“Why should you be infatuated, my son, with a loose woman”: This verse is expressed as a “Why?” rhetorical question by Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation. Others prefer a negative command. “Infatuated” translates the same word as used in verse 19, but here the sense of a foolish and temporary attachment is correct. For “my son” see the comments on 1.8. “Loose woman” is as in 5.3. If the line is translated as a question, we may say, for example, “My son, why should you get involved with an adulterous woman?” or “Why, my son, should you want to have an affair with someone else’s wife?” New Jerusalem Bible says “Why be seduced, my son, by someone else’s wife?” :We may also translate as a negative command; for example, “My son, don’t make love to another man’s wife.”

“Embrace the bosom of an adventuress?”: “Embrace” means to hold in the arms, hug, clasp to the breast. “Bosom”, as used elsewhere in 17.23 and 21.14, refers to bribes and secrecy. Here it refers to the breasts and represents the sexual attraction of the woman. “Adventuress” translates the word for a foreign female as used in 2.16 and matches the term in the first line that refers to an adulterous woman. Bible en français courant translates verse 20 as “My son, why should you desire another man’s wife? Why should you look for pleasure in a woman who is not your own?”

A translation of the verse highlighting the terms that are parallel with the previous verse says, “Son, don’t be thinking of another man’s wife and of handling her breasts.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Proverbs. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2000. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .