1My son, if you stood pledge for your fellow man,
gave your handshake to a stranger,
2you’ve been ensnared by your mouth’s sayings,
trapped by your mouth’s sayings.
3Do this, then, my son, and escape,
for you have fallen into your fellow man’s grasp,
go grovel, and pester your fellow man.
nor slumber to your eyelids.
5Escape like the deer from the hunter,
and the bird from the fowler’s hand.
6Go to the ant, you sluggard,
see its ways and get wisdom.
7For she has no foreman,
no taskmaster nor ruler.
8She readies her bread in summer,
stores up her food at the harvest.
9How long, O sluggard, will you lie there.
When will you rise from your sleep?
10A bit more sleep, a bit more slumber,
a bit more lying with folded arms,
11and your privation will come like a wayfarer,
your want like a shield-bearing man.
12A worthless fellow, a wrongdoing man,
goes about with a crooked mouth,
13winking his eyes, shuffling his feet,
pointing with his fingers,
14perverseness in his heart, plotting evil,
ever fomenting strife.
15Therefore his ruin will come suddenly,
he’ll be broken all at once beyond cure.
16Six things are there that the LORD hates,
and seven He utterly loathes.
17Haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
and hands shedding innocent blood,
18a heart plotting wicked designs,
feet hurrying to run to evil,
19a lying deposer, a false witness,
fomenting strife among brothers.
20Keep, my son, your father’s command,
and do not abandon your mother’s teaching.
21Bind them on your heart at all times,
garland them round your neck.
22When you walk about, it will guide you,
when you lie down, it will guard you,
when you wake, it will converse with you.
23For a command is a lamp and teaching a light,
and the way of life—stern rebukes.
24To keep you from your fellow man’s wife,
from the smooth tongue of an alien woman.
25Do not covet her beauty in your heart,
and let her not take you with her eyelids.
26For a whore’s price is no more than a loaf of bread,
but a married woman stalks a precious life.
27Can a man scoop fire into his lap
without his garments burning?
28Can a man walk on glowing coals
without his feet being scorched?
29Thus who comes to bed with his fellow man’s wife,
whoever touches her will not go scot-free.
30Let one not scorn the thief when he robs
to fill his belly when he hungers.
31If he is caught, he must pay sevenfold,
all the wealth of his house he must give.
32Who commits adultery with a woman is senseless,
ruining his life, it is he who does it.
33Blight and disgrace he will find,
and his shame will not be wiped out.
34For jealousy turns into a man’s wrath,
he will show no pity on the day of vengeance.
35He will take no account of ransom,
and will not be content, though you offer large bribes.
CHAPTER 6 NOTES
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1. if you stood pledge. The first unit of this chapter, ending with verse 5, is another of the Mentor’s pragmatic admonitions to the young man—in this instance, not to guarantee loans for others, an imprudent act that could easily lead one to financial ruin.
2. mouth’s sayings, / . . . mouth’s sayings. The characteristic pattern of biblical poetry would be to use a synonymous phrase in the second verset instead of the selfsame words. In fact, the Syriac translation reads for the second verset “by the word of your lips,” and that may well have been the original version.
3. escape. Literally, “be saved” (in a physical, not spiritual, sense).
go grovel, and pester your fellow man. The advice proffered is practical though scarcely edifying: if you have been foolish enough to get yourself into this sort of fix, use whatever means you can, even if they are humiliating or unpleasant, to extricate yourself from your obligation.
5. hunter. The Masoretic Text reads miyad, “from a hand.” This translation follows the Septuagint, which used a Hebrew text that seems to have had mitsayad, “from a hunter.”
9. How long, O sluggard, will you lie there. The lazybones sprawled inert on his couch is of course a sharp counterpoint to the ants scurrying about to gather their food, with no need of a taskmaster to urge them on.
11. your privation will come like a wayfarer. The inevitable consequence of the sluggard’s unwillingness to bestir himself and provide for his own needs is destitution. The term used here for poverty, reish, is relatively uncommon, and may derive from the verbal stem y-r-sh, which can mean to take over someone else’s possessions (hence the translation choice of “privation”). “Wayfarer” represents the Hebrew mehalekh, which means “one who walks about.” The most probable reference is to a passerby or vagabond who breaks into an unprotected house.
a shield-bearing man. This would be an intensification, as is the general case for parallel terms in the second verset, of “wayfarer,” probably referring to an armed brigand.
12. crooked mouth. While the phrase indicates perverted speech, it also launches the pattern of distorted body parts that is continued in the next line.
13. eyes . . . feet, / . . . fingers. These gestures are evidently expressions of attempted seduction or deception, but as they are catalogued, they clearly represent the worthless fellow as someone who makes himself look grotesque.
16. Six things . . . / seven. This numerical pattern—six, or indeed seven, and elsewhere, three, or indeed four—is used several times in Proverbs and occasionally in the Prophets. The miscellaneous character of the list accords with the miscellaneous character of this whole unit, which runs from verse 12 through verse 19.
17–18. eyes . . . tongue, / . . . hands, . . . heart . . . / feet. These lines pick up the use of body parts in verses 12 and 13 to create a small catalogue of immoral acts and stances, each associated with the agency of a particular physical organ or member.
20. Keep, my son, your father’s command. The unit that begins here, a warning against the dangers of adultery, is relatively long and has a formal exordium that takes up four verses (20–23). The adding of mother to father points to a solid conjugal couple contrasting to adulterers.
22. walk about . . . / lie down . . . / wake. The language alludes to Deuteronomy 6:7, where it is the words of God’s teaching (not, as here, that of human mentors) that must be remembered at all times.
23. stern rebukes. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “rebukes of reproof,” but, as elsewhere, the effect of joining synonyms in the construct state is an intensification, hence “stern.”
24. your fellow man’s wife. The Masoretic Text reads ʾeshet raʾ, “wife of an evil man,” but the phrase is semantically problematic. The Septuagint has reʿa (merely a difference of vocalization), “fellow man,” which is quite convincing as the authentic version.
smooth tongue. Literally, “smoothness of tongue.” The clear reference is to her seductive words.
25. covet. The Hebrew verb probably has the force here of “lust,” but it is the same verb used in the Decalogue in the prohibition of adultery, and so it is appropriate to follow the translation choice adopted for the Decalogue.
her eyelids. Here the common poetic synonym for “eyes” has special relevance—the fluttering of the eyelids seductively.
26. a whore’s price . . . a loaf of bread. The expression is no doubt hyperbolic (in Genesis 38 Tamar stipulates a kid—rather more valuable than a loaf of bread—as the price of her sexual favors): if you want sex, you could get it from a whore for mere pennies, whereas the real cost of sex with a married woman will be the destruction of your life (“a married woman stalks a precious life”). The poet is not suggesting that the adulteress is a deliberate killer, but rather that her cheating on her spouse will bring down the murderous wrath of her husband (verses 34 and 35) on her lover.
27. scoop fire into his lap. Pointedly, “lap” is linked by metonymy to the sexual organ. Fox neatly notes that “the line’s assonance and alliteration are evocative of the hissing and crackling of fire”—hayaḥeteh ʾish ʾesh beḥeiqo.
29. who comes to bed with. Literally, “who comes into.” The idiom, however, refers not just to penetration but to the full sexual act, with the usual implication of a man’s having sex with a woman for the first time.
not go scot-free. Literally, “not be innocent.”
30. Let one not scorn the thief. The two verses here on the thief seem to interrupt the disquisition on the dangers of adultery, which resumes with verse 32. The connection may be in the next verset, “to fill his belly [literally, “throat” or “appetite”] when he hungers” and the prospect of impoverishment invoked in the next line: the thief takes what does not belong to him because he is hungry, a more elemental appetite than the lust that impels the adulterer, who takes a woman who is not his; the likely consequence for the thief is being stripped of all he possesses, whereas the adulterer’s fate is shame, possible destitution (if the husband demands damages), and even death (if the husband’s jealous rage turns lethal).
32. adultery with a woman. The redundant “with a woman” in the Hebrew creates metrical balance with the second verset, but the word also brings us back to the evocation of the seductive married woman in verses 24–26.
senseless. Literally, “lacking heart,” the heart here figuring as the seat of reason.
34. jealousy turns into a man’s wrath. Literally, “jealousy is a man’s wrath.”