7
📚My son, keep my words,and store up my command with you.
2 📚Keep my command and live,
and keep my teaching as the apple
of your eye.
3 📚Bind them on your fingers.
Write them on the tablet of your heart.
4 📚Say to wisdom, “You are my sister”,
and call understanding your relative,
5 📚That they may keep you from the adulteress,
from the stranger who flatters
with her words.
6 📚For at the window of my house
I looked out through my lattice,
7 📚And I saw among the simple ones,
I discerned among the youths,
a young man lacking understanding,
8 📚Passing through the street
near her corner;
and he went along the way to her house,
9 📚In the twilight, in the evening,
in the black and dark night.
10 📚And then a woman met him,
dressed like a prostitute,
and with a cunning heart.
11 📚(She is loud and stubborn.
Her feet do not stay in her house;
12 📚Now she is in the public square,
now in the streets, and lurks at every corner.)
13 📚So she took hold of him,
and kissed him,
and with a brazen face said to him,
14 📚“I have peace offerings with me.
Today I have paid my vows.
7:14 Those who give themselves to the deadly sin of adultery may try to give offerings to God. Prostitutes sometimes profess to be pious, and rascals are often religious (Rom 2:21-24).⚜
15 Therefore I came out to meet you,
to seek your face earnestly;
and I have found you.
16 📚I have spread my bed with coverings,
with coloured linen from Egypt.
17 📚I have perfumed my bed with myrrh,
aloes, and cinnamon.
18 Come, let us take our fill of love
until the morning.
Let us delight ourselves with love.
19 📚For the man is not at home,
he has gone on a long journey.
20 📚He has taken a bag of money with him,
and will come home on the appointed day”.
21 📚With her great persuasiveness
she enticed him,
with her flattering lips she drew him on.
7:14-21 Sin appears in beautiful colours to deceive the unwary and the foolish.⚜
22 📚Suddenly he goes after her,
as an ox goes to the slaughter,
or like a fool to the correction
of the stocks,
23 📚Till an arrow pierces through his liver,
like a bird hurrying into the snare,
and does not know that it
is at the risk of his life.
24 📚Now therefore, listen to me,
my children,
and be attentive to the words of my mouth.
25 📚Do not let your heart turn to her ways.
Do not go astray in her paths.
26 📚For many are the wounded
she has thrown down;
yes, many strong men have been
killed by her.
7:26 Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands, but who can number the countless victims of adultery?⚜
27 📚Her house is the way
to the realm of the dead 📖,
going down to the chambers of death.