It is a kind of insanity that calls evil good and good evil. He has consumed so much of his own propaganda, so many of his own self-justifying lies, that he has become spiritually intoxicated. He is staggering, weaving, blind to his surroundings, convinced of his own cleverness right up to the moment he goes over the edge.
This is the portrait of the fool. He is not a victim of circumstance. He is the architect of his own ruin. He built his own trap, wove his own rope, rejected every offered rescue, and then staggered drunkenly into his own grave. This is a grim picture, but it is a necessary one. We must see the endgame of sin for what it is if we are to have any hope of avoiding it.
The Gospel Cords of Grace
Now, this is a hard word. If we are honest, we all see something of ourselves in this portrait of the fool. Who among us has not spun a few threads of sin? Who has not at times rejected discipline and staggered in the intoxication of their own folly? If this passage describes the inevitable end of the wicked, then what hope is there for any of us? Left to ourselves, there is none. We are all caught.
But the gospel announces that there is One who was not caught. Jesus Christ, the perfect Son, lived a life of perfect discipline. His ways were always before the eyes of Yahweh, and His tracks were perfectly straight. He never spun a single thread of sin. And yet, He allowed Himself to be captured. He was held fast with cords in the garden of Gethsemane. He was bound and led away to be crucified.
Why? He was entangled in our cords so that we might be set free. He took upon Himself the binding ropes of our sin. He died the death that our lack of discipline deserved. He endured the ultimate consequence of folly, separation from the Father, so that we, the foolish, might be brought into the family of God and receive the loving discipline of a son.
The Christian life, therefore, is a process of being untied from the cords of our sin and being bound instead by the cords of grace. When we are united to Christ by faith, God's all-seeing eye is no longer a threat but a comfort. He still watches all our tracks, but now He does so as a loving Father guiding His child home. He still brings discipline, musar, but it is not the wrathful punishment of a judge; it is the corrective training of a Father who loves us too much to let us wander off the cliff (Hebrews 12:6).
So the choice before us is simple. We will all be bound by something. The only question is, by what? Will you be held fast by the cords of your own sin, which lead to death? Or will you submit to be bound by what the old writers called the "cords of a man, with bands of love" (Hosea 11:4), the gracious discipline of a heavenly Father who is training you for glory? Reject the drunken stumble of folly. Embrace the loving discipline of your Father. For in His house, under His watchful eye, there is freedom, and there is life.