Proverbs 7:1-23

Warning Against the Strange Woman

1 My child, guard my sayings; store my commandments with you.
2 Keep my commands and live, and my teaching like [the] {apple of your eye}.
3 Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart.
4 Say to wisdom, "you are my sister," and you shall call insight, "{intimate friend}."
5 [In order] to guard yourself from {an adulteress}, from the foreigner who {makes her words smooth}.
6 For at the window of my house, through my lattice, I looked down.
7 And I saw among the simple, I observed among the youth, a young man lacking {sense},
8 passing on the street {at} her corner, and he takes the road [to] her house,
9 at twilight, at [the] day's evening, in [the] midst of night and the darkness.
10 Then behold! A woman [comes] to meet him [with the] garment of a prostitute and {a secret heart}.
11 She is loud and stubborn; her feet do not stay at her house.
12 Now in the street, now in the square, {at} every corner she lies in wait.
13 She took hold of him and kissed him. Her face was impudent, and she said to him,
14 "Sacrifices of peace offerings [are] upon me; {today} I completed my vows.
15 So I have come out to meet you, to seek your face, and I have found you.
16 [With] coverings I have adorned my couch, spreads of the linen of Egypt;
17 I have perfumed my bed [with] myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.
18 Come, let us take [our] fill of love making, until the morning let us delight in love.
19 For there is no man in his home; he has gone on a {long journey}.
20 The bag of money he took in his hand, for [on] the day of the full moon he will come home."
21 She persuades him with the greatness of her teachings; with her smooth lips she compels him.
22 He goes after her suddenly; like an ox to the slaughter he goes, and like a stag to the instruction of a fool,
23 until an arrow pierces his {entrails}, like a bird rushing into a snare, but he does not know that {it will cost him his life}.

Proverbs 7:1-23 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO PROVERBS 7

The sum of this chapter is to exhort men to attend to the doctrines and precepts of Wisdom, in order to avoid the adulterous woman; the exhortation to keep them with care, affection, and delight, in order to answer the end, is in Pr 7:1-5. A story is told, of Solomon's own knowledge, of a young man ensnared and ruined by a lewd woman; it begins Pr 7:6. The young man is described as foolish, and as throwing himself in the way of temptation, Pr 7:7-9; the harlot that met him is described by her attire, her subtlety, her voice, her inconstancy, her impudence, and pretensions to piety, Pr 7:10-14. The arguments she made use of to prevail upon him to go with her are taken partly from the elegance of her bed, the softness of it, and its sweet perfume, and satiety of love to be enjoyed in it, Pr 7:15-18; and partly from the absence of her husband, who was gone a long journey, and had made provision for it for a certain time, Pr 7:19,20. By which arguments she prevailed upon him to his utter ruin: which is illustrated by the similes of an ox going to the slaughter, a fool to the stocks, and a bird to the snare, Pr 7:21-23. And the chapter is concluded with an exhortation to hearken to the words of Wisdom, and to avoid the ways and paths of the harlot, by which many and mighty persons have been ruined; they being the direct road to hell and death, Pr 7:24-27.

Footnotes 18

  • [a]. A single word meaning "pupil of the eye"
  • [b]. Hebrew "the wisdom"
  • [c]. Hebrew "the insight"
  • [d]. Literally "one who is known." To "know" is often a euphemism for intercourse. Therefore "intimate friend" may also be read "lover."
  • [e]. Literally "a strange woman"
  • [f]. Literally "causes to be smooth her words"
  • [g]. Literally "heart"
  • [h]. Literally "at the place of"
  • [i]. Or "whore"
  • [j]. Literally "secret of heart"
  • [k]. Literally "at the place of"
  • [l]. Or "strengthened"
  • [m]. Literally "the day"
  • [n]. Hebrew "thus"
  • [o]. Or "husband"
  • [p]. Literally "a journey from far"
  • [q]. Literally "heaviness," often referring to the liver
  • [r]. Literally "it is against his life"
Scripture quotations marked (LEB) are from the Lexham English Bible. Copyright 2012 Logos Bible Software. Lexham is a registered trademark of Logos Bible Software.