BIBLE CHAPTER STUDY
Proverbs 7 — Warning Against the Adulteress
A father commands his son to internalize wisdom, then illustrates her protection through a vivid account of a naive youth seduced by a scheming woman whose house leads to death.
Scripture
1My son, keep my words, And lay up my commandments with thee.
2Keep my commandments and live; And my law as the apple of thine eye.
3Bind them upon thy fingers; Write them upon the tablet of thy heart.
4Say unto wisdom, Thou art my sister; And call understanding thy kinswoman:
5That they may keep thee from the strange woman, From the foreigner that flattereth with her words.
6For at the window of my house I looked forth through my lattice;
7And I beheld among the simple ones, I discerned among the youths, A young man void of understanding,
8Passing through the street near her corner; And he went the way to her house,
9In the twilight, in the evening of the day, In the middle of the night and in the darkness.
10And, behold, there met him a woman With the attire of a harlot, and wily of heart.
11(She is clamorous and wilful; Her feet abide not in her house:
12Now she is in the streets, now in the broad places, And lieth in wait at every corner.)
13So she caught him, and kissed him, And with an impudent face she said unto him:
14Sacrifices of peace-offerings are with me; This day have I paid my vows.
15Therefore came I forth to meet thee, Diligently to seek thy face, and I have found thee.
16I have spread my couch with carpets of tapestry, With striped cloths of the yarn of Egypt.
17I have perfumed my bed With myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.
18Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning; Let us solace ourselves with loves.
19For the man is not at home; He is gone a long journey:
20He hath taken a bag of money with him; He will come home at the full moon.
21With her much fair speech she causeth him to yield; With the flattering of her lips she forceth him along.
22He goeth after her straightway, As an ox goeth to the slaughter, Or as one in fetters to the correction of the fool;
23Till an arrow strike through his liver; As a bird hasteth to the snare, And knoweth not that it is for his life.
24Now therefore, my sons, hearken unto me, And attend to the words of my mouth.
25Let not thy heart decline to her ways; Go not astray in her paths.
26For she hath cast down many wounded: Yea, all her slain are a mighty host.
27Her house is the way to Sheol, Going down to the chambers of death.
What this passage means
The chapter opens with a tightly woven call to retain instruction (vv. 1–3): the father's words, commandments, and teaching are to be stored inside the son like treasure and tied to fingers and the tablet of the heart. The vocabulary moves from external obedience to internal inscription, so that wisdom becomes part of the son's identity rather than mere memory.
In vv. 4–5 wisdom and understanding are personified as sister and kinswoman, a deliberate family framing that contrasts with the foreign woman of v. 5. The kinship language is the chapter's first line of defense: if wisdom belongs to the household, the seductress by definition stands outside it.
The narrative scene (vv. 6–23) dramatizes what happens when that defense is absent. From a latticed window the speaker watches a youth lacking understanding walk, at twilight, toward the adulteress's corner. The encounter is told in slow, sensory detail — perfumed bed, woven linen, peace-offerings, a husband away with money until the full moon — and ends with three animal images (ox to slaughter, stag in fetters, bird to snare) that show the youth mistaking his own destruction for pleasure. The closing exhortation (vv. 24–27) gathers the lesson: her house is the way to Sheol, descending to the chambers of death.
Context
Proverbs 7 sits inside the collection's longer warning against the strange woman that also runs through Proverbs 5 and 6:20–35, and the chapter-note records that this page was backfilled from Proverbs chapters outside the P0/P1 study set, so it reads as a self-contained wisdom lecture rather than part of a larger curated arc.
Within the chapter itself the only contextual anchor is the speaker's own framing: a window-and-lattice vantage point that allows the reader to overhear both the seduction scene and the young man's silent compliance, before the closing appeal returns to direct father-to-son address.
Key words in the original
- H8104 The verb šāmar (keep) opens both vv. 1 and 2, framing the chapter. It pictures guarding something like a hedge around a vineyard, so retaining the father's words is treated as active vigilance rather than passive hearing.
- H3871 The Hebrew lûaḥ (tablet) in v. 3 names the writing surface that will receive the commandments. The same word is later used for the stone tablets of the covenant, so 'tablet of your heart' deliberately echoes the Sinai imagery and recasts the son himself as the place where the words are inscribed.
- H2451 ḥoḵmâ (wisdom) in v. 4 is the term the Father himself personifies and addresses as 'my sister.' By elevating wisdom to family status the chapter makes rejecting her equivalent to rejecting kinship — and sets her up as the direct counterweight to the foreign woman of v. 5.
Related verses
- Proverbs 3:3 Proverbs 3:3 already pairs 'bind them about your neck' with 'write them on the tablet of your heart.' Proverbs 7:1–3 sharpens that image by adding the fingers, turning the son himself into a living copy of the instruction.
- Deuteronomy 6:8 Deuteronomy 6:8 commands binding God's words as a sign on the hand and frontlets between the eyes. Proverbs 7:3 reuses that language of binding on the fingers, but redirects it inward: the true goal is inscription on the heart, not merely external phylacteries.
- Proverbs 9:13 Proverbs 9:13 describes the foolish woman as clamorous and simple, knowing nothing. Proverbs 7:11 borrows that exact pair — loud and restless, feet that do not stay home — to characterize the adulteress, so the two women in Proverbs 9 form the deliberate pairing the reader is meant to weigh against Lady Wisdom of Proverbs 7:4.
Common questions
Why does the chapter personify wisdom as 'my sister' (v. 4)?
By placing wisdom inside the family circle, the father turns loyalty to her into a kinship duty. The phrasing makes it natural to receive her counsel and equally natural to refuse the foreign woman of v. 5, who by definition is not part of the household.
What is the point of the window-and-lattice framing in vv. 6–7?
It places the reader in the position of the father-speacher, watching from above. The vantage point lets us observe both the woman's calculated moves and the youth's silent compliance, building the dramatic tension that the closing exhortation then resolves.
How should the three animal images in v. 22 be read together?
The ox heading to slaughter, the fool in fetters, and the bird flying to the snare each picture a creature moving toward its own destruction without perceiving it. Read together they argue that the youth's eager following is not freedom but blind self-destruction disguised as pleasure.