Proverbs 5

¹ My son, be attentive to my wisdom, incline your ear to my understanding;

² that you may keep discretion, and your lips may guard knowledge.

³ For the lips of a loose woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil;

⁴ but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.

⁵ Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol;

⁶ she does not take heed to the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it.

⁷ And now, O sons, listen to me, and do not depart from the words of my mouth.

⁸ Keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house;

⁹ lest you give your honor to others and your years to the merciless;

¹⁰ lest strangers take their fill of your strength, and your labors go to the house of an alien;

¹¹ and at the end of your life you groan, when your flesh and body are consumed,

¹² and you say, "How I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof!

¹³ I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors.

¹⁴ I was at the point of utter ruin in the assembled congregation."

¹⁵ Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.

¹⁶ Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?

¹⁷ Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you.

¹⁸ Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth,

¹⁹ a lovely hind, a graceful doe. Let her affection fill you at all times with delight, be infatuated always with her love.

²⁰ Why should you be infatuated, my son, with a loose woman and embrace the bosom of an adventuress?

²¹ For a man's ways are before the eyes of the LORD, and he watches all his paths.

²² The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is caught in the toils of his sin.

²³ He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly he is lost.