Proverbs

Chapter 7 opens with the same instruction that has now appeared several times — keep my commandments, write them on the table of your heart — but this time the purpose is made explicit and personal: call wisdom your sister, and call understanding your kinswoman, so that they may keep you from the strange woman and her flattery. Wisdom as a close, trusted family member is the specific protection the chapter promises. Then the father narrates what he has seen from his window. In the street below, among the simple and the young, he picks out a young man void of understanding. This young man is walking through the street near her corner, in the twilight, in the black and dark night. He is in the wrong place at the wrong time and shows no sign of knowing it. The woman meets him: dressed as a harlot, subtle of heart. The description of her is precise. She is loud and stubborn; her feet do not stay in her house — she is always outside, always in the streets, lurking at every corner. She catches him, kisses him, and speaks. Her speech is a constructed seduction. She has peace offerings — she has fulfilled her religious vows — which establishes her as pious. She has prepared the bedroom: tapestry, carved works, fine linen from Egypt, perfumed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. And then the key detail: her husband has gone on a long journey with a bag of money; he will not be home until the appointed day. She has removed every apparent obstacle and created an atmosphere of safety and luxury. With her fair speech and flattering lips she causes him to yield. He goes after her immediately — as an ox goes to the slaughter, as a fool to the correction of the stocks — until a dart strikes through his liver. As a bird hastens to the snare and does not know it is for his life. The address turns to the plural audience: hearken unto me, O ye children. Do not let your heart decline to her ways, do not go astray in her paths. The reason given is empirical: she has cast down many wounded. Many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.