Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Young Man Void of Understanding
Proverbs 7:1-27
1 My son, keep my words. Lay up my commandments within you. · WEB
The father stops arguing and tells a story he watched through a window, and every detail in it is a decision the young man made before he met anyone.
The chapter changes method. Chapters 5 and 6 argued; this one narrates, and the narrator places himself at a window looking through the lattice. What follows is presented as something observed, which gives it a different kind of authority. The reader is put beside a man watching.
The young man is described before the woman appears, and this is where the chapter does its real work. He is among the simple, void of understanding. He is passing through the street near her corner — he knows which corner it is. He went the way to her house. And the time is given four ways in one verse: twilight, evening, the middle of the night, darkness. Nothing has happened to him yet, and every choice that matters has already been made. He picked the street, the direction and the hour.
Only then does she appear. Her approach is drawn with the same economy: dressed for it, loud and defiant, feet that do not stay in her house, lurking at every corner. And the first thing she says is religious. Sacrifices of peace offerings are with me. Today I have paid my vows. A peace offering had to be eaten the same day, so she is inviting him to a meal left over from an act of worship. She has been to the sanctuary and she is using it as the opening line.
The rest of her speech is a catalogue of preparation — tapestry from Egypt, myrrh and aloes and cinnamon — followed by the one piece of information that makes it possible: my husband isn't at home. He has gone on a long journey. She even gives the date of his return. The whole thing is planned, priced and timetabled, and the young man contributes nothing to it but arriving.
The three images at the end run in a deliberate order. He follows as an ox goes to the slaughter, which walks willingly and does not understand. As a fool stepping into a noose, who understands and does it anyway. And as a bird hurries to the snare, and doesn't know that it will cost his life — hurrying, eager, and wrong about the price. The chapter's verdict is in that last clause. He is not described as choosing death. He is described as not knowing what it costs, having taken care not to be in a position to find out.
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