Seventh Address to a Son:
Wisdom Teaches You to Avoid Adultery
5 My son, pay attention to my wisdom.
Open your ears to my understanding,
2 so that you may hold on to insight,
so your lips may guard knowledge,
3 because the lips of an immoral woman drip with honey,
and her words are[a] as smooth as olive oil,
4 but in the end she is as bitter as wormwood[b]
and as sharp as a double-edged sword.
5 Her feet go down to death.
Her steps lead to hell.[c]
6 She gives no thought to the path of life.[d]
Her ways wander, but she doesn’t realize it.
7 Now, you sons, listen to me.
Do not turn away from the words of my mouth.
8 Keep your way far from her.
Do not go near the doorway of her house.
9 If you do, you will give your wealth to others
and your years to a cruel person.
10 If you do, your work will satisfy strangers,
and the results of your labor will end up in another man’s house.
11 You will groan when your end comes,
when your body and flesh are consumed.
12 Then you will say, “Oh, how I hated discipline,
and my heart despised warnings!
13 I did not listen to my teachers’ voices,
and I did not open my ears to hear my instructors.
14 I soon[e] reached total ruin
in the midst of the assembly of the community.”
Encouragement to Faithfulness in Marriage
15 Drink water from your own cistern.
Drink running water from your own well.
16 Why should the water from your springs flow out into the street,
your streams of water into the public squares?
17 They should be yours, yours alone.
They are not for strangers to share with you.
18 Let your fountain be blessed.
Obtain your joy from the wife you married in your youth,
19 who is a loving doe and a graceful deer.
Let her breasts satisfy you at all times.
Always be intoxicated with her love.
20 Why should you be led astray, my son, by an immoral woman?
Why embrace a woman who is not your wife?
21 For the ways of a man are in front of the eyes of the Lord,
and he weighs all of his paths.
22 The evil deeds of the wicked man will capture him,
and he will be bound by the ropes of his sin.
23 He will die for lack of discipline,
and he will go astray because of his great stupidity.
Footnotes
- Proverbs 5:3 Literally her palate is
- Proverbs 5:4 Wormwood is a toxic, bitter-tasting drink (absinthe).
- Proverbs 5:5 Or the grave. The Hebrew word is sheol.
- Proverbs 5:6 Or she does not make the paths of life level
- Proverbs 5:14 Or almost