TOB - Adultery in the OT Wisdom Books

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says: “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Clearly, Jesus counter-posed adultery committed in the heart with adultery committed in the body. We ask: in what does the former consist? What does to desire or look lustfully mean? What is the ethical content of this lustful look that makes someone commit adultery in the heart?

The Old Testament Wisdom literature teach virtue and seek to protect the moral order, by going back to the real intent of God’s laws. Moreover, they are distinguished for their special knowledge of the human heart and human experience. In this way, they come close to that appeal made by Christ to the “heart” in Matthew 5:27-28. According to John Paul II, if the prophetic tradition somehow prepared the Israelites to understand the correct meaning of adultery, the Wisdom books (Proverbs, Sirach, Ecclesiastes) prepared them to understand what “looking lustfully” and “adultery in the heart” mean.

The Wisdom books give “repeated admonitions about concupiscence of the body and also advice on how to preserve oneself from it.” However, these admonitions are somehow one-sided in that they are all directed to men and regard the woman “as an occasion of sin and a downright seducer” who leads man to sin (cf. Prv 5:1-6; 6:24-29; Sir 26:9-12). For instance, we read in Proverbs: “Do not desire her beauty in your heart...” (Prv 6:25). Sirach, warns men: “Turn away your eyes from a shapely woman, / and do not look intently at beauty belonging to another; / Many have been misled by a woman's beauty, / and by it passion is kindled like a fire” (Sir 9:8-9). However, Sirach also praises the woman who is a perfect wife who makes her husband happy (Sir 26:15-18, 13).

The Wisdom books likewise offer us some “classic” description of lust and the concupiscence of the body. Sirach “the soul of the man dominated by the concupiscence of the flesh” to a “soul heated like a burning fire,” that “will not be quenched until it is consumed” (cf. Sir. 23:17-22). Lust is like fire flaring up in man which, John Paul II says, “invades his senses, excites his body, involves his feelings and in certain sense takes possession of his ‘heart.’ Such passion, originating in carnal concupiscence, suffocates in his ‘heart’ the most profound voice of conscience, the sense of responsibility before God…” Lust mutes the “inner man” and seeks to satisfy the senses and the body. The man committed to satisfying his senses is incapable of reflective activity and finds neither peace nor himself. Passion, of course, can be turned into something creative and positive. However, paying no attention to the voice of conscience, it “wears out,” exhausts itself, and consumes the man who is its prey.

Wisdom literature has given us an insight into the man of lust. The lustful look directed to a woman remains as yet an internal act and has not yet been acted on externally; it has not yet become an act of the body. It expresses itself in a look. However, John Paul says, this lustful look already reveals what is inside the man who looks lustfully. It already reveals the man within. In the way he looks, in the way he “desires” the woman, one can already figure out what is going on in the “heart” of the man of lust. Looking at lustfully indicates an experience of the value of the body. It indicates that the nuptial meaning of the body has been distorted and blurred or even muted because of lust or concupiscence of the flesh. The man who looks lustfully has separated the nuptial meaning of the body from its purely sexual value and sees only the latter. The lustful look has reduced the body to simply an object of one’s sexual pleasure and gratification. Here lies the moral evil of lust. Here is why looking at lustfully is defined by Christ as adultery in the heart