25 Don't lust after her beauty in your heart, neither let her captivate you with her eyelids.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
Eyelids - Possibly pointing to the Eastern custom of painting the eyes on the outside with kohl so as to give brightness and languishing expression.
Neither let her take thee with her eye-lids - It is a very general custom in the East to paint the eye-lids. I have many Asiatic drawings in which this is expressed. They have a method of polishing the eyes with a preparation of antimony, so that they appear with an indescribable lustre; or, as one who mentions the fact from observation, "Their eyes appear to be swimming in bliss."
Lust not after her beauty in thy heart; neither let her take thee with her (m) eyelids.
(m) With her wanton looks and gesture.
Lust not after her beauty in thine heart,.... Do not look upon it with the eye, nor dwell upon it in the thought; the one will lead on to and kindle last in the heart, and the other will cherish it and blow it up into a flame; and lust thus conceived and nourished in the heart is no other than committing adultery, Matthew 5:28;
neither let her take thee with her eyelids; let her not take thee from instruction with them, so Aben Ezra, from attending to that; or let her not take thy wisdom from thee, so Jarchi; or rather let her not take thee as in a net, with the sparkling of her eyes, with the wanton and amorous glances of them; so the Syriac version, "let her not captivate thee", &c. which applied to the antichristian church, may signify the outward pomp and grandeur of it, its pretensions to antiquity, to the apostolic see, to infallibility, miracles, great devotion, &c. which are taking to men, and are the Circean cup with which she bewitches and allures, Revelation 17:4. The Targum is,
"let her not seduce thee,'' &c.
One of the cautions of this instruction, avoid alluring beauty.
take--or, "ensnare."
eyelids--By painting the lashes, women enhanced beauty.
The proaemium of these twelve proverbial discourses is now at an end. Wisdom herself begins striking the note of the Decalogue:
25 Long not for her beauty in thy heart,
And let her not catch thee with her eyelids;
26 Because for a harlot one cometh down to a piece of bread,
And a man's wife lieth in wait for a precious soul.
The warning 25a is in the spirit of the "thou shalt not covet," Exodus 20:17, and the ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ αὑτοῦ, Matthew 5:28, of the Preacher on the Mount. The Talmudic proverb הרהודי עבירה קשו מעבירה (Joma 29a) means only that the imagination of the sinful act exhausts the body even more than the act itself. The warning, "let her not catch thee with her eyelids," refers to her (the adulteress's) coquettish ogling and amorous winking. In the reason added, beginning with כּי בעד־ (thus it is to be punctuated), there is the appositional connection אשּׁה זונה, Gesen. 113; the idea of זונה goes over into 26b. "לחם כּכּר [ = כּרכּר, R. kr, to round, vid., at Genesis 49:5], properly a circle of bread, is a small round piece of bread, such as is still baked in Italy (pagnotta) and in the East (Arab. ḳurṣ), here an expression for the smallest piece" (Fl.). בּעד (constr. of בּעד), as Job 2:4; Isaiah 32:14, is used in the sense of ὑπέρ, pro, and with עד there is connected the idea of the coming down to this low point. Ewald, Bertheau explain after the lxx, τιμὴ γὰρ πόρνης ὅση καὶ ἑνὸς ἄρτου, γυνὴ δὲ ἀνδρῶν τιμίας ψυχὰς ἀγρεύει. But nothing is said here of price (reward); the parallelism is synonymous, not antithetic: he is doubly threatened with loss who enters upon such a course. The adulterer squanders his means (Proverbs 29:3) to impoverishment (vid., the mention of a loaf of bread in the description of poverty 1-Samuel 2:36), and a man's wife (but at the same time seeking converse with another) makes a prey of a precious soul; for whoever consents to adulterous converse with her, loses not perhaps his means, but certainly freedom, purity, dignity of soul, yea, his own person. צוּד comprehends - as צידון, fisher's town [Zidon], Arab. ṣyâd, hunter and fisher, show - all kinds of hunting, but in Hebr. is used only of the hunting of wild beasts. The root-meaning (cf. צדיּה) is to spy, to seize.
Eye - lids - With her wanton glances,
*More commentary available at chapter level.