One Intention Of The Commandment And Torah Is To Keep Him From The Adulterous Woman Who Will Seek To Lead Him Astray (Proverbs 6:24-29).
In contrast with ‘woman wisdom' (e.g. Proverbs 1:20-33; Proverbs 3:13-20) is the ‘strange woman' who will seek to lead him astray. She will speak smooth words and seek to entice him with her beauty and her eyelids. But her way only leads to poverty and judgment.
Once again note the chiasmus:
A To keep you from the evil woman, from the flattery of the stranger's tongue (Proverbs 6:24).
B Do not lust after her beauty in your heart, nor let her take you with her eyelids (Proverbs 6:25)
C For on account of a prostitute/immoral woman a man is brought to a piece of bread, and the adulteress hunts for the precious life (Proverbs 6:26).
B Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? Or can one walk on hot coals, and his feet not be scorched? (Proverbs 6:27-28).
A So he who goes in to his neighbour's wife, whoever touches her will not be unpunished (Proverbs 6:29).
Note that A refers to the evil woman, the female stranger, and the parallel identifies her as the neighbour's wife. In B he must not burn with lust and passion, and in the parallel this is likened to playing with fire. Central is the idea of the consequences.
‘To keep you from the evil woman,
From the flattery (‘smoothness') of the stranger's tongue,
Do not lust after her beauty in your heart,
Nor let her take you with her eyelids.
For on account of a harlot a man is brought to a piece of bread,
And the adulteress hunts for the precious life.'
One of the dangers of dividing up the text under headings is a loss of continuity. The original text, of course, is continuous, as is often the thought, even though chiasms do serve to indicate the subsections. Here Proverbs 6:24 continues on directly from Proverbs 6:23. It is the commandment, the torah and reproofs which were aimed at keeping the young man from the evil woman.
In this case the evil and strange woman is in fact a neighbour's wife (previously she has been a foreign wife, or a prostitute). But like a prostitute her aim is to inveigle the young man into wrongful sexual activity by means of her smooth tongue (her flattery), her sexual beauty, and her fluttering eyelids. She is behaving like a prostitute, and is an adulteress. Like the worthless man she has deceitful lips. To heed her is to play with fire (Proverbs 6:27-28). It is an interesting lesson that in Proverbs the only other reference to a woman's beauty, as opposed to her sexual attractions (Proverbs 5:18-19), is of it as ‘as nothing, vain'. What is seen as far more important is that she fears YHWH (Proverbs 31:30)
‘For on account of a harlot a man is brought to a piece of bread, and the adulteress hunts for the precious life.' The opening clause is literally ‘on account of/by means of a harlot unto/around a loaf of bread'. There are a number of possible interpretations:
1) On account of a prostitute the victim is reduced to poverty, having as a result of his extravagances only a loaf of bread left of all his possessions (compare 1 Samuel 2:36 where an impoverished priest humbles himself for ‘a piece of silver or a loaf of bread', a minimum requirement for survival). Compare Proverbs 5:10-11 which supports this.
2) On account of/by means of a prostitute the victim himself is reduced in value to that of a loaf of bread. That is all he can be seen as worth.
3) On account of having/by means of a prostitute the victim has to pay the cost of a loaf of bread. This is based on a suggested meaning for be‘ad as ‘cost, price', or as meaning ‘exchange for' (compare Job 2:4), but indicates a very low charge for a prostitute. It may, however, be seen as unlikely that someone who could say what Solomon has said previously about prostitutes (Proverbs 2:18-19; Proverbs 5:4-5) would so belittle the cost of going with a prostitute.
The question must be answered by considering the parallel that ‘an adulteress hunts for the precious life'. In other words an adulteress is pictured as hunting down, by her allurements, a man's very life, the most precious thing of all that he possesses. And this because the sentence for adultery was death.
So the thought may be that the harlot ruins a man wealthwise, but an adulteress ruins him totally, taking his very life from him; that a prostitute lowers a man's personal value, but an adulteress ruins him totally, because through death he ceases to have any value; or that a prostitute is cheap by comparison as the adulteress costs him, not a loaf of bread but his very existence (for the penalty for adultery was death).
‘Can a man take fire in his bosom,
And his clothes not be burned?
Or can one walk on hot coals,
And his feet not be scorched?
So he who goes in to his neighbour's wife,
Whoever touches her will not be unpunished.
If a man holds fire against himself, probably in a pot, his clothes will undoubtedly be singed, although the thought might be to postulate an absurdity, a man actually carrying fire in his clothing (the thought being how absurd the man is who engages in adultery). A man who walks on hot coals must expect his feet to be burned. So a man who plays with fire by going in to ‘his neighbour's wife' (the wife of a fellow-Israelite) must certainly expect to be severely punished. It is inevitable.
‘Whoever touches her.' A euphemism for someone who touches her sexually, and has sex with her.