The Evils of Unchastity.
WARNING AGAINST WANTONNESS. — V. 1–10 (Stay away from the seductive woman who is not your wife so that you do not) V. 11. mourn at the last, groaning in distress when it is too late, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, this being the punishment which will eventually strike the libertine, v. 12. and say,
How have I hated instruction, as here given, and my heart despised reproof, by which earnest men, true friends, tried to keep him from the path of lewdness; v. 13. and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me! Such is the vain lament of the ruined sinner over his neglect of warning and his sad fate in being brought to public disgrace. V. 14. I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly, literally, “Almost I had been in the extremity of evil in the midst of assembly and congregation,” that is, he had just barely escaped the height of ruin, open condemnation in the midst of the congregation, which might have resulted in severe punishment for him.
Such is the way of sin, to hold alluring temptations before the eyes of the unwary and then to plunge him into the greatest misery, the victim’s repentance often coming too late.