Numbers 5:20

5:20 But if you ¹  have gone astray while under your husband’s authority, and if you have defiled yourself and some man other than your husband has had sexual relations with you….” ² 

Proverbs 5:4-11

5:4 but in the end ³  she is bitter ⁴  as wormwood, ⁵ 

sharp as a two-edged ⁶  sword.

5:5 Her feet go down to death;

her steps lead straight to the grave. ⁷ 

5:6 Lest ⁸  she should make level the path leading to life, ⁹ 

her paths are unstable ¹⁰  but she does not know it. ¹¹ 

5:7 So now, children, ¹²  listen to me;

do not turn aside from the words I speak. ¹³ 

5:8 Keep yourself ¹⁴  far ¹⁵  from her,

and do not go near the door of her house,

5:9 lest you give your vigor ¹⁶  to others

and your years to a cruel person,

5:10 lest strangers devour ¹⁷  your strength, ¹⁸ 

and your labor ¹⁹  benefit ²⁰  another man’s house.

5:11 And at the end of your life ²¹  you will groan ²² 

when your flesh and your body are wasted away. ²³ 

Ecclesiastes 7:26

7:26 I discovered this: ²⁴ 

More bitter than death is the kind of ²⁵  woman ²⁶  who is like a hunter’s snare; ²⁷ 

her heart is like a hunter’s net and her hands are like prison chains.

The man who pleases God escapes her,

but the sinner is captured by her.

Romans 6:21

6:21 So what benefit ²⁸  did you then reap ²⁹  from those things that you are now ashamed of? For the end of those things is death.

Romans 6:2

6:2 Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Colossians 2:16

2:16 Therefore do not let anyone judge you with respect to food or drink, or in the matter of a feast, new moon, or Sabbath days –

Hebrews 10:26-30

10:26 For if we deliberately keep on sinning after receiving the knowledge of the truth, no further sacrifice for sins is left for us, ³⁰  10:27 but only a certain fearful expectation of judgment and a fury ³¹  of fire that will consume God’s enemies. ³²  10:28 Someone who rejected the law of Moses was put to death ³³  without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. ³⁴  10:29 How much greater punishment do you think that person deserves who has contempt for ³⁵  the Son of God, and profanes ³⁶  the blood of the covenant that made him holy, ³⁷  and insults the Spirit of grace? 10:30 For we know the one who said, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” ³⁸  and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” ³⁹ 

Hebrews 10:2

10:2 For otherwise would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers would have been purified once for all and so have ⁴⁰  no further consciousness of sin?

Hebrews 2:10

2:10 For it was fitting for him, for whom and through whom all things exist, ⁴¹  in bringing many sons to glory, to make the pioneer ⁴²  of their salvation perfect through sufferings.

[5:20]  ¹ tn The pronoun is emphatic – “but you, if you have gone astray.”

[5:20]  ² tn This is an example of the rhetorical device known as aposiopesis, or “sudden silence.” The sentence is broken off due to the intensity or emphasis of the moment. The reader is left to conclude what the sentence would have said.

[5:4]  ³ sn Heb “her end” (so KJV). D. Kidner notes that Proverbs does not allow us to forget that there is an afterward (Proverbs [TOTC], 65).

[5:4]  ⁴ sn The verb “to be bitter” (מָרַר, marar) describes things that are harmful and destructive for life, such as the death of the members of the family of Naomi (Ruth 1:20) or finding water that was undrinkable (Exod 15:22-27). The word indicates that the sweet talking will turn out badly.

[5:4]  ⁵ tn The Hebrew term translated “wormwood” refers to the aromatic plant that contrasts with the sweetness of honey. Some follow the LXX and translate it as “gall” (cf. NIV). The point is that there was sweetness when the tryst had alluring glamour, but afterward it had an ugly ring (W. G. Plaut, Proverbs, 74).

[5:4]  ⁶ sn The Hebrew has “like a sword of [two] mouths,” meaning a double-edged sword that devours/cuts either way. There is no movement without damage. There may be a wordplay here with this description of the “sword with two mouths,” and the subject of the passage being the words of her mouth which also have two sides to them. The irony is cut by the idiom.

[5:5]  ⁷ tn The term שְׁאוֹל (she’ol, “grave”) is paralleled to “death,” so it does not refer here to the realm of the unblessed.

[5:6]  ⁸ tn The particle פֶּן (pen) means “lest” (probably from “for the aversion of”). It occurs this once, unusually, preceding the principal clause (BDB 814 s.v.). It means that some action has been taken to avert or avoid what follows. She avoids the path of life, albeit ignorantly.

[5:6]  ⁹ tn Heb “the path of life.” The noun חַיִּים (khayyim, “of life”) functions as a genitive of direction (“leading to”).

[5:6]  ¹⁰ sn The verb נוּעַ (nua’) means “to quiver; to wave; to waver; to tremble”; cf. KJV “her ways are moveable”; NAB “her paths will ramble”; NLT “She staggers down a crooked trail.” The ways of the adulterous woman are unstable (BDB 631 s.v.).

[5:6]  ¹¹ sn The sadder part of the description is that this woman does not know how unstable her life is, or how uneven. However, Thomas suggests that it means, “she is not tranquil.” See D. W. Thomas, “A Note on לא תדע in Proverbs v 6,” JTS 37 (1936): 59.

[5:7]  ¹² tn Heb “sons.”

[5:7]  ¹³ tn Heb “the words of my mouth” (so KJV, NAB, NRSV).

[5:8]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “your way.”

[5:8]  ¹⁵ sn There is a contrast made between “keep far away” (הַרְחֵק, harkheq) and “do not draw near” (וְאַל־תִּקְרַב, vÿ’al-tiqrav).

[5:9]  ¹⁶ sn The term הוֹד (hod, “vigor; splendor; majesty”) in this context means the best time of one’s life (cf. NIV “your best strength”), the full manly vigor that will be wasted with licentiousness. Here it is paralleled by “years,” which refers to the best years of that vigor, the prime of life. Life would be ruined by living this way, or the revenge of the woman’s husband would cut it short.

[5:10]  ¹⁷ tn Or “are sated, satisfied.”

[5:10]  ¹⁸ tn The word כֹּחַ (coakh, “strength”) refers to what laborious toil would produce (so a metonymy of cause). Everything that this person worked for could become the property for others to enjoy.

[5:10]  ¹⁹ tn “labor, painful toil.”

[5:10]  ²⁰ tn The term “benefit” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity and smoothness.

[5:11]  ²¹ tn Heb “at your end.”

[5:11]  ²² tn The form is the perfect tense with the vav consecutive; it is equal to a specific future within this context.

[5:11]  ²³ tn Heb “in the finishing of your flesh and your body.” The construction uses the Qal infinitive construct of כָּלָה (calah) in a temporal clause; the verb means “be complete, at an end, finished, spent.”

[7:26]  ²⁴ tn The word “this” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for smoothness.

[7:26]  ²⁵ tn The phrase “kind of” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for clarity (see the following note on the word “woman”).

[7:26]  ²⁶ tn The article on הָאִשָּׁה (ha’ishah) functions in a particularizing sense (“the kind of woman”) rather than in a generic sense (i.e., “women”).

[7:26]  ²⁷ tn Heb “is snares.” The plural form מְצוֹדִים (mÿtsodim, from the noun I מָצוֹד, matsod, “snare”) is used to connote either intensity, repeated or habitual action, or moral characteristic. For the function of the Hebrew plural, see IBHS 120-21 §7.4.2. The term II מָצוֹד “snare” is used in a concrete sense in reference to the hunter’s snare or net, but in a figurative sense of being ensnared by someone (Job 19:6; Prov 12:12; Eccl 7:26).

[6:21]  ²⁸ tn Grk “fruit.”

[6:21]  ²⁹ tn Grk “have,” in a tense emphasizing their customary condition in the past.

[10:26]  ³⁰ tn Grk “is left,” with “for us” implied by the first half of the verse.

[10:27]  ³¹ tn Grk “zeal,” recalling God’s jealous protection of his holiness and honor (cf. Exod 20:5).

[10:27]  ³² tn Grk “the enemies.”

[10:28]  ³³ tn Grk “dies.”

[10:28]  ³⁴ sn An allusion to Deut 17:6.

[10:29]  ³⁵ tn Grk “tramples under foot.”

[10:29]  ³⁶ tn Grk “regarded as common.”

[10:29]  ³⁷ tn Grk “by which he was made holy.”

[10:30]  ³⁸ sn A quotation from Deut 32:35.

[10:30]  ³⁹ sn A quotation from Deut 32:36.

[10:2]  ⁴⁰ tn Grk “the worshipers, having been purified once for all, would have.”

[2:10]  ⁴¹ tn Grk “for whom are all things and through whom are all things.”

[2:10]  ⁴² sn The Greek word translated pioneer is used of a “prince” or leader, the representative head of a family. It also carries nuances of “trailblazer,” one who breaks through to new ground for those who follow him. It is used some thirty-five times in the Greek OT and four times in the NT, always of Christ (Acts 3:15; 5:31; Heb 2:10; 12:2).