BITTER AS WORMWOOD, SHARP AS A … SWORD

In this section of Proverbs, the writer turns to the subject of the words which drip from the lips of a strange woman. While no doubt there is a literal situation at which this instruction is aimed, it seems evident it can also be applied to any enticement to sin. While the appeal, like the woman’s words, may be sweet and smooth, the end result in contrast is ‘bitter’ and ‘sharp’.

Though not common to us, wormwood is a poisonous plant; on one occasion the King James Version renders it as the more familiar hemlock. It is often associated with gall, another bitter substance which, mingled with wine, was offered to the Lord Jesus on the cross. That such things identified as the conse­quences of sin should be associated with the Saviour remind us of the terrible price He paid at Calvary. Well might the hymn- writer recall, ‘Whatever curse was mine He bore; the wormwood and the gall, There in that lone mysterious hour, my cup - He drained it all’.

The sword is also associated with the Lord’s suffering for sin. Simeon prophesied its blow extending to Mary in Luke 2, but the horror of divine judgement was reserved for Him alone. As another hymnwriter, Anne Ross Cousins, puts it, ‘Jehovah bade His sword awake; O Christ, it woke ‘gainst thee!’, and continues, All for my sake my peace to make, now sleeps that sword for me’. Such reminders of the conse­quences of our sin for Him should cause us to shun that which seems sweet, like the ‘honeycomb’, or smooth as ‘oil’. In verse 8, we are reminded to ‘remove thy way far from her and come not nigh the door of her house’. Sadly, many believers, espe­cially perhaps the young, like to go as close to the edge as possible with sin. Samson was forbidden wine but went to a vineyard; required to avoid contact with the dead yet he toyed with animal corpses and repeatedly desired unsuitable women, ultimately ending in disaster. The scripture enjoins us to ‘flee youthful lusts’, yet many, ignoring such commands, have come to know the bitterness of failure and the sharpness of its consequences. o that a grasp of sin’s awfulness and its consequences would preserve us from such failure.