Proverbs 7:1-27
7 My son, be careful of what I sayand lay up my commands in your mind.
2 Be careful of my commands and live;and of my teaching as if of the apple of your eye.
3 Tie them to your fingers;write them on the tablet of your heart.
4 Say to wisdom “you are my sister,”and call discretion a relative,
5 To guard you from a stranger woman,from a foreigner that talks slippery language.
6 For I looked out of my house window,through my lattice,
7 And I saw among the simpletons,perceived among the youngsters,a brainless boy
8 Going along the street that went by her cornerand stepping in the direction of her house
9 In the twilight, the evening hours,in the dead of night and the murky gloom;
10 * And there coming to meet him was a womanwith a prostitute’s rig and a close heart;—
11 Boisterous and wayward is she,her feet do not perch in her house;
12 Now in the street, now in the squares,and beside every corner she lies in ambush;—
13 And she caught hold of him and kissed him,said to him with a bold face
14 * “I have welfare-sacrifices that must be eaten,I paid my vows today;
15 That was why I came out to meet you,to hunt up your face, and I have found you.
16 I have spread my couch with rugs,striped work of Egyptian yarn,
17 I have sifted myrrh, eaglewood,and cinnamon over my sofa.
18 Come on, we will quaff love till morning,have a gay night with endearments,
19 Because husband is not in the house,he is off on a long journey,
20 He took the moneybag with him;he will get home the day the moon is full.”
21 She swayed him with the thoroughness of her technique,tugged at him with the glibness of her lips—
22 * He suddenly goes along after herlike a steer coming to the slaughter,Or as a buck prances toward a decoy
23 till an arrow cuts open his liver;Like a bird’s hurrying into a trapand not knowing that its life is at stake.
24 Now, sons, hear meand listen to the words of my mouth:
25 Let your hearts not run off into her roads,do not stray along her paths,
26 Because she has stabbed down manyand all her killed are a multitude.
27 * Her paths are roads to the world below,going down to the chambers of death.
Footnotes
^ 7:10 Conj. in a prostitute’s rig, bundled up in a muffler
^ 7:14 Lit. There are welfare-sacrifices on me, I paid
^ 7:22 (last part) Unc.
^ 7:27 Codd. Her house is roads to
