5 My son, pay attention to my wisdom;
incline your ear to my understanding;
2 so that you will preserve discretion
and your lips keep watch over knowledge.
3 For the lips of a woman who is a stranger drop honey,
her mouth is smoother than oil;
4 but in the end she is as bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a double-edged sword.
5 Her feet go down to death,
her steps lead straight to Sh’ol;
6 she doesn’t walk the level path of life —
her course wanders all over, but she doesn’t know it.
7 So now, children, listen to me;
don’t turn away from what I am saying:
8 distance your way from her,
stay far from the door of her house;
9 so that you won’t give your vigor to others
and your years to someone who is cruel,
10 so strangers won’t be filled with your strength
and what you worked for go to a foreign house.
11 Then, when your flesh and bones have shrunk,
at the end of your life, you would moan,
12 “How I hated discipline!
My whole being despised reproof,
13 I ignored what my teachers said,
I didn’t listen to my instructors.
14 I took part in almost every kind of evil,
and the whole community knew it.”
15 Drink the water from your own cistern,
fresh water from your own well.
16 Let what your springs produce be dispersed outside,
streams of water flowing in the streets;
17 but let them be for you alone
and not for strangers with you.
18 Let your fountain, the wife of your youth,
be blessed; find joy in her —
19 a lovely deer, a graceful fawn;
let her breasts satisfy you at all times,
always be infatuated with her love.
20 My son, why be infatuated with an unknown woman?
Why embrace the body of a loose woman?
21 For Adonai is watching a man’s ways;
he surveys all his paths.
22 A wicked person’s own crimes will trap him,
he will be held fast by the ropes of his sin.
23 He will die from lack of discipline;
the magnitude of his folly will make him totter and fall.