Proverbs 7:6-9

The camera opens on Solomon at the lattice, watching the street — and one old commentator's line belongs over the whole scene: God is ever at His window. The young man down there believes the dark hides him. It hides him from nobody that matters.

Now study the three details Solomon gives, because the story's verdict is already decided before the woman ever appears.

He's "void of understanding" — not wicked, the text is careful: simple. Empty-headed and, worse, empty-hearted — no great affection in residence, nothing loved enough to compete. An idle evening, a vacant mind, nowhere to be. Was not idleness the parent of this whole mischief? It usually is — David's fall began on an idle rooftop at evening too (2 Samuel 11:2).

He's "near her corner." Read that twice. Of all the streets in the city, the aimless stroll just happens to drift down hers. He hasn't decided to sin — he'd tell you so sincerely. He has only decided to be near it: to see, maybe, to be seen, to feel the pull from a safe distance. There is no safe distance. A man carrying gunpowder has no business strolling through the blacksmith's forge, and the man who saunters past the door he should flee has already cast his vote — he just hasn't counted it yet. The battle was lost at the route-planning stage.

And it's getting dark. Verse 9 stacks four time-stamps like a countdown: twilight... evening... black and dark night — all the way down to midnight's dead center. Solomon is showing you time passing: the boy loitered there as the light died, and the deepening dark outside is a picture of the dark gathering inside. Night is falling over the young man's life as the shadows deepen. Sin loves that schedule — "men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil" (John 3:19) — and the man who thinks darkness hides him from God has only hidden God from himself.