1 My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my intelligence;
2 that thou may keep council and that thy lips may conserve knowledge.
3 For the lips of the strange woman drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil,
4 But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword.
5 Her feet go down to death, her steps uphold Sheol,
6 lest thou should ponder the path of life, her ways are unstable; thou shalt not know them.
7 Hear me now therefore, O ye sons, and do not depart from the words of my mouth.
8 Remove thy way far from her, and do not come near the door of her house,
9 lest thou give thine honour unto others and thy years unto the cruel,
10 lest strangers be filled with thy wealth, and thy labours be in the house of a stranger,
11 and thou mourn at the last when thy flesh and thy body are consumed
12 and say, How have I hated chastening and my heart despised reproof
13 and have not obeyed the voice of those who chastened me, nor inclined my ear to those that instructed me!
14 I have been in almost every kind of evil, in the midst of society and of the congregation.
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 thy waters in the streets.
17 Let them be only thine own and not for strangers with thee.
18 Thy fountain shall 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, without eyes for anyone else.
20 And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a woman belonging to someone else, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?
21 For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he weighs all his goings.
22 His own iniquities shall take hold of the wicked, and he shall be imprisoned with the cords of his sins.
23 He shall die because he did not submit to chastening; and due to the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.