Proverbs

My son, listen to my wisdom; bow your ear to my understanding;

in order to keep discretion, [that] your lips may keep knowledge.

For the lips of a strange woman drip honey, and her palate [is] smoother than oil;

but afterward she [is as] bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.

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

lest you should meditate on the path of life, her tracks are movable; you cannot know [them].

And now hear me, O sons, and do not depart from the words of my mouth.

Remove your ways far from her, and do not come near the door of her house,

lest you give your honor to others and your years to the cruel;

that strangers not be filled [with] your strength, and your labors [be] in the house of a stranger;

and you moan when your end [comes], when your flesh and muscle are eaten away,

and say, How I have hated instruction, and my heart despised correction;

and I have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor bowed down my ears to those who taught me!

I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.

Drink waters out of your own cistern, and running waters out of your own well.

Should your overflowing spring he scattered abroad [as] rivers of waters in the streets.

Let them be only your own, and not strangers' with you.

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

[Like] the loving deer and pleasant doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times, and be ravished always with her love.

And why will you, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?

His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be held with the cords of his sin.

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