Proverbs 5

1. My son, attend to my wisdom; bow your ear to my understanding;

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

3. For the lips of a wanton woman drip as a honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil;

4. But her end is as bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.

5. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on the grave.

6. She does not ponder the path of life; her ways are unstable—you cannot know them.

7. Now therefore hear me, O you children, and do not depart from the words of my mouth.

8. Remove your ways far from her, and do not come near the door of her house,

9. Lest you give your honor unto others and your years unto the cruel;

10. Lest strangers be filled with your wealth, and your labors be in the house of a stranger;

11. And you moan when your end comes, when your flesh and your body are consumed,

12. And say, “How I hated instruction, and my heart despised correction;

13. And I have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ears to those who taught me!

14. I was almost in utter ruin in the midst of the congregation and assembly.”

15. Drink waters out of your own cistern and running waters out of your own well.

16. Let your fountains be dispersed abroad as rivers of waters in the streets.

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

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

19. Let her be as the loving deer and pleasant doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times, and be ravished always with her love.

20. For why will you, 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 ponders all his paths.

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

23. He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall breathe his last.