World English Bible
- My son, keep my words. Lay up my commandments within you.
- Keep my commandments and live! Guard my teaching as the apple of your eye.
- Bind them on your fingers. Write them on the tablet of your heart.
- Tell wisdom, “You are my sister.” Call understanding your relative,
- that they may keep you from the strange woman, from the foreigner who flatters with her words.
- For at the window of my house, I looked out through my lattice.
- I saw among the simple ones. I discerned among the youths a young man void of understanding,
- passing through the street near her corner, he went the way to her house,
- in the twilight, in the evening of the day, in the middle of the night and in the darkness.
- Behold, there a woman met him with the attire of a prostitute, and with crafty intent.
- She is loud and defiant. Her feet don’t stay in her house.
- Now she is in the streets, now in the squares, and lurking at every corner.
- So she caught him, and kissed him. With an impudent face she said to him:
- “Sacrifices of peace offerings are with me. Today I have paid my vows.
- Therefore I came out to meet you, to diligently seek your face, and I have found you.
- I have spread my couch with carpets of tapestry, with striped cloths of the yarn of Egypt.
- I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.
- Come, let’s take our fill of loving until the morning. Let’s solace ourselves with loving.
- For my husband isn’t at home. He has gone on a long journey.
- He has taken a bag of money with him. He will come home at the full moon.”
- With persuasive words, she led him astray. With the flattering of her lips, she seduced him.
- He followed her immediately, as an ox goes to the slaughter, as a fool stepping into a noose.
- Until an arrow strikes through his liver, as a bird hurries to the snare, and doesn’t know that it will cost his life.
- Now therefore, sons, listen to me. Pay attention to the words of my mouth.
- Don’t let your heart turn to her ways. Don’t go astray in her paths,
- for she has thrown down many wounded. Yes, all her slain are a mighty army.
- Her house is the way to Sheol, going down to the rooms of death.
Proverbs 7 is often read simply as a warning against adultery. It is that—but it is also a study of counterfeit worship. The seductress offers nearly everything true worship promises: a feast, peace, costly fragrance, intimate knowledge, and the assurance, “I diligently sought you, and I have found you.” Sin rarely appears as sheer ugliness. It borrows the language of love and liturgy while quietly removing covenant.
The father commands his son to call wisdom his “sister” and understanding his “relative.” In ancient Israel, family ties carried duties of loyalty, protection, and belonging. Wisdom must not remain an admired visitor; she must become kin.
The “strange woman” does not primarily mean a woman of another ethnicity. The Hebrew words zarah and nokriyah describe one who stands outside the bonds of covenant faithfulness. The contrast is therefore between two kinds of intimacy: wisdom, who belongs within the household of the heart, and temptation, which offers closeness without faithfulness.
The command to guard teaching as “the apple of your eye” uses the Hebrew ishon, literally “little man”—the tiny image reflected in another person’s pupil. God’s truth is to be guarded with the same swift instinct by which the eyelid protects sight. Yet it must also be written upon the heart. External vigilance is not enough; holiness requires inward affection.
The woman has offered peace offerings and paid her vows. Part of a peace offering became a shared meal, and because the meat had to be eaten promptly, her words likely imply: A feast is ready; come now. Religion becomes bait.
Egyptian linen, myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon create the setting of royal luxury. Everything appeals to the senses. Yet the chapter repeatedly darkens: twilight, evening, night, deep darkness. The young man enters darkness before he enters her house. His fall begins not at the bed but at the corner, when he chooses to walk near what he should flee.
Augustine taught that evil has no independent substance; it survives by twisting something good. Proverbs 7 shows this vividly. Food, fragrance, sexuality, celebration, and even sacrifice are good gifts. But severed from truth and covenant, gifts become traps. Temptation says, “Take the pleasure without receiving the person, the vow, or the responsibility.”
The final revelation is terrible: her house is not merely a private room but a stairway to Sheol. Every secret sin promises a hidden chamber; eventually we discover that its rooms are connected.
Yet Jesus Christ, the true Wisdom of God, entered the realm of death not as a trapped animal but as its conqueror. In him, God does more than warn us away from the fatal house: he writes his law upon our hearts and gives us better desires.
Suggested cross-references: Jeremiah 31:33; Matthew
4:1–11; 1 Corinthians 6:18–20; James 1:14–16.
Hymn: “O for a Heart to Praise My God” by Charles
Wesley.
Lord Jesus, expose every false promise that borrows the language of love. Make wisdom at home within me, turn my feet from darkened corners, and write your faithful desires upon my heart. Amen.