[1] MY son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding:
[2] That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy 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 twoedged sword.
[5] Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.
[6] Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.
[7] Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.
[8] Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh 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 instruction, and my heart despised reproof;
[13] And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!
[14] I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.
[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 waters in the streets.
[17] Let them be only thine own, and not strangers’ with thee.
[18] Let thy fountain 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.
[20] And why wilt thou, 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 pondereth all his goings.
[22] ¶ His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.
[23] He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.
