1 My son, pay attention to my wisdom;listen closely to my understanding
2 so that you may maintain discretionand your lips safeguard knowledge.
3 Though the lips of the forbidden woman drip honeyand her words are smoother than oil,
4 in the end she’s as bitter as wormwood and as sharp as a double-edged sword.
5 Her feet go down to death;her steps head straight for Sheol.
6 She doesn’t consider the path of life;she doesn’t know that her ways are unstable.
7 So now, my sons, listen to me,and don’t turn away from the words of my mouth.
8 Keep your way far from her.Don’t go near the door of her house.
9 Otherwise, you will give up your vitality to othersand your years to someone cruel;
10 strangers will drain your resources,and your earnings will end up in a foreigner’s house.
11 At the end of your life, you will lamentwhen your physical body has been consumed,
12 and you will say, “How I hated discipline,and how my heart despised correction.
13 I didn’t obey my teachersor listen closely to my mentors.
14 I am on the verge of complete ruinbefore the entire community.”
15 Drink water from your own cistern,water flowing from your own well.
16 Should your springs flow in the streets,streams of water in the public squares?
17 They should be for you aloneand not for you to share with strangers.
18 Let your fountain be blessed,and take pleasure in the wife of your youth.
19 A loving doe, a graceful fawn —let her breasts always satisfy you; be lost in her love forever.
20 Why, my son, would you be infatuatedwith a forbidden womanor embrace the breast of a stranger?
21 For a man’s ways are before the Lord’s eyes, and He considers all his paths.
22 A wicked man’s iniquities entrap him; he is entangled in the ropes of his own sin.
23 He will die because there is no discipline, and be lost because of his great stupidity.