As a word of reminder and exhortation, the goal for our study through Proverbs is to read a chapter a day, the chapter that corresponds to the day of the month. This being the 7th day of March, I encourage you to take a few minutes and read Proverbs 7 before continuing today’s devotional thought.
Solomon dedicated the whole of Proverbs 7 warning his son to be wise to the charms of a “strange woman” [an adulterer; a woman who was not his wife]. Rather than following his familiar format of one proverb to one verse, Solomon shares a narrative of a foolish man who, allured by the ways of a beguiling woman, followed her to the slaughterhouse of his soul.
Having studied Proverbs 7:1-5 in previous devotions, our focus will be on the character of the man who was so easily beguiled by the floozy in our passage.
Proverbs 7:6-7 – “For at the window of my house I looked through my casement, 7 And beheld among the simple ones, I discerned among the youths, a young man void of understanding,”
Windows of glass were not existent in Solomon’s day and so the window from which he was peering was an opening, perhaps of latticework.
Solomon notes the characteristics of the Proverbs 7 man who was so easily led down a path of moral depravity and destruction. He was “a young man”—not only chronologically young, but also lacking in maturity and good judgment. He was old enough to be away from his father’s supervision, but foolish enough to not know what he did not know!
We notice the company he was keeping. He was “among the simple ones” (7:7) –the silly, foolish and easily led astray. The idiom, “Birds of a feather flock together,” was true of this man.
Finally, we note he was vulnerable to the wiles of the adulterous woman because he was “void of understanding” (7:7). The word void means lacking or in want of; he lacked “understanding”. Solomon’s use of “understanding” has a much broader meaning than the idea the man was unaware of what he was doing or where his choices might lead. He was morally weak, not intellectually challenged!
Being “void of understanding” is the moral malady of our society. Our culture has given permission for young people to give rein to every lust and the result is a generation “void of understanding”—they have no heart, mind, or conviction for moral disciplines.
I close once again with a moral challenge: “Flee…youthful lusts” (2 Timothy 2:22). Solomon warns, the path of immorality is “the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death” (7:27). 