[1] My son, attend to my wisdom, and bow your ear to my understanding:
[2] That you may regard discretion, and that your lips may keep knowledge. ¶
[3] For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:
[4] But her end is 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 ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that you can not know them.
[7] Hear me now therefore, O you children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.
[8] Remove your way far from her, and come not near the door of her house:
[9] Lest you give your honor to others, and your years to the cruel:
[10] Lest strangers be filled with your wealth; and your labors be in the house of a stranger;
[11] And you mourn at the last, when your flesh and your body are consumed,
[12] And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;
[13] And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to them that instructed me!
[14] I was almost in all evil in the middle of the congregation and assembly. ¶
[15] Drink waters out of your own cistern, and running waters out of your own well.
[16] Let your fountains be dispersed abroad, and 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] Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy you at all times; and be you ravished always with her love.
[20] And 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 ponders all his goings. ¶
[22] His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be held with the cords of his sins.
[23] He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.
