To know wisdom, instruction and to understand words of
insight let the wise hear and increase in learning and the one who understands
obtain guidance. Were you not instructed not to forsake the instructions of our
father and the teachings of our mother be used as a garland for your head and
as pendant for your neck?
When sinners come with enticement and plot to lie in wait for
blood, are you not strong enough to refuse consent and flee from such worthless
and wicked persons you call acquaintances, or did you not take counsel from our
father when He said the man filled with crooked speech, the one who winks with
his eyes, signals with his feet, points with his finger and whose heart devise
evils, will have calamity come on him in a moment that he is beyond healing?
Now I laugh at your calamity, terror strikes and I mock you
now. Distress and anguish has come upon your flesh and body because you heard
and refused to heed, your complacency is now your woe. Do you now wonder where
you err? Would you have me remind you of your intoxication with a foreign woman
that now brings you much distress?
From the window of my house I beheld you, a young man empty
of common sense, passing the street near her corner in the evening, deliberately
going through the road leading up to her house in the dark of the night when no
one will see you both. Alas, the woman you seek dressed as a prostitute comes
out to corner you. Of course she is that loud and wayward lady most people
know, she is stubborn and her feet does not stay at home, this minute she is in
the street calling on those who pass on their own way, next she is in the
market and at every corner you turn she is there in wait.
She quickly gives you a kiss, seize your hand and with
boldness declare false affections with the smooth tongue of an adulteress, her
beauty overwhelms you while her eyelashes flutters your weak heart.
‘’ I just offered prayers to God and you happened by’’ she
cons you as you smile unaware of your impending doom. ‘’ come’’ she says ‘’ I
have the most amazing apartment, my beds have linen spread on them and the
sweet odor of my signature perfume will put you in the mood’’ she slurs in your
ear. ‘’we can make love all through the night because my husband has gone on a
trip he took large sums of money and his business will be long’’. With much
seductive speech she persuades you and with smooches she compels you.
Straightway you follow her into her house as an ox goes to
the slaughter or as a fool till a dart strike through his liver and as a bird
hasten into a snare; not knowing that it will cost you your life for many
strong men have been wounded by her.
To be safe from an evil woman and the flattering tongue of
one who is strange, lust not after her vain beauty in your heart for the price
of a prostitute is but a loaf of bread, you will come to penury after all you
expend on her lasciviousness. But, adultery with a married woman hunts down
precious life. So you are like one that has gone in to his neighbor’s wife;
none who touches her will go unpunished.
Did not a wise king articulate ‘’people do not despise a
thief if he steals to satisfy his appetite when he is hungry, but if he is
caught, he will pay sevenfold; he will give all the goods in his house’’.
He who commits adultery lacks sense; he who does it will by
his own hands destroy himself. He will get dishonor aplenty and his disgrace
when caught will not be wiped away. Drink water from your own cup and fetch
from your own well, let it be for you alone and not for the strangers with you.
Rejoice in the wife of your youth, allow her breast fill you with delight all
the time and remain intoxicated with her love.
Preserve your life from an adulteress. ‘’ can a man hold fire
next to his chest and not be burned? Or can he walk on hot coal and his feet
will not be scorched?
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