5:1
My son, pay attention to my wisdom, listen carefully to what I know;
5:2
so that you may preserve discretion and your lips may guard knowledge. Take no notice of a loose-living woman,
5:3
for the lips of the adulteress drip with honey, her palate is more unctuous 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, Sheol the goal of her steps;
5:6
far from following the path of life, her course is uncertain and she does not know it.
5:7
And now, son, listen to me, never deviate from what I say:
5:8
set your course as far from her as possible, go nowhere near the door of her house,
5:9
or she will hand over your honour to others, the years of your life to a man without pity,
5:10
and strangers will batten on your property, and your produce go to the house of a stranger,
5:11
and, at your ending, your body and flesh having been consumed, you will groan
5:12
and exclaim, 'Alas, I hated discipline, my heart spurned all correction;
5:13
I would not attend to the voice of my masters, I would not listen to those who tried to teach me.
5:14
Now I have come to nearly every kind of misery, in the assembly and in the community.'
5:15
Drink the water from your own storage-well, fresh water from your own spring.
5:16
Even if your fountains overflow outside, your streams of water in the public squares:
5:17
let them be for you alone, and not for strangers with you.
5:18
May your fountain-head be blessed! Find joy with the wife you married in your youth,
5:19
fair as a hind, graceful as a fawn: hers the breasts that ever fill you with delight, hers the love that ever holds you captive.
5:20
Why be seduced, my son, by someone else's wife, and fondle the breast of a woman who belongs to another?
5:21
For the eyes of Yahweh observe human ways, and survey all human paths.
5:22
The wicked is snared in his own misdeeds, is caught in the meshes of his own sin.
5:23
For want of discipline, he dies, led astray by his own excessive folly.
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