Proverbs 7
Big idea: The father stops arguing and tells a story, and the change of mode is the whole strategy. He is at his own window, and everything from here is observed rather than asserted — the hour, the route, the kiss, the speech she has clearly given before. He does not interrupt her; he lets her talk for eight verses, including the piety she opens with and the travel schedule she closes with. Then he supplies the one thing the young man could not: three images of an animal walking calmly into what it does not understand.
Chapter 7 ends at a house that is the way to Sheol. Chapter 8 goes back out to the same streets and lets the other woman speak.
7:1–9 — At the window I looked out
Five verses of instruction, then the father does something he has not done in six chapters: he opens a window. From verse 6 the mode is eyewitness, and the detail is what makes it work — the boy is not dragged anywhere, he walks, and his route passes a corner everyone in the city could name. The hour is given four times over, which slows the reading down to the pace of the walk itself and leaves time for someone to stop him.
1 My son, keep my words. Lay up my commandments within you. 2 Keep my commandments and live! Guard my teaching as the apple of your eye. 3 Bind them on your fingers. Write them on the tablet of your heart. 4 Tell wisdom, “You are my sister.” Call understanding your relative, 5 that they may keep you from the strange woman, from the foreigner who flatters with her words. 6 For at the window of my house, I looked out through my lattice. 7 I saw among the simple ones. I discerned among the youths a young man void of understanding, 8 passing through the street near her corner, 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.
7:10–23 — As an ox goes to the slaughter
The father hands over the floor. Eight verses of her speech, uninterrupted, and it is constructed the way a real one would be: religion first, flattery second, sensory detail third, and the practical reassurance last, with a date on it. Nothing in it is refuted. The reply, when it comes, is not an argument at all but three pictures of an animal — and the horror of each is that the animal is calm.
10 Behold, there a woman met him with the attire of a prostitute, and with crafty intent. 11 She is loud and defiant. Her feet don’t stay in her house. 12 Now she is in the streets, now in the squares, and lurking at every corner. 13 So she caught him, and kissed him. With an impudent face she said to him: 14 “Sacrifices of peace offerings are with me. Today I have paid my vows. 15 Therefore I came out to meet you, to diligently seek your face, and I have found you. 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’s take our fill of loving until the morning. Let’s solace ourselves with loving. 19 For my husband isn’t at home. He has gone on a long journey. 20 He has taken a bag of money with him. He will come home at the full moon.” 21 With persuasive words, she led him astray. With the flattering of her lips, she seduced him. 22 He followed her immediately, as an ox goes to the slaughter, as a fool stepping into a noose. 23 Until an arrow strikes through his liver, as a bird hurries to the snare, and doesn’t know that it will cost his life.
7:24–27 — Her house is the way to Sheol
Four verses to close, and the argument in them is a headcount. Everything before this was one night and one boy; the last image widens to a battlefield — many wounded, an army of slain. The young man's silent assumption, the one the story never made him state, was that his case was particular. He is being told he is a statistic.
24 Now therefore, sons, listen to me. Pay attention to the words of my mouth. 25 Don’t let your heart turn to her ways. Don’t go astray in her paths, 26 for she has thrown down many wounded. Yes, all her slain are a mighty army. 27 Her house is the way to Sheol, going down to the rooms of death.
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).