 1 My son, listen to my wisdom. Bow your ear to my understanding; 2 in order to keep discretion, that your lips may keep knowledge. 3 For the lips of a strange woman drip honey, and her palate is smoother than oil; 4 but afterward she is as bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two edged sword. 5 Her feet go down to death. Her steps take hold on hell, 6 lest you should meditate on the path of life, her tracks are movable. You cannot know them. 7 Now hear me, O children, and do not depart from the words of my mouth. 8 Remove your ways far from her, and do not come near the door of her house, 9 lest you give your honor to others and your years to the cruel; 10 that strangers not be filled with your strength, and your labors be in the house of a stranger; 11 and you moan when your end comes, when your flesh and muscle are eaten away, 12 and say, How I have hated instruction, and my heart despised correction; 13 and I have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor bowed down my ears to those who taught me. 14 I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly. 15 Drink waters out of your own cistern, and running waters out of your own well. 16 Should your overflowing spring be scattered abroad as rivers of waters in the streets. 17 Let them be only your own, and not strangers' with you. 18 Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of your youth. 19 Like the loving deer and pleasant doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times, and be ravished always with her love. 20 Why will you, 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 watches all his paths. 22 His own iniquities will take the wicked himself and he will be held with the cords of his sin. 23 He will die without instruction. And in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.
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