| 1 | My child, be attentive to my wisdom; incline your ear to my understanding, |
| 2 | so that you may hold on to prudence, 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 keep straight to the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it. |
| 7 | And now, my child, 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 | or you will give your honor to others, and your years to the merciless, |
| 10 | and strangers will take their fill of your wealth, and your labors will go to the house of an alien; |
| 11 | and at the end of your life you will groan, when your flesh and body are consumed, |
| 12 | and you say, “Oh, 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 | Now I am at the point of utter ruin in the public assembly.” |
| 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 sharing with strangers. |
| 18 | Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, |
| 19 | a lovely deer, a graceful doe. May her breasts satisfy you at all times; may you be intoxicated always by her love. |
| 20 | Why should you be intoxicated, my son, by another woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? |
| 21 | For human ways are under the eyes of the LORD, and he examines all their paths. |
| 22 | The iniquities of the wicked ensnare them, and they are caught in the toils of their sin. |
| 23 | They die for lack of discipline, and because of their great folly they are lost. |