THE BOOK OF PROVERBS
A CHAPTER A DAY
CHAPTER 7
7
My son, pay close attention
and don’t forget
what I tell you to do.
2
Obey me, and you will live!
Let my instructions be
your greatest treasure.
3
Keep them at your fingertips
and write them
in your mind.
4
Let wisdom be your sister
and make common sense
your closest friend.
5
They will protect you
from the flattering words
of someone else’s wife.
6
From the window of my house,
I once happened to see
7
some foolish young men.
8
It was late in the evening,
sometime after dark.
9
One of these young men
turned the corner
and was walking by the house
of an unfaithful wife.
10
She was dressed fancy
like a woman of the street
with only one thing in mind.
11
She was one of those women
who are loud and restless
and never stay at home,
12
who walk street after street,
waiting to trap a man.
13
She grabbed him and kissed him,
and with no sense of shame,
she said:
14
“I had to offer a sacrifice,
and there is enough meat
left over for a feast.
15
So I came looking for you,
and here you are!
16
The sheets on my bed
are bright-colored cloth
from Egypt.
17
And I have covered it
with perfume
made of myrrh,
aloes, and cinnamon.
18
“Let’s go there
and make love all night.
19
My husband is traveling,
and he’s far away.
20
He took a lot of money along,
and he won’t be back home
before the middle
of the month.”
21
And so, she tricked him
with all of her sweet talk
and her flattery.
22
Right away he followed her
like an ox on the way
to be slaughtered,
Like an antelope bounding
Into the noose
23
Then the arrow pierces his liver.
He was no more than a bird
rushing into a trap,
without knowing
it would cost him his life.
24
My son, pay close attention
to what I have said.
25
Don’t even think about
that kind of woman
or let yourself be misled
by someone like her.
26
Such a woman has caused
the downfall
and destruction
of a lot of men.
27
Her house is a one-way street
leading straight down
to the world of the dead.
LIKE AN OX….
So three times now in seven chapters men are warned against a “strange” or “foreign” or “separate” woman, who offers sex which ends in disgrace, ruin, or even death of her victim. This chapter is the fullest version of this moral tale. In fact making the wiles of the woman so powerful seems more likely to send young men out looking for her, than to teach them chastity.
But what is actually happening here? What precisely is the nature of the “death” that awaits the stupid young man? I noted in chapter 6 that it may be financial ruin. If so, then a) this may simply refer to the cost of keeping a mistress, or b) to the cost of being blackmailed or sued by her husband. The vivid imagery here of animals led into traps and killed, however, makes me wonder of the author is suggesting deadly physical violence by the betrayed husband.
Commentators on this passage are a little evasive as to what’s going on. The author seems to assume that readers will know without being told explicitly. I used to wonder if an STD was being hinted at, but found no support from scholars. I still think that the image of the arrow in the liver is possibly pointing to a symptom of a sexual disease. I defer to those scholars who have concluded that our particular STDs did not exist in the ancient world, but it would be odd if there were none at all. Obviously the ancients has no knowledge of the mechanism of disease communication, but diseases of the sexual organs would be naturally associated with sex.
On balance however it seems more likely that the deadly result of adulterous sex was a combination of financial and social ruin, something worth the many warnings it is given in this book. Or can it be that old men are trying to steer young men away from the remembered follies of their own youth?
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