Proverbs

5 My son, listen to my wisdom,

bend your ear to my insight,

2* To be careful of sound judgment

and have your lips keep knowledge;

3* For a stranger woman’s lips drip virgin honey

and her throat is smoother than oil,

4 But her aftermath is bitter as wormwood,

sharper than a two-edged sword.

5* Her feet are going down to death,

she plants her steps in the world below.

6* That she may not heed the path to life,

her roads wander about, she does not know how.

7 But now, sons, listen to me

and do not deviate from what my mouth tells:

8 Make your course far from her,

do not come near the door of her house,

9** For fear you should give your fortune to others

and your years to a cruel man;

10 For fear strangers should consume your strength at will

and your pains come into a foreigner’s house;

11 And in the sequel you should repent,

when your flesh and muscle give out,

12 And say “How I did hate instruction

and my heart despised admonition,

13 And I did not obey my preceptors

nor bend my ear to my teachers!

14 I was within a tittle of coming to the utmost harm

in the midst of assembly and congregation.”

15 Drink water out of your own cistern

and the flow out of the middle of your own well.

16 Your fountains would scatter to the street,

rills of water through the squares!

17 Let them be for you alone

and nothing for strangers with you.

18 Be your springhead blessed,

and have joy out of the wife of your youth.

19 Doe of love, ibex of grace,

her breasts shall refresh you at every time,

with love of her you shall be always maddened.

20 And why, son, should you be maddened with a stranger

and embrace a foreigner’s bosom?

21 For a man’s courses face Jehovah’s eyes,

who observes all the roads he takes.

22 His guilt will clutch him, the wrong-doer,

and he will be caught in the cords of his sin.

23* Such a one will die for lack of discipline

and run into ruin by his great ignorance.