Hebrew Bible and Christian Scriptures

Proverbs 5, 6, and 7 contain sections that the ESV labels as Warning(s) Against Adultery or the Adulteress.  While these passages may indeed point to the avoidance of adultery, I am wondering if the ESV may have labeled them poorly.  My question in this regard comes from the similarities between these passages and Proverbs 9:13-18, which speaks of the “woman Folly.”  Just as wisdom has been personified as a woman, so now is folly, and they are described in very similar ways.  Wisdom sends her young women to call from the highest places in the town “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”  Likewise, Folly herself sits at the door of her house; she takes a seat on the highest places of the town, calling to those who pass by, “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”  Both wisdom and folly invite the simple to their houses, but this is where their similarities end.  Whereas Wisdom is described as industrious and having built her house and prepared it for guests, Folly is simply described as seductive (or full of simpleness) and knowing nothing.  Moreover, while Wisdom offers her own bread and wine and calls people from their simplicity, Folly encourages the stealing of bread and the eating of it in secret.  Her guests are also described as dead and in the depths of sheol.  It seems that Wisdom calls people into insight, a better way of life, while Folly calls people to continue in their simpleness, the path to death.

Now back to the warnings against adultery.  In Proverbs 5:5-6 the adultress is described thus: “her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path of Sheol.”  Simlarly, in 7:27 her house is described as “the way to Sheol, going down to the chambers of death.”  Is it just me, or does this sound familiar?  Death and Sheol were also tied to Folly.  Then listen to 6:23-24: “For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life, to preserve you from the evil woman, from the smooth tongue of the adultress.”  These verses seem to point to the idea that the entirety of the Father’s and Mother’s teaching is meant to preserve the young man from the adultress, an idea that seems to put too much stock on one particular sin unless the adultress is identified with Folly.  If this move is made, then the Father and Mother’s teaching is meant to keep the son from unwise action in all areas of life.

So just who is the adultress in Proverbs?  Is she meant to be a picture of adultresses in general, or could she actually point to the personification of folly?  If the latter, then perhaps the wife of the young man’s youth would be the wisdom imparted to him by his father and mother, and the message is that he must be faithful to that wisdom rather than dabbling in the folly of the world.  This reading may be reinforced by the similar pictures of Wisdom and Folly described above.  Both invite the simple into their homes but to greatly different ends.  The teaching of the Father and Mother serves as a safeguard to the son that he may choose wisdom over folly.