How to Avoid Sin

Warning Against the Adulteress

¹My son, keep my words

and treasure up my commandments with you;

²keep my commandments and live;

keep my teaching as the apple of your eye;

³bind them on your fingers;

write them on the tablet of your heart.

⁴Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,”

and call insight your intimate friend,

⁵to keep you from the forbidden1 woman,

from the adulteress2 with her smooth words.

⁶For at the window of my house

I have looked out through my lattice,

⁷and I have seen among the simple,

I have perceived among the youths,

a young man lacking sense,

⁸passing along the street near her corner,

taking the road to her house

⁹in the twilight, in the evening,

at the time of night and darkness.

¹⁰And behold, the woman meets him,

dressed as a prostitute, wily of heart.3

¹¹She is loud and wayward;

her feet do not stay at home;

¹²now in the street, now in the market,

and at every corner she lies in wait.

¹³She seizes him and kisses him,

and with bold face she says to him,

¹⁴“I had to offer sacrifices,4

and today I have paid my vows;

¹⁵so now I have come out to meet you,

to seek you eagerly, and I have found you.

¹⁶I have spread my couch with coverings,

colored linens from Egyptian linen;

¹⁷I have perfumed my bed with myrrh,

aloes, and cinnamon.

¹⁸Come, let us take our fill of love till morning;

let us delight ourselves with love.

¹⁹For my husband is not at home;

he has gone on a long journey;

²⁰he took a bag of money with him;

at full moon he will come home.”

²¹With much seductive speech she persuades him;

with her smooth talk she compels him.

²²All at once he follows her,

as an ox goes to the slaughter,

or as a stag is caught fast5

²³till an arrow pierces its liver;

as a bird rushes into a snare;

he does not know that it will cost him his life.

²⁴And now, O sons, listen to me,

and be attentive to the words of my mouth.

²⁵Let not your heart turn aside to her ways;

do not stray into her paths,

²⁶for many a victim has she laid low,

and all her slain are a mighty throng.

²⁷Her house is the way to Sheol,

going down to the chambers of death.