Warning against Impurity and Infidelity

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 loose5.3 Heb strange 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,5.7 Gk Vg: Heb children 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 honour to others,

and your years to the merciless,

10and strangers will take their fill of your wealth,

and your labours 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.