Proverbs 7

1. My son, keep my words, And lay up my commandments with thee. 2 Keep my commandments and live; And my law as the apple of thine eye. 3 Bind them upon thy fingers; Write them upon the table of thine heart. 4 Say unto wisdom, Thou art my sister; And call understanding thy kinswoman: 5 That they may keep thee from the strange woman, From the stranger which flattereth with her words. 6 For at the window of my house I looked forth through my lattice; 7 And I beheld among the simple ones, I discerned among the youths, A young man void of understanding, 8 Passing through the street near her corner, And he went the way to her house; 9 In the twilight, in the evening of the day, In the middle of the night and in the darkness. 10 And, behold, there met him a woman With the attire of an harlot, and wily of heart. 11 She is clamorous and wilful; Her feet abide not in her house: 12 Now she is in the streets, now in the broad places, And lieth in wait at every corner. 13 So she caught him, and kissed him, And with an impudent face she said unto him: 14 Sacrifices of peace offerings are with me; This day have I paid my vows.

15. Therefore came I forth to meet thee, Diligently to seek thy face, and I have found thee. 16 I have spread my couch with carpets of tapestry, With striped cloths of the yarn of Egypt. 17 I have perfumed my bed With myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. 18 Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning; Let us solace ourselves with loves. 19 For the goodman is not at home He is gone a long journey: 20 He hath taken a bag of money with him; He will come home at the full moon. 21 With her much fair speech she causeth him to yield, With the flattering of her lips she forceth him away. 22 He goeth after her straightway, As an ox goeth to the slaughter, Or as one in fetters to the correction of the fool; 23 Till an arrow strike through his liver; As a bird hasteth to the snare, And knoweth not that it is for his life. 24 Now therefore, my sons, hearken unto me, And attend to the words of my mouth. 25 Let not thine heart decline to her ways, Go not astray in her paths. 26 For she hath cast down many wounded: Yea, all her slain are a mighty host. 27 Her house is the way to Sheol, Going down to the chambers of death.

IN chaps. 2, 5, and 6 the great danger to which the crime of adultery exposes one has been set forth in strong colors. The writer now proceeds, in the way of forewarning, to set forth the alluring and deceitful arts practised by the adulteress, in order to inveigle and mislead the unwary youth. Forewarned, forearmed. If he gives diligent heed to the words of the faithful monitor, he may learn to shun the ways of crime and destruction. As usual, at the outset he is exhorted to hearken and to impress deeply on his heart what is said (vs. 1-5). The remainder of the chapter is occupied with graphically describing the demeanor and actions of the adulteress. M. S.—To put the virtuous upon their guard, and to fill them with a just abhorrence of the ways of crime, he sketches a life-scene in which are traced, first, the young man void of understanding, abroad in the dark night (vs. 8, 9); then a harlot and her vile seductions (vs. 10-20), and the sudden and fearful ruin in which she involves her victims (vs. 21-23); closing with renewed exhortations against being allured by one who has ruined her thousands and whose “house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death” (vs. 24-27). H. C.

1-4. The introduction to a yet more lifelike portrait of the harlot adulteress of an Eastern city, contrasted with the true feminine ideal of the wisdom who is to be the “sister” and “kinswoman” of the young man as he goes on his way through life. E. H. P.

2. My law as the apple of thine eye. No part of the body more precious, more tender, and more carefully guarded than the eye; and of the eye, no portion more peculiarly to be protected than the central apple, the pupil, or, as the Hebrew calls it, “the daughter of the eye.” The all-wise Creator has placed the eye in a well-protected position, surrounded by projecting bones, with many tunics of inward covering, besides the hedge of the eyebrows, the curtain of the eyelids, and the fence of the eyelashes; and, in addition to this, he has given to every man so high a value for his eyes, and so quick an apprehension of danger, that no member of the body is more faithfully cared for than the organ of sight. Spurgeon.

6-9. The first character appears on the scene, young, “simple,” in the bad sense of the word; open to all impressions of evil, empty-headed and empty-hearted; lounging near the house of ill-repute, not as yet deliberately purposing to sin, but placing himself in the way of it, wandering idly to see one of whose beauty he had heard. And this at a time when the pure in heart would seek their home—literally, “in the cool, in the evening, in the eyeball of night (a bold expressive figure for its blackness), and in darkness.” It is impossible not to see a certain symbolic meaning in this picture of the gathering gloom. Night is falling over the young man’s life as the shadows deepen. E. H. P.

9. We learn from this the evil of late hours. The devil, like the beast of prey, stalks forth when the sun goes down. Midnight on earth is hell’s midnoon. J. T. Davidson.

14. The offerings here named are those of thanksgiving and joy on account of blessings received. Of such offerings the guests partook in part; so that a rich feast is here virtually set before the simpleton under the garb of a religious usage. The pretence is that she had before bound herself by vows to make the offerings in question. This therefore is represented to be a lucky day for the invited guest. M. S.

26. The house of the harlot had been compared before (2:18) to the grave, to the world of the dead; now it is likened to a field of battle strewn with the corpses of the slain. “Many strong men.” The word speaks rather of the multitude than of the individual strength of those who have perished. “Mighty hosts are all they that have been slain by her.” This is followed by a repetition of the old similitude from 2:18; 5:5. E. H. P.

27. Her house, though richly decked and furnished and called a house of pleasure, is the way to hell; and her chambers are the staircase that goes down to the chambers of death and everlasting darkness. The cup of fornication must shortly be exchanged for the cup of trembling; and the flames of lust, if not quenched by repentance and mortification, will burn to the lowest hell. Therefore stand in awe and sin not. H.—Death, for the godless, is but the bond between past and future misery. The ungodly pass from the first death across to the second. Gerhard.

There are unseen, pitiless limits existing—walls of adamant, against which the waves of human passion and human folly dash, and break, and are shattered without mercy, even though every drop be a life, and every life be dashed to pieces in hopeless agony in the vain endeavor to go its own way, and set its own will as the judge what that way shall be. There is an eternal march of judgment, which they who choose can see. And calm, and clear, and pitiless on every side, amid the noise of ignorant self-will, the clash of blinded passion, and wisdom blinder still, the voiceless warning strikes upon the world; and the great prison walls close in on those who will have it so. It may be said: “These are but words; what proof is there of this invisible, everlasting wall of doom, and of the unseen executioners, God’s secret police, that arrest the guilty and the careless, self-indulgent fools?” I answer: “Take any form of vice you like, give it power, give it wealth, and then—wait a few years and see what comes of it. Watch the curse day by day, and hour by hour, walking by the victim’s side; watch him dragged from bad to worse; stand in his dreary home when the last scene comes—and doubt no more of God’s great prison walls on earth.” E. Thring.

God’s Word has its silences, merciful and beneficent; but Satan’s word has its silences too, not merciful, and not beneficent. Satan’s word tells of flowery paths, of alluring pleasures, of seductive companionships, of jovial nights and days; but Satan’s word is silent concerning the hidden precipices, the gnawing remorse, the degrading bondage, the deathless despair that lie in wait for the footsteps of those who walk in evil paths. Flashing lights, costly paintings, merry music send out their welcome to the passer, from halls of fair-seeming which are wholly devoted to the service of evil; but no voice from within, no legend on the wall, tells of the ruined lives, the scattered households, the broken hearts, whose history found its first tragic meaning beneath these lights. H. C. T.