Commentary - Proverbs 9:13-18

Bird's-eye view

In this closing section of Proverbs 9, Solomon presents the stark and necessary contrast to the call of Lady Wisdom. Having laid out the glorious, life-giving invitation to Wisdom’s feast, he now shows us the alternative. There are only two options on the menu. Folly, personified here as a disreputable woman, does not build a house or prepare a feast. She simply sets up shop, offering a cheap, tawdry, and ultimately lethal alternative. She mimics Wisdom’s call, but her aim is not to build up but to tear down. Her appeal is to the basest parts of our nature, promising illicit thrills and secret pleasures. The passage is a solemn warning that the path which seems easy and exciting, the path of rebellion against God’s created order, is in fact a well-trodden highway to Hell. The choice presented is not between two lifestyles, but between life and death itself.

Outline

The Two Women

The entire structure of the first nine chapters of Proverbs builds to this great contrast. We have two women, two houses, two invitations, and two final destinations. Lady Wisdom, introduced earlier, has built her house on seven pillars, has slaughtered her beasts, mingled her wine, and furnished her table. She sends out her maidens to call the simple to a feast of life. She is industrious, prepared, and her invitation leads to understanding and life. Dame Folly, her counterpart, is the exact opposite. She is idle, loud, and ignorant. Her house is not a home but a trap. Her invitation is not to a feast of life, but to a funeral. This stark antithesis is central to the biblical worldview. There is no middle ground, no third way. You are either dining with Wisdom or being devoured with Folly. Christ Himself is the wisdom of God, and He sets before us this same choice: the broad way that leads to destruction, or the narrow way that leads to life.

Clause-by-Clause Commentary

v. 13 The woman of foolishness is boisterous, A woman of simplicity, and does not know anything.

Right away, the contrast with Lady Wisdom is jarring. Wisdom is orderly and prepared; Folly is boisterous, or clamorous. She is loud. This is not the noise of a bustling, productive household, but the noise of chaos and disorder. She is all surface, all volume, with no substance. She is a woman of simplicity, but this is not the beautiful simplicity of godly worship. This is the simplicity of a vacant mind. It is an unprincipled simplicity, a gullibility that has graduated into active recruitment. And the capstone of her character is that she does not know anything. She is pure ignorance, personified. This is not a humble lack of knowledge, but a proud and aggressive emptiness. She knows nothing of substance, nothing of truth, nothing of God. Her entire operation is a bluff, a noisy carnival act designed to distract from the utter vacuity within. She is the embodiment of the world's philosophy: loud, confident, and entirely bankrupt.

v. 14 She sits at the doorway of her house, On a seat by the high places of the city,

Notice the posture of Folly. She sits. Lady Wisdom was active, building, preparing, sending out her maidens. Folly is idle. She just sits at the door, like a cheap lure. She is not building anything; she is simply waiting for something to tear down. And where does she set up her trap? In the high places of the city, the very same places where Wisdom makes her appeal. This is crucial. Folly does not set up her operation in some dark, obscure back alley. She competes directly with Wisdom in the public square. The devil always offers a parody of the truth. He mimics the location and the language of God’s call, but the substance is poison. She is brazen, setting her trap in plain sight, counting on the blindness and moral lethargy of her victims.

v. 15 To call to those who pass by that way, Who are making their paths straight:

Who are her targets? She calls to those who are just passing by, going about their business. And specifically, she targets those who are making their paths straight. This is the man who has a destination, who is trying to walk uprightly. Folly is not content to let people go on their way. She is an active disruption. Her goal is to divert. She sees a man walking a straight line, and her entire goal is to introduce a fatal curve. This is the nature of all temptation. It seeks to interrupt a course of action that is headed in a godly direction. The devil is not much interested in those who are already sitting with him in the ditch. He is interested in tripping up those who are trying to walk the path of righteousness.

v. 16 “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here,” And to him who lacks a heart of wisdom she says,

Here is the imitation. She uses the exact same line as Wisdom: Whoever is simple, let him turn in here. The simple man, the naive man, is at a crossroads. He is the undecided voter. Both Wisdom and Folly are campaigning for his soul. But Folly’s appeal is to the man who lacks a heart of wisdom. This is the man who is not just uninformed, but who is devoid of the internal governor, the moral sense, that God’s law provides. He lacks a "heart," which in Hebrew means the seat of his intellect, will, and emotions. He is empty on the inside, and Folly promises to fill that emptiness with excitement and cheap thrills. She appeals to the void.

v. 17 “Stolen water is sweet; And bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”

This is the heart of the satanic sales pitch, going all the way back to the Garden. God’s water, provided freely, is just water. But stolen water, that’s sweet. God’s bread, eaten in fellowship and with thanksgiving, is just bread. But bread eaten in secret, that’s pleasant. The allure is in the prohibition. The thrill is in the transgression. Sin promises a sweetness that obedience supposedly lacks. It’s the lie that God is holding out on you, that He is a cosmic killjoy, and that true pleasure is found only by stepping over the boundaries He has set. Adultery, theft, deceit, all of it is packaged this way. It is a secret knowledge, a hidden pleasure that the unenlightened masses know nothing about. But it is a lie. The sweetness is momentary, and it is the sweetness of arsenic.

v. 18 But he does not know that the dead are there, That those she called are in the depths of Sheol.

And here is the final invoice. The simpleton who accepts her invitation does not know. He is willfully ignorant of the consequences. He thinks he is walking into a party, but he is walking into a tomb. The dead are there. The Hebrew word is rephaim, the shades, the ghosts. Her house is a mausoleum. All her previous guests are there, not feasting, but rotting. Those she called are not in a secret VIP lounge; they are in the depths of Sheol. Sheol is the realm of the dead. This is not just physical death, but the spiritual death that is the wages of sin. The path of Folly, the path of secret pleasures and stolen water, does not lead to a more exciting life. It leads straight to Hell. The door of her house is the gate to the grave. Every invitation to sin is an invitation to join the dead.

Application

The choice presented in this chapter is the fundamental choice of every human life. There are two voices calling out to us in the public square. One is the voice of Christ, our Wisdom, calling us to a feast of life, purchased by His own blood. It is a call to order, to discipline, to true and lasting joy. The other is the voice of the world, the flesh, and the devil, personified as Dame Folly. She is loud, enticing, and promises instant gratification. She makes sin look sophisticated and exciting.

We must train our ears to distinguish the two voices. Folly’s voice is the one that tells you that God’s commands are burdensome, that righteousness is boring, and that true fun is found in what is forbidden. It’s the voice that whispers that stolen water is sweeter.

The application is therefore to choose life. It is to recognize the cheapness of Folly’s offer and the infinite value of Wisdom’s feast. It is to understand that every time you choose to indulge in a secret sin, you are accepting Folly’s invitation. You are taking a step into her house, where the dead reside. But when you confess that sin and turn to Christ, you are leaving her deadly house and taking your seat at the table of Wisdom, where there is forgiveness, life, and pleasure forevermore.