Warnings about the Adulteress
My son, keep my sayings, and store up my commandments with you.
Keep my commandments and live, and my instruction as the pupil of your eye.
Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart.
Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,” and call understanding your kinswoman,
to keep you from the strange woman, from the foreign woman who has made her sayings smooth.
For at the window of my house, through my lattice, I looked down,
and I saw among the simple ones; I discerned among the sons a young man lacking heart,
passing through the street beside her corner, and he strode the way to her house,
in the twilight, in the evening of the day, in the pupil of night and darkness.
And see — a woman to meet him, dressed as a prostitute and guarded of heart.
She is clamorous and rebellious; her feet do not stay in her house.
Now in the street, now in the open places, and beside every corner she lies in wait.
And she took hold of him and kissed him; she made her face bold and said to him,
“Sacrifices of peace offerings were on me; today I have paid my vows.
Therefore I came out to meet you, to seek your face early, and I have found you.
I have spread my couch with coverings, with colored linen of Egypt.
I have sprinkled my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.
Come, let us drink our fill of love until the morning; let us delight ourselves in loving.
For the man is not in his house; he has gone on a distant way.
He took the bag of silver in his hand; at the day of the full moon he will come to his house.”
She turned him aside with the greatness of her learning; with the smoothness of her lips she drove him on.
He goes after her suddenly, like an ox coming to the slaughter, and like a fetter to the discipline of a stubborn fool,
until an arrow splits his liver — like a bird hurrying to the snare, and he did not know that it was for his life.
And now, sons, listen to me, and attend to the sayings of my mouth.
Let not your heart turn aside to her ways; do not wander in her paths.
For many are the slain she has made fall, and numerous are all those she has killed.
Her house is the ways of Sheol, going down to the chambers of death.