< Proverbs 5

[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 two-edged 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.