Proverbs 5 · משלי

My son, attend to my wisdom, and bend thy ear to my understanding:

that thou mayst preserve discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.

For the lips of a strange woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil:

but her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two edged sword.

Her feet go down to death: her steps take hold of She᾽ol.

She is far from measuring her way of life; her paths wander, and she is ignorant.

Hear me now therefore, O children, and do not depart from the words of my mouth.

Remove thy way far from her, and do not come near the door of her house:

lest thou give thy vigour to others, and thy years to the cruel one:

lest strangers be filled with thy strength; and thy labours go to the house of a stranger:

and thou moan when thy end comes, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,

and thou say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof!

And I have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor bent my ear to those who instructed me!

I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.

Drink waters out of thy own cistern, and running waters out of thy own well.

So will thy spring be dispersed abroad, and streams of water will flow in the broad places.

Let them be only thy own, and not strangers’ with thee.

Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.

A loving hind and a pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.

And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of an alien?

For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders all his goings.

His own iniquities shall trap the wicked man, and he shall be caught fast in the cords of his sins.

He shall die for want of instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.