Proverbs 7:1-27
7 My son, keep my sayings,+ and may you treasure up my own commandments with you.+
2 Keep my commandments and continue living,+ and my law like the pupil+ of your eyes.
3 Tie them upon your fingers,+ and write them upon the tablet of your heart.+
4 Say to wisdom:+ “You are my sister”; and may you call understanding itself “Kinswoman,”
5 to guard you against the woman stranger,+ against the foreigner who has made her own sayings smooth.+
6 For at the window of my house, through my lattice+ I looked down,
7 that I might peer upon the inexperienced ones.+ I was interested in discerning among the sons a young man in want of heart,*+
8 passing along on the street near her corner, and in the way to her house he marches,+
9 in the twilight, in the evening of the day,+ at the approach* of the night and the gloom.
10 And, look! there was a woman to meet him, with the garment of a prostitute+ and cunning* of heart.
11 She is boisterous and stubborn.+ In her house her feet do not keep residing.+
12 Now she is outdoors, now she is in the public squares,+ and near every corner she lies in wait.+
13 And she has grabbed hold of him and given him a kiss.+ She has put on a bold face, and she begins to say to him:
14 “Communion sacrifices were incumbent upon me.+ Today I have paid my vows.+
15 That is why I have come out to meet you, to look for your face, that I may find you.
16 With coverlets I have bedecked my divan, with many-colored things, linen of Egypt.+
17 I have besprinkled my bed with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon.+
18 Do come, let us drink our fill of love until the morning; do let us enjoy each other with love expressions.+
19 For the husband is not in his house; he has gone traveling on a way of some distance.+
20 A bag of money* he has taken in his hand. On the day of the full moon he will come to his house.”
21 She has misled him by the abundance of her persuasiveness.+ By the smoothness of her lips she seduces him.+
22 All of a sudden he is going after her,*+ like a bull that comes even to the slaughter, and just as if fettered* for the discipline of a foolish man,
23 until an arrow cleaves open his liver,+ just as a bird hastens into the trap,+ and he has not known that it involves his very soul.*+
24 And now, O sons, listen to me and pay attention to the sayings of my mouth.+
25 May your heart not turn aside to her ways. Do not wander into her roadways.+
26 For many are the ones she has caused to fall down slain,+ and all those being killed by her are numerous.+
27 The ways to Sheʹol* her house+ is; they are descending to the interior rooms of death.+
Footnotes
^ Or, “lacking good motive.” Heb., chasar-levʹ.
^ “Approach,” by a slight correction; M, “pupil (of the eye),” or, “middle.”
^ Lit., “guarded.”
^ Lit., “the silver.”
^ Or, “with her.”
^ “Fettered,” by a change of vowel pointing; M, “an anklet (fetter).”
^ “That it involves his very soul (life).” Heb., ki-venaph·shohʹ huʼ; Gr., psy·khesʹ; Lat., aʹni·mae. See App 4A.
^ “Sheol.” Heb., sheʼohlʹ; Gr., haiʹdou; Lat., inʹfe·ri.
