Mystery and No Mystery – Proverbs 30:18-20

In 1862, Lewis Douglass wrote his future wife, Amelia Loguen:  “Men and women talk of love, can anyone describe it? Can anyone give the reason why one person loves another to the exclusion of everyone else….I know many ladies, who are amiable, kind, talented and refined, all that a man could wish, and yet I cannot love them or do not love them as I love you, and they may be like you, but to me they are different…So, I say reason or no reason, some undefinable force attracts me to you, and I have no means of resisting it and would not if I had.”

Three things are too wonderful for me; four I do not understand:  the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a virgin.  This is the way of an adulteress:  she eats and wipes her mouth         and says, “I have done no wrong.” (Proverbs 30:18–20, ESV)

This is an odd set of proverbs for us, though not likely as much so for the culture to which it was written.  Consequently, various interpretations have been offered.  The New English Version Study Bible offers two views:

The numerical saying of vv. 18–19 is a riddle. What do these four things have in common, and why is the teacher amazed by them? Verse 20 is a clue to the meaning of the riddle; it is linked to v. 19 by the catchword way (Hb. derek). The adulteress … eats and wipes her mouth, and says she has done no wrong. Taking the words literally, what she says is true; eating is no sin. But eating here is symbolic of her life of adultery—wiping the mouth after eating suggests cleansing herself after illicit sex. She is of the opinion that after she has washed up, nothing remains of the sexual encounter and there are no moral ramifications to her behavior. In v. 19, the eagle, the serpent, and the ship leave no trail behind them (the serpent is on a large rock and not on sand, and the ship is a slow-moving sailboat). The relationship of a man and a virgin, if it is chaste, likewise leaves no observable change in either of them. An alternative interpretation of what the items in v. 19 have in common is that they all make apparently effortless, almost instinctive, progress toward a goal. These things happen, but the speaker finds them amazing and does not understand quite how they happen.

Here is a third.

The wise man wonders how an eagle can fly, how a serpent can move, and how a ship can float and travel the seas, and he also, with the same awe, cannot explain love between a man and a woman.  It is a sublime mystery.

The adulteress, on the other hand, is understandable.  There is no love, only sex, and like eating, is only what is in her nature to do.  To her it isn’t wrong, not realizing how really unsatisfying, shameful and demeaning it is.