Thematic Bible: Avoiding harlots


Thematic Bible



My child, be attentive to my wisdom, and to my understanding incline your ear; [in order] to keep prudence, and knowledge will guard your lips. For the lips of the strange woman will drip honey, and smoother than oil is her mouth. read more.
But her end is bitter as the wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down [to] death; her steps take hold [of] Sheol. She does not observe the path of life; her ways wander, [and] she does not know [it]. Now, O children, listen to me; do not depart from the sayings of my mouth. Keep your paths far from her, and do not go near to the door of her house, lest you give your honor to the others, and your years to the merciless, lest strangers take [their] fill of your strength, and your labors [go] to the house of a foreigner, and you groan at your end, when your flesh and body are consumed, and say "How I hated discipline, and I despised reproof!" and "I did not listen to the voice of my teachers, and I did not incline my ear to my instructors! I was almost at utter ruin in the midst of the assembly and congregation."

Say to wisdom, "you are my sister," and you shall call insight, "{intimate friend}." [In order] to guard yourself from {an adulteress}, from the foreigner who {makes her words smooth}. For at the window of my house, through my lattice, I looked down. read more.
And I saw among the simple, I observed among the youth, a young man lacking {sense}, passing on the street {at} her corner, and he takes the road [to] her house, at twilight, at [the] day's evening, in [the] midst of night and the darkness. Then behold! A woman [comes] to meet him [with the] garment of a prostitute and {a secret heart}. She is loud and stubborn; her feet do not stay at her house. Now in the street, now in the square, {at} every corner she lies in wait. She took hold of him and kissed him. Her face was impudent, and she said to him, "Sacrifices of peace offerings [are] upon me; {today} I completed my vows. So I have come out to meet you, to seek your face, and I have found you. [With] coverings I have adorned my couch, spreads of the linen of Egypt; I have perfumed my bed [with] myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. Come, let us take [our] fill of love making, until the morning let us delight in love. For there is no man in his home; he has gone on a {long journey}. The bag of money he took in his hand, for [on] the day of the full moon he will come home." She persuades him with the greatness of her teachings; with her smooth lips she compels him. He goes after her suddenly; like an ox to the slaughter he goes, and like a stag to the instruction of a fool, until an arrow pierces his {entrails}, like a bird rushing into a snare, but he does not know that {it will cost him his life}. And now, my children, listen to me, and be attentive to the sayings of my mouth. May your heart not turn aside to her ways; do not stray into her path. For many slain she has laid low, and countless [are] all of her killings. The ways of Sheol [are] her house, descending to chambers of death.

[in order] to preserve you from an evil woman, from the smoothness of [the] tongue of {an adulteress}. Do not desire her beauty in your heart; may she not capture you with her eyelashes.