Stolen Water Is Sweet?
“Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.” But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of hell.
Proverbs 9:15-16 show a woman representing foolishness personified calling out to passersby to lure them in. This mimics the call of wisdom in verses 4 and 5, but it is more of a parody. The message and the results are much different.
Consider her words of temptation: “Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.” Satan has been very effective with this marketing method from the beginning. He made the forbidden fruit seem more appealing than all other fruit—even the fruit of the tree of life that offered an eternal reward (Genesis 3:1-6, 22)!
And so he has enticed humans ever since to believe that anything God has forbidden must be more fun and exciting and pleasurable than the true pleasures God’s way offers.
Satan also tries to blind people to the true results of illicit sex and other forbidden actions. But God removes the blindfold in verse 18, revealing the skeletons of those who have chosen the way of sin and death.
For more about combating temptations, see our article “Temptation.”
