Proverbs 5

1. My son, attend unto my wisdom and bow thine ear to my understanding,

2. that thou mayest have regard for discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.

3. For the lips of a strange woman drip as a honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil;

4. but her end is as bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword.

5. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.

6. Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are wandering, that thou canst not know them.

7. Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.

8. Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house,

9. lest thou give thine honor unto others, and thy years unto the cruel,

10. lest strangers be filled with thy wealth and thy labors be in the house of a stranger,

11. and thou mourn at the last when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,

12. and thou sayest, “How have I hated instruction and my heart despised reproof;

13. and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!

14. I was almost in total evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.”

15. Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.

16. Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets.

17. Let them be only thine own, and not for strangers with thee.

18. Let thy fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.

19. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times, and be thou ravished always with her love.

20. And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?

21. For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and He pondereth all his doings.

22. His own iniquities shall entrap the wicked himself, and he shall be held by the cords of his sins.

23. He shall die without instruction, and in the greatness of his folly shall he go astray.