Discovery BoxProverbs 9:14-17 
Context9:14 So she sits at the door of her house,
on a seat at the highest point of the city,
9:15 calling out 1 to those who are passing by her 2 in the way, 3
who go straight 4 on their way.
9:16 “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here,”
she says to those who lack understanding. 5
9:17 “Stolen waters 6 are sweet,
and food obtained in secret 7 is pleasant!”
1 tn The infinitive construct “calling out” functions epexegetically in the sentence, explaining how the previous action was accomplished.
2 tn The term “her” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is supplied for the sake of clarity and smoothness.
3 tn The noun is a genitive of location after the construct participle. Its parallel word is also an adverbial accusative of location.
4 tn The participle modifies the participle in the first colon. To describe the passers-by in this context as those “who go straight” means that they are quiet and unwary.
5 tn This expression is almost identical to v. 4, with the exception of the addition of conjunctions in the second colon: “and the lacking of understanding and she says to him.” The parallel is deliberate, of course, showing the competing appeals for those passing by.
6 sn The offer is not wine and meat (which represented wisdom), but water that is stolen. The “water” will seem sweeter than wine because it is stolen – the idea of getting away with something exciting appeals to the baser instincts. In Proverbs the water imagery was introduced earlier in 5:15-19 as sexual activity with the adulteress, which would seem at the moment more enjoyable than learning wisdom. Likewise bread will be drawn into this analogy in 30:20. So the “calling out” is similar to that of wisdom, but what is being offered is very different.
7 tn Heb “bread of secrecies.” It could mean “bread [eaten in] secret places,” a genitive of location; or it could mean “bread [gained through] secrets,” a genitive of source, the secrecies being metonymical for theft. The latter makes a better parallelism in this verse, for bread (= sexually immoral behavior) gained secretly would be like stolen water.
