“yet she is not aware of it.” The Hebrew verb can be read as a second person masculine singular (“you”) or a third person feminine singular (“she”), which is why the versions differ (“you,” KJV; NAB; YLT. “She,” CJB; NCSB; ESV; NASB; NET; NIV; NLT). The vast majority of the versions favor “she,” and we agree (although it is true that “you” also may not know her ways are unstable and wander from the will of God). The flow of the context is about the woman and how she is, and the subject does not change until the next verse, with the opening, “But now, my sons” (Prov. 5:7), so we favored the reading “she.”

One of the things that makes the ungodly so dangerous to believers is that they are so sincere. Although there are some of them who have a sense that what they are doing is wrong, a large percentage of them think the way they are living their lives is fine. This verse is speaking about an adulteress, but the lesson applies to any sin the ungodly commit; they are so convinced that what they are doing is fine that they speak and act with passion and conviction, and many times that pulls the godly into their ungodly ways. The New Testament warns about this in a plain statement of fact: “Bad company ruins good morals” (1 Cor. 15:33). To maintain godliness in an ungodly world, the believer must know how God wants us to live (which comes in large part from knowing the Bible), and then have the courage of conviction to say “No!” to sin.