Warnings Against Adultery
20 My son, keep your father’s commandment,
and forsake not your mother’s teaching.
21 Bind them on your heart always;
tie them around your neck.
22 When you walk, they1 will lead you;
when you lie down, they will watch over you;
and when you awake, they will talk with you.
23 For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light,
and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life,
24 to preserve you from the evil woman,2
from the smooth tongue of the adulteress.3
25 Do not desire her beauty in your heart,
and do not let her capture you with her eyelashes;
26 for the price of a prostitute is only a loaf of bread,4
but a married woman5 hunts down a precious life.
27 Can a man carry fire next to his chest
and his clothes not be burned?Footnotes
[1] 6:22
Hebrew it; three times in this verse
[2] 6:24Revocalization (compare Septuagint) yields from the wife of a neighbor
[3] 6:24Hebrew the foreign woman
[4] 6:26Or (compare Septuagint, Syriac, Vulgate) for a prostitute leaves a man with nothing but a loaf of bread
[5] 6:26Hebrew a man’s wife (ESV)
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