Chapter 7

  My son, keep my words, and lay up my commandments with thee.  

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  Keep my commandments, and live; and my teaching, as the apple of thine eye.  

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  Bind them upon thy fingers, write them upon the tablet of thy heart.  

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  Say unto wisdom, Thou art my sister, and call intelligence [thy] kinswoman:  

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  that they may keep thee from the strange woman, from the stranger who flattereth with her words.  

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  For at the window of my house, I looked forth through my lattice,  

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  and I beheld among the simple ones, I discerned among the sons, a young man void of understanding,  

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  passing through the street near her corner; and he went the way to her house,  

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  in the twilight, in the evening of the day, in the blackness of night and the darkness.  

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  And behold, there met him a woman in the attire of a harlot, and subtle of heart.  

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  She is clamorous and unmanageable; her feet abide not in her house:  

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  now without, now in the broadways, -- and she lieth in wait at every corner.  

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  And she caught him and kissed him, and with an impudent face said unto him,  

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  I have peace-offerings with me; this day have I paid my vows:  

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  therefore came I forth to meet thee, to seek earnestly thy face, and I have found thee.  

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  I have decked my bed with tapestry coverlets of variegated linen from Egypt;  

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  I have perfumed my couch with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.  

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  Come, let us revel in love until the morning, let us delight ourselves with loves.  

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  For the husband is not at home, he is gone a long journey;  

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  he hath taken the money-bag with him, he will come home on the day of the full moon.  

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  With her much enticement she beguiled him; with the smoothness of her lips she constrained him.  

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  He went after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, and as stocks [serve] for the correction of the fool;  

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  till an arrow strike through his liver: as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for its life.  

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  And now, ye sons, hearken unto me, and attend to the words of my mouth.  

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  Let not thy heart decline to her ways, go not astray in her paths:  

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  for she hath cast down many wounded, and all slain by her were strong.  

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  Her house is the way to Sheol, going down to the chambers of death.  

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