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The False Attractions of Adultery

7My child, keep my words
   and store up my commandments with you;
² keep my commandments and live,
   keep my teachings as the apple of your eye;
³ bind them on your fingers,
   write them on the tablet of your heart.
⁴ Say to wisdom, ‘You are my sister’,
   and call insight your intimate friend,
⁵ that they may keep you from the loose^* woman,
   from the adulteress with her smooth words.

⁶ For at the window of my house
   I looked out through my lattice,
⁷ and I saw among the simple ones,
   I observed among the youths,
   a young man without sense,
⁸ passing along the street near her corner,
   taking the road to her house
⁹ in the twilight, in the evening,
   at the time of night and darkness.

¹⁰ Then a woman comes towards him,
   decked out like a prostitute, wily of heart.^*
11 She is loud and wayward;
   her feet do not stay at home;
¹² now in the street, now in the squares,
   and at every corner she lies in wait.
¹³ She seizes him and kisses him,
   and with impudent face she says to him:
¹⁴ ‘I had to offer sacrifices,
   and today I have paid my vows;