CHAPTER 7
1My son, keep my sayings,
and store up my commands within you.
2Keep my commands and live,
my teaching like the apple of your eye.
3Bind them on your fingers,
write them on the tablet of your heart.
4Say to Wisdom, “You are my sister,”
and call Discernment a friend.
5To keep you from a stranger-woman,
from a smooth-talking alien woman.
6For from the window of my house,
through my lattice I looked down,
7and I saw among the dupes,
discerned among the young men a witless lad,
8passing through streets, by the corner,
on the way to her house he strides,
9at twilight, as evening descends,
in pitch-black night and darkness.
10And, look, a woman to meet him,
whore’s attire and hidden intent.
11Bustling she is and wayward,
in her house her feet do not stay.
12Now outside, now in the square,
and by every corner she lurks.
13She seizes him and kisses him,
impudently says to him:
14“I had to make well-being offerings,
today I’ve fulfilled my vows.
15And so I’ve come out to meet you,
to seek you, and I’ve found you.
16With coverlets I’ve spread my couch,
dyed cloths of Egyptian linen.
17I’ve sprinkled my bed with myrrh,
with aloes and cinnamon.
18Come, let us drink deep of loving till morn,
let us revel in love’s delights.
19For the man is not in his house,
he’s gone on a far-off way.
20The purse of silver he took in his hand,
at the new moon he’ll return to his house.”
21She sways him with all her talk,
with her smooth speech she leads him astray.
22He goes after her in a trice,
as an ox goes off to the slaughter,
as a stag prances into a halter.
23Till an arrow pierces his liver,
as a bird hastens to the snare,
not knowing the cost is his life.
24And now, sons, listen to me,
and attend to my mouth’s sayings.
25Let your heart not veer to her ways,
and do not go astray on her paths.
26For many the victims she has felled,
innumerable all whom she has killed.
27Through her house are the ways to Sheol,
going down to the chambers of Death.