Proverbs 5

¹My child, be attentive to my wisdom;

incline your ear to my understanding,

²so that you may hold on to prudence,

and your lips may guard knowledge.

³For the lips of a loose woman drip honey,

and her speech is smoother than oil;

⁴but in the end she is bitter as wormwood,

sharp as a two-edged sword.

⁵Her feet go down to death;

her steps follow the path to Sheol.

⁶She does not keep straight to the path of life;

her ways wander, and she does not know it.

⁷And now, my child, listen to me,

and do not depart from the words of my mouth.

⁸Keep your way far from her,

and do not go near the door of her house;

⁹or you will give your honor to others,

and your years to the merciless,

¹⁰and strangers will take their fill of your wealth,

and your labors will go to the house of an alien;

¹¹and at the end of your life you will groan,

when your flesh and body are consumed,

¹²and you say, “Oh, how I hated discipline,

and my heart despised reproof!

¹³I did not listen to the voice of my teachers

or incline my ear to my instructors.

¹⁴Now I am at the point of utter ruin

in the public assembly.”

¹⁵Drink water from your own cistern,

flowing water from your own well.

¹⁶Should your springs be scattered abroad,

streams of water in the streets?

¹⁷Let them be for yourself alone,

and not for sharing with strangers.

¹⁸Let your fountain be blessed,

and rejoice in the wife of your youth,

¹⁹a lovely deer, a graceful doe.

May her breasts satisfy you at all times;

may you be intoxicated always by her love.

²⁰Why should you be intoxicated, my son, by another woman

and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?

²¹For human ways are under the eyes of the Lord,

and he examines all their paths.

²²The iniquities of the wicked ensnare them,

and they are caught in the toils of their sin.

²³They die for lack of discipline,

and because of their great folly they are lost.