“... 4Q184 takes phrases out of Proverbs that assure protection against the evil woman through righteousness and contradicts them. If you “walk in paths of righteousness…you will not stumble”; she overtakes him to “make him stumble,” so he “does not walk…in the tracks of uprightness.” Also, if you “keep your father’s commands,” you will be pro- tected from “an evil woman,” from a “smooth tongue”; here she stops him “from keeping the command” with her “smooth words” and her “eyelashes”. Again, the important difference is the identity of the victims. If they were all unwitting boys, there would be nothing amiss about this description. But the characters here are all exactly those who, by the standards of Proverbs have succeeded, and should be inviolable. But they are not. There is nothing in Proverbs that explains such a change. To take up Proverbs so clearly and then blatantly contradict it, to show that wisdom is not as powerful as wickedness is a bold move that requires explanation, if it is not simply an authorial invention . ...”