Proverbs

Chapter 5

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¹My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding:1 sermon²That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.³For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:⁴But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword.⁵Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.⁶Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.⁷Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.⁸Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house:⁹Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel:¹⁰Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger;¹¹And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,¹²And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;¹³And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!¹⁴I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.¹⁵Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.¹⁶Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets.¹⁷Let them be only thine own, and not strangers’ with thee.¹⁸Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.¹⁹Let 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.²⁰And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?²¹For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goings.²²His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.²³He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.