Proverbs 7: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

A father tells his son to hold on to his teaching and to treat wisdom like a close member of the family, so that it will keep him away from another man's wife. He then tells what he saw from his window: a young man with no sense walking toward the woman's house at nightfall, and the woman coming out to meet him with kisses, an invitation to her perfumed bed, and the news that her husband is away on a long trip. The young man follows her, and the father compares him to an ox headed for slaughter and a bird flying into a trap. The chapter closes with a warning to the sons not to turn onto her paths, because many men have already been brought down there.

Claim by Claim

1. 7:1
   • The speaker addresses his son.
   • The speaker tells his son to keep his words.
   • The speaker tells his son to store up his commandments with himself.
2. 7:2
   • The speaker tells his son to keep his commandments and live.
   • The speaker tells his son to keep his teaching as the pupil of his eye.
3. 7:3
   • The speaker tells his son to bind them on his fingers.
   • The speaker tells his son to write them on the tablet of his heart.
4. 7:4
   • The speaker tells his son to say to wisdom, "You are my sister."
   • The speaker tells his son to call understanding a kinswoman.
5. 7:5
   • The purpose is to keep the son from the strange woman.
   • The purpose is to keep the son from the foreign woman.
   • The foreign woman makes her words smooth.
6. 7:6
   • The speaker looked out at the window of his house.
   • The speaker looked out through his lattice.
7. 7:7
   • The speaker saw among the simple ones.
   • The speaker observed among the sons a young man lacking sense.
8. 7:8
   • The young man was passing through the street near her corner.
   • The young man strode along the road to her house.
9. 7:9
   • It was at twilight, in the evening of the day.
   • It was in the deep middle of the night and darkness.
10. 7:10
    • A woman met the young man.
    • The woman was dressed in the garb of a prostitute.
    • The woman was guarded in heart.
11. 7:11
    • She is loud.
    • She is rebellious.
    • Her feet do not stay at her house.
12. 7:12
    • She is now outside, now in the open squares.
    • She lies in wait at every corner.
13. 7:13
    • She seized him.
    • She kissed him.
    • She made her face bold.
    • She spoke to him.
14. 7:14
    • The woman said peace offerings were upon her.
    • The woman said that on that day she had paid her vows.
15. 7:15
    • The woman said that therefore she had come out to meet him.
    • The woman said she came to seek his face.
    • The woman said she had found him.
16. 7:16
    • The woman said she had spread coverings on her couch.
    • The woman said the coverings were of colored or striped linen of Egypt.
17. 7:17
    • The woman said she had sprinkled her bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.
18. 7:18
    • The woman invited him to come.
    • The woman proposed they take their fill of lovemaking until morning.
    • The woman proposed they delight themselves in love.
19. 7:19
    • The woman said the man of the house is not at home.
    • The woman said he had gone on a journey far away.
20. 7:20
    • The woman said he took a bag of silver in his hand.
    • The woman said he would come home at the day of the full moon, which the King James renders as the appointed day.
21. 7:21
    • She turned him aside with her great persuasion.
    • She drove him on with the smoothness of her lips.
22. 7:22
    • He goes after her suddenly.
    • He goes like an ox going to the slaughter.
    • The second comparison is obscure in the Hebrew, read as a fool going to correction in fetters or stocks.
23. 7:23
    • He goes until an arrow pierces his liver.
    • He is like a bird hurrying into a trap.
    • He does not know that it costs him his life.
24. 7:24
    • The speaker calls on the sons to listen to him now.
    • The speaker calls on them to pay attention to the words of his mouth.
25. 7:25
    • The speaker says not to let the heart turn aside to her ways.
    • The speaker says not to stray into her paths.
26. 7:26
    • She has caused many to fall slain.
    • All those she has killed are numerous and mighty.
27. 7:27
    • Her house is the ways to Sheol.
    • Her house goes down to the chambers of death.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

7:1

"My son" is the standard opening of ancient instruction literature, in Israel and in Egypt and Mesopotamia before it. A teacher addressed his pupil as a son, so the phrase need not mean a literal father speaking to his own child. Chapters 1–9 of Proverbs are built as a series of these speeches.

7:2

"The apple of thine eye" translates a Hebrew phrase meaning the pupil of the eye, literally "the little man of the eye," from the tiny reflection you see of yourself in someone else's pupil. It stands for something both precious and easily damaged, which you shield instinctively. "Apple" here is the old English word for the pupil and has nothing to do with fruit.

7:3

Tying words on the fingers refers to the practice of wearing a written text on the body as a reminder you cannot put down. The "table" (tablet) is a writing surface of stone, clay or wax, the ordinary place a permanent record was kept. In Hebrew, the heart is not the seat of feeling but of thought, memory and decision; "write them on your heart" means fix them in your mind and your will.

7:4

Calling wisdom "my sister" claims her as family. Kin were bound to protect one another, so the image is of a relative who will stand between you and harm. "Sister" was also a common term of endearment for a beloved woman in the love poetry of the region, which sets up the contrast with the woman in the rest of the chapter.

7:5

The KJV's "strange woman" and "stranger" do not mean an odd woman or a foreigner passing through. The two Hebrew words describe a woman who is outside the bounds, outside your own marriage and household. Verse 19 makes plain that she has a husband, so what is being described is adultery, an offense that carried the death penalty in Israelite law.

7:6

A "casement" is a lattice: a screen of crossed wooden strips set in a window opening, since windows had no glass. It let air and light through and let someone inside watch the street while staying unseen from below.

7:7

"The simple ones" translates a Hebrew word for the untaught and inexperienced rather than the stupid. The word describes someone whose mind is still wide open and who has not yet learned to tell a good argument from a bad one, exactly the person this book says it is written for.

7:10

Clothing marked out a prostitute in the ancient world, though the text does not say what the marks were. "Subtil of heart" renders a Hebrew phrase meaning guarded or hidden of heart: her intentions are kept out of sight. "Subtil" in 1611 English meant crafty, not delicate.

7:11

"Loud and stubborn" describes a woman who is boisterous in public and refuses to be governed. The remark that her feet do not stay at home would have carried weight in a society where a respectable married woman's sphere of activity was the household; a wife regularly out in the streets at night was, by that standard, already outside her place.

7:12

"Without" in 1611 English means outdoors, outside the house. The streets and the open squares were the public spaces of a walled town, and corners were where roads met and people had to pass.

7:13

A kiss here was not a family kiss. She was a stranger grabbing him in the street, and that surprised him.

7:14

A peace offering (also called a fellowship offering) was a sacrifice in which only part of the animal was burned; the worshiper took the bulk of the meat home and had to eat it within a day or two. So her words announce that there is fresh roast meat waiting at her house, a feast, since meat was rare in an ordinary diet. "I have paid my vows" means she had promised God a sacrifice in return for something and has now made good on the promise. She is invoking a religious duty properly discharged, and using it as the invitation.

7:16

Imported Egyptian linen was a luxury good, the finest cloth available. The Hebrew word the KJV renders "carved works" is uncertain; it most likely refers to colored or striped material, though some read it as a kind of woven or embroidered pattern.

7:17

Myrrh and aloes are aromatic resins from trees, and cinnamon is a bark; all three had to be carried in by caravan from Arabia, east Africa or further east. They were among the most expensive substances a household could buy, normally used in small amounts. Sprinkling them over bedding is deliberate extravagance.

7:19

"Goodman" is 1611 English for the master of a household, here, her husband. In the Hebrew she does not say "my husband" but simply "the man," a coolly distancing way to refer to him.

7:20

Money was weighed metal rather than coin at this period, carried in a pouch; taking the bag means he has funds for a long absence and no reason to turn back early. The Hebrew for "the day appointed" most likely means the full moon, that is, a fixed date some weeks off: she is telling the young man exactly how much time they have.

7:21

"She forced him" translates a Hebrew verb meaning to drive or push along, as one drives an animal. It describes the pressure of persuasion wearing down his resistance, not physical compulsion; the point of the chapter is that he goes willingly.

7:22

Stocks were a wooden frame that clamped the feet or neck, holding an offender fast in public while he was beaten. The Hebrew of this line is damaged and disputed: the traditional text yields something like "as a fetter to the discipline of a fool," while the ancient Greek and Syriac translations read it as "like a stag bounding into a noose," which fits the animal images on either side. Modern translations differ for this reason.

7:23

The liver was regarded as a vital organ and, in the ancient Near East, as a seat of life and strong feeling. An arrow through it is a killing wound, not a wounding one, the man is already dead and does not know it.

7:26

The language is that of a battlefield report: she has laid low a great number of casualties, and her slain are a mighty host. The picture is of a single victor and a field of bodies.

7:27

"Hell" here translates Sheol, the Hebrew name for the underworld where all the dead were thought to go, good and bad alike. It is the realm of the grave, not the place of punishment that the English word "hell" came to mean centuries later. "Chambers" are the inner rooms of a house, the image deliberately turns her house into the house of the dead.