Proverbs 7:18

As she had made it entertaining to the senses of seeing and feeling, it being showy and gaudy, soft and easy; so to the sense of smelling; and all to provoke lust, and draw into her embraces; by censing it with incense, as Donesh in Jarchi; or by sprinkling {s} a liquor, made of the following spices, on the head, posts, and sides of the bed, to remove all ill scents, and make it more acceptable; so the Targum, Vulgate Latin, Septuagint, and all the Oriental versions, render it, "I sprinkled my bed": or, it may be, by suffumigation, which women are said to use with their garments and bed clothes {t}. Even this the harlot did, with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon; all odorous, and of a sweet smell: Horace {u} speaks of the anointed beds of such persons; and of the above spices ointments were made, with which the harlot's bed might be perfumed. Cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, are reckoned among the wares of Babylon, or the church of Rome, Revelation 18:13. {s} Plin. Nat. Hist. l. 13. c. 1. {t} Clemens Alex. Paedagog. l. 2. c. 8. p. 177. {u} "Uctis cubilibus pellicum", Epod. Ode. 5. v. 69, 70. Proverbs 7:18 Ver. 18. Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning,....

7:6-27 Here is an affecting example of the danger of youthful lusts. It is a history or a parable of the most instructive kind. Will any one dare to venture on temptations that lead to impurity, after Solomon has set before his eyes in so lively and plain a manner, the danger of even going near them? Then is he as the man who would dance on the edge of a lofty rock, when he has just seen another fall headlong from the same place. The misery of self-ruined sinners began in disregard to God's blessed commands. We ought daily to pray that we may be kept from running into temptation, else we invite the enemies of our souls to spread snares for us. Ever avoid the neighbourhood of vice. Beware of sins which are said to be pleasant sins. They are the more dangerous, because they most easily gain the heart, and close it against repentance. Do nothing till thou hast well considered the end of it. Were a man to live as long as Methuselah, and to spend all his days in the highest delights sin can offer, one hour of the anguish and tribulation that must follow, would far outweigh them.

Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning,.... Taking him by the hand, and pulling him along, she says, "come"; let us not stand here in the streets, but let us go within, and after supper to bed; and there enjoy ourselves, till "inebriated" with love, as the word (w) signifies: so the poet (x) speaks of "ebrios ocellos", "eyes drunk", that is, with love; and so continue till the morning light, the night being the fittest season for those works of darkness: this expresses the insatiableness of her lust; let us solace ourselves with loves; mutual love, not lawful, but criminal; more properly lusts; denoting the abundance of it, and the pleasure promised in it, which is very short lived, and bitterness in the end. (w) "inebriemur", Pagninus, Montanus, Mercerus, Piscator, Gejerus, Michaelis, Schultens. (x) Catullus de Acme, Ephesians 43. c. 11.

Verse 18. - Let us take our fill of love; let us intoxicate ourselves ( inebriemur , Vulgate); as though the reason were overthrown by sensual passion as much as by drunkenness. The bride in Song of Solomon 1:2 says, "Thy love is better than, wine" (see Proverbs 5:15, 19 , and note there), Proverbs 7:18

These verses remind us of expressions in the Canticles. There, at Proverbs 4:14 , are found the three names for spicery as here, and one sees that מר אהלים are not to be connected genitively: there are three things, accented as in the title-verse Proverbs 1:3 . The myrrh, מר (Balsamodendron myrrha), belongs, like the frankincense, to the species of the Amyris, which is an exotic in Palestine not less than with us; the aromatic quality in them does not arise from the flowers or leaves, so that Sol 1:13 leads us to think of a bunch of myrrh, but from the resin oozing through the bark (Gummi myrrhae or merely myrrha), consisting of bright glossy red or golden-yellow grains more or less transparent. אהלים (used by Balaam, Numbers 24:6 ) is the Semitic Old-Indian name of the alo, agaru or aguru; the aromatic quality is in the wood of the Aquilaria agallocha, especially its root (agallochum or lignum aloes) dried in the earth - in more modern use and commerce the inspissated juice of its leaves. קנּמון is κιννάμωμον (like מר, a Semitic word (Note: Myrrh has its name מר from the bitterness of its taste, and קנם appears to be a secondary formation from קנה, whence קנה, reed; cf. the names of the cinnamon, cannella, Fr. cannelle. Cinnamum (κίνναμον) is only a shorter form for cinnamomum. Pliny, Hist. Nat. xii. 19 (42), uses both forms indiscriminately.) that had come to the Greeks through the Phoenicians), the cinnamon, i.e., the inner rind of the Laurus cinnamomum.

The myrrh is native to Arabia; the alo, as its name denotes, is Indian; the cinnamon in like manner came through Indian travellers from the east coast of Africa and Ceylon (Taprobane). All these three spices are drugs, i.e., are dry apothecaries' wares; but we are not on that account to conclude that she perfumed (Hitzig) her bed with spices, viz., burnt in a censer, an operation which, according to Sol 3:6, would rather be designated קטּרתּי. The verb נוּף (only here as Kal) signifies to lift oneself up (vid., under Psalm 48:13), and transitively to raise and swing hither and thither ( equals חניף); here with a double accusative, to besprinkle anything out of a vessel moved hither and thither. According to this sense, we must think of the three aromas as essences in the state of solution; cf. Exodus 30:22-33; Esther 2:12. Hitzig's question, "Who would sprinkle bed-sheets with perfumed and thus impure water?" betrays little knowledge of the means by which even at the present day clean linen is made fragrant. The expression רוה דּודים sounds like שׁכר דודים, Sol 5:1, although there דודים is probably the voc., and not, as here, the accus.; רוה is the Kal of רוּה, Proverbs 5:19, and signifies to drink something copiously in full draughts.

[Reformed Biblical] Passing through the street near her corner; and he went the way to her house, 9. In the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night: 10. And, beholds there met him a woman with the attire of an harlot, and subtil of heart. 11. (She is loud and stubborn; her feet abide not in her house: 12. Now is she without, now in the streets, and lieth in wait at every corner.) 13. So she caught him, and kissed him, and with an impudent face said unto him, 14. ‘I have peaces-offerings with me; this day have I paid my vows. 15. Therefore came I forth to meet thee, diligently to seek thy face, and I have found thee. 16. I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry, with carved works, with fine linen of Egypt. 17. I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. 18. Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning: let us solace ourselves with loves. 19. For the goodman is not at home, he is gone a long journey: 20. He bath taken a bag of money with him, and will come home at the day appointed.' 21. With her much fair speech she caused him to yield; with the flattering of her lips she forced him. 22. He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks: 23. Till a dart strike through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life. Solomon paints the deadly snare of the strange woman with a master's hand, and with exquisite fidelity of colouring. A young man without understanding (Chap. i. 4, 22 ; xiii