Proverbs 7:1-23 ▼

1 My son, keep my words and treasure my commands within you.

2 Guard my commands and live, and my instruction like the pupil of your eyes.

3 Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart.

4 Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,” and call out to understanding, “Kinsman,”

5 to guard you from the strange woman, from a foreign woman who has made smooth her words.

6 For at the window of my house I have looked through my lattice,

7 and I have looked among the simple, and discerned among the sons a young man lacking heart,

8 passing by on the street near her corner, and the way of her house he steps in—

9 in the twilight, in the evening of the day, in the pupil of night and darkness.

10 And behold, a woman to meet him, in the garment of a prostitute and guarded of heart.

11 She is roaring and rebellious; in her house her feet do not dwell.

12 Once in the street, once in the open squares, and beside every corner she lies in wait.

13 And she laid hold on him and kissed him; she has hardened her face and said to him:

14 “Sacrifices of peace offerings are by me; this day I have paid my vows;

15 upon thus I have come out to meet you, to earnestly seek your face, and I have found you!

16 With coverings I have spread my couch, with colored linen of Egypt.

17 I have sprinkled my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.

18 Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning; let us delight ourselves with loves!

19 For the husband is not in his house; he has gone far away on a road.

20 A bag of silver he has taken with him; on the day of the full moon he will enter his house.”

21 She turns him aside with the abundance of her speech; with the smoothness of her lips she compels him.

22 Going after her suddenly, he goes in like an ox to the slaughter, like a deer bounding into a trap,

23 until an arrow splits his liver, like the hurrying of a bird to the snare, and he did not know that it was for his soul!