^5:1 My son, attend to my wisdom. Incline your ear to my understanding, ^5:2 that you may preserve discretion and that your lips may keep knowledge.

    ^5:3 Because the lips of a strange woman drop honey and her mouth is smoother than oil. ^5:4 But in the end, she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.

    ^5:5 Her feet go down to death. Her steps take hold on Sheol, ^5:6 so that she does not find the level path of life. Her ways are unstable and she does not know.

    ^5:7 Now therefore, you^* the sons, listen to me and do not depart from the words of my mouth.

    ^5:8 Remove your way far from her and do not come near the door of her house, ^5:9 lest you give your honor to others and your years to the cruel, ^5:10lest strangers be filled with your strength and your labors be in the house of an alien, ^5:11 and you mourn at your latter end when your flesh and your body are consumed, ^5:12 and say, How I have hated instruction and my heart despised reproof. ^5:13 Neither have I obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to those who instructed me! ^5:14 I was almost in all evil in the midst of the assembly and congregation.

    ^5:15 Drink waters out of your own cistern and flowing waters out of your own well. ^5:16 Should your springs be dispersed abroad and streams of water in the streets? ^5:17 Let them be for yourself alone and not for strangers with you.

    ^5:18 Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth: ^5:19 a loving female-deer and a pleasant doe. Let her breasts satisfy you at all times and be ravished always with her love.

    ^5:20 For why should you, my son, be ravished with an strange woman and embrace the bosom of a foreigner?

    ^5:21 Because the ways of man are before the eyes of Jehovah and he makes level all his paths.

    ^5:22 His own iniquities will take a wicked man and he will be held with the cords of his sin. ^5:23 He will die for lack of instruction. And he will go astray in the greatness of his folly.