Polyglot Bible: Proverbs: Proverbs 5

This is a synoptic biblical text display of Proverbs chapter 5, presented in four parallel columns: the King James Version (with Strong's concordance numbers interleaved), the Septuagint (Greek LXX), the Masoretic Hebrew (Tanakh), and the Latin Vulgate. The format is a scholar's comparison tool rather than a reading text, intended to allow word-level cross-referencing across manuscript traditions. The chapter's content is a father's extended warning to his son against the "strange woman" (variously rendered as *porne*, meretrix, or זָרָ֑ה depending on tradition) — whose lips drip honeycomb but whose end is "bitter as wormwood" and whose feet "go down to death." The positive counterpart is an equally extended exhortation to fidelity with "the wife of thy youth," cast in a sustained water/fountain metaphor: drink from your own cistern, let your springs be yours alone. The chapter closes with the theological rationale — God observes all human paths, and the wicked are ultimately snared by their own iniquities. The most notable feature for a scholar is where the versions diverge: the Septuagint attributes the danger to *aphrosyne* (folly, an abstraction) rather than to the woman personally in verse 5, and verse 23's LXX rendering has the wicked man "cast out from abundance of his livelihood," which differs markedly from the Hebrew and KJV. Anyone interested in the textual history of this passage — particularly debates about whether the "strange woman" is a moral, social, or religious category — would find this a useful starting point.

Polyglot Bible: Proverbs: Proverbs 5

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