King James Version · The united kingdom
Proverbs 7
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
My son, keep my words, and lay up my with thee. Keep my , and live; and as the apple of thine eye. Bind them upon thy fingers, write them upon the table of thine . Say unto , Thou art my sister; and call thy kinswoman: That they may keep thee from the strange woman, from the which flattereth with her words. For at the window of my house I looked through my casement, And beheld among the simple ones, I discerned among the youths, a young man void of , Passing through the street near her corner; and he went to her house, In the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night: And, behold, there met him a woman with the attire of an , and subtil of . (She is loud and ; her feet not in her house: Now is she without, now in the streets, and lieth in wait at every corner.) So she caught him, and kissed him, and with an impudent said unto him, I have with me; this day have I payed my . 15Therefore came I forth to meet thee, diligently to seek thy , and I have found thee. I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry, with carved works, with fine linen of . I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. 18Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning: let us solace ourselves with loves. For the goodman is not at home, he is gone a long journey: He hath taken a bag of money with him, and will come home at the day appointed. With her much fair speech she caused him to yield, with the flattering of her she forced him. He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the of the stocks; Till a dart strike through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life. unto me now therefore, O ye children, and attend to the words of my . Let not thine decline to her ways, go not astray in her . For she hath cast down many wounded: yea, many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is to hell, going down to the chambers of .
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · The united kingdom, 1050 BC to 931 BC ›
Saul, David, and Solomon. A rare window when both Egypt and Mesopotamia are weak, which is how a small kingdom in the corridor between them could briefly become a regional power.
- The power vacuum
- This is the whole political explanation for the united kingdom. Egypt is fragmented, Assyria is recovering but still local, the Hittites are gone, and nobody is in a position to object to a strong state in the corridor. It lasts about a century, and Israel's golden age fits exactly inside it.
- Phoenicia
- Tyre under Hiram is the commercial power of the coast, and supplies the cedar, the craftsmen, and the shipping for Solomon's building programme. The alliance is trade, not charity: Israel had grain and a land route, Tyre had timber and ships.
- Egypt
- Weak enough that a pharaoh gives a daughter in marriage to an Israelite king, which is the opposite of Egyptian practice in stronger centuries. Late in the era it recovers under a new house, and Shishak will invade within five years of Solomon's death.
- Further afield
- Greece is still in its dark age but beginning to recover, and will adopt the Phoenician alphabet within a century or two. Carthage is founded by settlers from Tyre by tradition in 814 BC. In the Americas the Olmec centre shifts to La Venta.