Proverbs

My son, attend to my wisdom, and bow your ear to my understanding:

That you may regard discretion, and that your lips may keep knowledge.

For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, 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 on hell.

Lest you should ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that you cannot know them.

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

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

Lest you give your honour to others, and your years to the cruel:

Lest strangers be filled with your wealth; and your labours be in the house of a stranger;

And you mourn at the last, when your flesh and your body are consumed,

And say, "How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;

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

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

Drink water out of your own cistern, and running waters out of your own well.

Let your fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets.

Let them be only your own, and not for strangers with you.

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

Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy you at all times; and be always ravished with her love.

And why will you, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?

For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and He ponders all his goings.

His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be held with the cords of his sins.

He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.