Proverbs
7 My son, be careful of what I say
and 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,
8 Going along the street that went by her corner
and stepping in the direction of her house
9 In the twilight, the evening hours,
in the dead of night and the murky gloom;
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
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 her
like 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 trap
and not knowing that its life is at stake.
24 Now, sons, hear me
and 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 many
and all her killed are a multitude.