Compassionate and Jealous—Proverbs 6:20-35

Another theme has started to emerge in Proverbs. You may have noticed. Sexual temptation looms large. The wise father who teaches his son in these chapters is not blind to the main dangers that young men face. In Proverbs 6:20-35, he returns again to this urgent theme.

But these verses have their own distinctive focuses. Two things in particular stand out. The first is the tender compassion that the young man's parents have for their son. The second is the intense jealousy of the husband whose wife commits adultery.

Both of these qualities, compassion and jealousy, are characteristics of God. Perhaps that surprises you. Not the first part -- most people who believe in God agree that he is compassionate. But in our culture, jealousy has a bad reputation, and I'm not sure many people think of God as jealous. But the Bible says he is, and it makes clear that this is a good thing, as everything about God is good. God's jealousy means that he treasures and demands the exclusive devotion that his people owe him, much as a husband or wife rightly treasures and has a right to demand the exclusive devotion of their spouse.

Compassion and jealousy may seem like incompatible attributes. What I want to show you is that God's compassion and jealousy meet at the cross of Christ.

This passage talks about the young man's father and mother, about the adulteress who tempts him, and about the adulteress's husband. Let's think about each of these in turn.

First, the passage talks about his father and mother: more specifically, about their commandments and teaching. These commandments need to be the young man's guidebook. If you go visit another country, you may take a guidebook with you, and in the days before cell phones, that guidebook would be almost indispensable, because without it you would have no idea where to stay, where to go, or what to do. You would make sure not to lose your guidebook. These commandments are like that. You should treat them like the things you least want to lose when you travel: your towel, your toothbrush, your phone charger. Like a cowboy needs his six-shooter or a violinist needs his instrument, a Christian needs to cling to his parents' teaching -- or, if your parents weren't so wise, to the teaching of the people who led you to Christ and brought you up in the faith. And all of us need to cling, ultimately, to God's word.

Clinging to God's word involves remembering it. There's a danger in our current world of relying so heavily on artificial intelligence for our answers, even answers to religious questions, that we give up using our memory. And AI may give you a right answer. But that's no substitute for heart-knowledge of the word of God. We need to absorb the word.

Maybe you think that rules, especially God's rules, will keep you from having fun. But Proverbs says that God's rules are a light in the darkness. If you're walking through the woods at night, a flashlight doesn't keep you from having fun. It keeps you from getting lost.

You see the compassion of this father and mother, who warn their son against the danger of adultery. They could easily say, "Our son should know better than to commit adultery. We've set him a good example. We think he's a good boy. If he actually has to be told not to commit adultery, then he isn't the good boy we think he is. In that case, he's probably too far gone to listen to advice anyway. There's no point in having such an awkward conversation."

But that's not what they do. They know their son is immature. They know he will face temptation. So they prepare him, because they love him. That's just like God. God is patient with his immature children. God only has one mature child, Jesus Christ. The rest of his children are spiritual adolescents. And God doesn't turn his back on us while we crash and burn. He doesn't disown us because we are inclined to nasty sins like adultery. He sits us down and talks it through, because he loves his awkward, imperfect children.

Second, the passage talks about the adulteress. The main thing to notice here is sin's subtlety. It's easy to think that sexual temptation is all...well, sexual. It's easy to think that sexual temptation all comes in the form of obvious immodesty, and that any behavior that isn't obviously immodest isn't temptation. But sin is more subtle than that. The only temptations the passage mentions are the adulteress's speech, her beauty, and her eyelashes. Not particularly scandalous. But it's enough to trap our foolish young man.

And the danger is huge, because, as the second part of verse 26 says, "a married woman hunts down a precious life." That's pretty clear. The first part of the verse is a bit trickier, and scholars disagree about how to translate it. The ESV says, "for the price of a prostitute is only a loaf of bread." If that translation is correct, the point is not that visiting a prostitute is a viable alternative. Proverbs 29:3 says that a companion of prostitutes squanders his wealth, and Proverbs 23:27 says "a prostitute is a deep pit." In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul says clearly that because Christians are united to the Lord, they can't be united to prostitutes. The point in our chapter would simply be that however foolish it is to visit a prostitute, to commit adultery with a married woman is more foolish still.

The King James version and some others translate the verse like this: "For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece of bread." In this case, there would be no contrast between the adulteress and the prostitute: The adulteress is the prostitute, the whorish woman, and she impoverishes her victim till he has nothing left but a piece of bread.

So which translation is right? Unfortunately, the reason the translators disagree is that the Hebrew of the verse is so difficult that even the best scholars can't provide a conclusive case for their translation. I don't have the solution. The main things to keep in mind are (1) the Bible certainly doesn't allow prostitution, but (2) there's something particularly foolish about adultery.

What's so foolish about getting involved with a married woman? That brings us to think, third, about the adulteress's husband. The young man who commits adultery faces the danger of being persecuted or even killed by the woman's husband. And he should not imagine that he will escape. He should take it for granted that he will not. "Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? Or can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched?" Maybe you think that playing with fire is glamorous, but there will be nothing sexy about the smell of your burning feet.

Be reasonable. If a thief steals something because he is hungry, the victim of the theft is probably not going to be horribly angry at him. But he's still going to prosecute him to the full extent of the law. It's nothing personal, but he's still not going to let the guy off the hook.

It isn't like that with adultery. With adultery, it's personal, as personal as it gets. And the offended husband is going to be deadly angry. He will want you dead. And if he can get you killed, he will.

Pause for a minute there. This was written in ancient Israel, where adultery really was punishable by death. It was completely realistic to say that an adulterer might be killed for his sin.

But what about now? No one in America is put to death for adultery. People do sometimes get murdered for it, but the popular picture of the adulteress's husband is either that he's such a mean guy that it's really his fault that his wife cheated on him, or that he's such an idiot that he'll never notice. We don't typically think of a cheated husband as a fierce and just avenger of the wrong that has been done to him. Is that danger relevant today? Should the adulterer still be afraid?

To answer the question, we have to step back and recognize that the book of Proverbs is not just concerned with things as they are. It's concerned with things as they should be. When it warns young men that if they commit adultery, the woman's husband will be angry, and the adulterer will pay dearly, it says this because the woman's husband should be angry, and the adulterer should pay dearly. That was law in ancient Israel, and it was law because it reflected something about God. God too is a jealous husband. His people are his bride. Other gods and idols are the adulterers. And God will crush them for leading his people away from him. That's why God hates all adultery. And because of that, he will bring all adulterers to justice, even if they escape justice from men.

So: God is compassionate like the young man's parents, and he is jealous like the adulteress's husband. His aims are to save his children from sin, and to have his bride -- his people -- to himself. And he achieved these aims at the cross of Christ.

The cross of Christ is the ultimate expression of the compassion of God. Here we are, a bunch of wayward children, foolish sons, wandering around down here committing sin. And God sent his only un-foolish son, his only obedient child, to die on the cross in our place. Jesus Christ volunteered to take the place of his dirty-minded brothers and endure the punishment we deserved.

The cross is also the ultimate expression of the jealousy of God. I'm not talking about his desire to punish Satan and the wicked people who have led his children astray, although the cross is certainly a picture of the wrath that God will one day pour out on the wicked. But I'm talking about God's desire to have his bride to himself. We were a wayward bride, far from our husband. But on the cross, Jesus reclaimed his bride by dying in our place. He won us back. It wasn't because he was captivated by our eyelashes -- we were more like an old prostitute who had lost her charms. But he loved us, and he knew he could make us truly beautiful at last. So he washed us in his blood.

Now he is risen from the dead, and he calls to everyone who will hear his voice. Do you need a compassionate Father? Come to God: His compassion is never-ending. Do you want to be loved with a jealous, fierce, just, avenging, tender, redeeming love? Come to Jesus Christ, who died for a wayward bride.

Pastor Nate Jeffries