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.
