LEB PROV Chapter 7

Warning Against the Strange Woman

• 7 My child, guard my sayings;
  • store my commandments with you.
• 2 Keep my commands and live,
  • and my teaching like the apple of your eye .[fn]
• 3 Bind them on your fingers;
  • write them on the tablet of your heart.
• 4 Say to wisdom,[fn] “you are my sister,”
  • and you shall call insight,[fn] “ intimate friend .”[fn]
• 5 In order to guard yourself from an adulteress ,[fn]
  • from the foreigner who makes her words smooth .[fn]
• 6 For at the window of my house,
  • through my lattice, I looked down.
• 7 And I saw among the simple,
  • I observed among the youth,
  • a young man lacking sense ,[fn]
• 8 passing on the street at[fn] her corner,
  • and he takes the road to her house,
• 9 at twilight, at the day’s evening,
  • in the midst of night and the darkness.
• 10 Then behold! A woman comes to meet him
  • with the garment of a prostitute[fn] and a secret heart .[fn]
• 11 She is loud and stubborn;
  • her feet do not stay at her house.
• 12 Now in the street, now in the square,
  • at[fn] every corner she lies in wait.
• 13 She took hold of[fn] him and kissed him.
  • Her face was impudent, and she said to him,
• 14 “Sacrifices of peace offerings are upon me;
  • today[fn] I completed my vows.
• 15 So[fn] I have come out to meet you,
  • to seek your face, and I have found you.
• 16 With coverings I have adorned my couch,
  • spreads of the linen of Egypt;
• 17 I have perfumed my bed with myrrh,
  • aloes, and cinnamon.
• 18 Come, let us take our fill of love making,
  • until the morning let us delight in love.
• 19 For there is no man[fn] in his home;
  • he has gone on a long journey .[fn]
• 20 The bag of money he took in his hand,
  • for on the day of the full moon he will come home.”
• 21 She persuades him with the greatness of her teachings;
  • with her smooth lips she compels him.
• 22 He goes after her suddenly;
  • like an ox to the slaughter he goes,
  • and like a stag to the instruction of a fool,
• 23 until an arrow pierces his entrails ,[fn]
  • like a bird rushing into a snare,
  • but he does not know that it will cost him his life .[fn]

Reiteration of the Warning Against a Strange Woman

• 24 And now, my children, listen to me,
  • and be attentive to the sayings of my mouth.
• 25 May your heart not turn aside to her ways;
  • do not stray into her path.
• 26 For many slain she has laid low,
  • and countless[fn] are all of her killings.
• 27 The ways of Sheol[fn] are her house,
  • descending to chambers of death.