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Proverbs 7
1 My son, keep my words, and treasure my principles,
2 keep my principles and you will live, keep my teaching as the apple of your eye.
3 Bind these to your fingers, write them on the tablet of your heart.
4 To Wisdom say, ‘My sister!’ Call Perception your dearest friend,
5 to preserve you from the alien woman, from the stranger, with her wheedling words.
6 From the window of her house she looked out on the street,
7 to see if among the men, young and callow, there was one young man who had no sense at all.
8 And now he passes down the lane, and comes near her corner, reaching the path to her house
9 at twilight when day is declining, at dead of night and in the dark.
10 But look, the woman comes to meet him, dressed like a harlot, wrapped in a veil.
11 She is loud and brazen; her feet cannot rest at home.
12 Now in the street, now in the square, she is on the look-out at every corner.
13 She catches hold of him, she kisses him, the bold-faced creature says to him,
14 ‘I had to offer sacrifices: I discharged my vows today,
15 that is why I came out to meet you, to look for you, and now I have found you.
16 I have made my bed gay with quilts, spread the best Egyptian sheets,
17 I have sprinkled my bed with myrrh, with aloes and with cinnamon.
18 Come, let us drink deep of love until the morning, and abandon ourselves to delight.
19 For my husband is not at home, he has gone on a very long journey,
20 taking his moneybags with him; he will not be back until the moon is full.’
21 With her persistent coaxing she entices him, draws him on with her seductive patter.
22 Bemused, he follows her like an ox being led to the slaughter, like a stag caught in a noose,
23 till he is pierced to the liver by an arrow, like a bird darting into a snare not knowing its life is at stake.
24 And now, my son listen to me, pay attention to the words I have to say:
25 do not let your heart stray into her ways, or wander into her paths;
26 she has done so many to death; and the strongest have all been her victims.
27 Her house is the way to Sheol, the descent to the courts of death.