1 My son, pay attention to my wisdom;

listen closely  * to my understanding  *

2 so that you may maintain discretion

and your lips safeguard knowledge.  *

3 Though the lips of the forbidden woman drip honey

and her words are  * smoother than oil,

4 in the end she’s as bitter as wormwood  *

and as sharp as a double-edged sword.  *

5 Her feet go down to death;

her steps head straight for Sheol.  *

6 She doesn’t consider the path of life;

she doesn’t know that her ways are unstable.

7 So now, sons, listen to me,

and don’t turn away from the words from my mouth.  *

8 Keep your way far from her.

Don’t go near the door of her house.  *

9 Otherwise, you will give up your vitality to others

and your years to someone cruel;

10 strangers will drain your resources,

and your hard-earned pay will end up in a foreigner’s house.

11 At the end of your life, you will lament

when your physical body has been consumed,

12 and you will say, "How I hated discipline,

and how my heart despised correction.  *

13 I didn’t obey my teachers

or listen closely  * to my instructors.

14 I am on the verge of complete ruin

before the entire community."

15 Drink water from your own cistern,

water flowing from your own well.  *

16 Should your springs flow in the streets,

streams in the public squares?  *

17 They should be for you alone

and not for you to share with strangers.

18 Let your fountain be blessed,

and take pleasure in the wife of your youth.  *

19 A loving deer, a graceful doe  *  —

let her breasts always satisfy you;  *

be lost in her love forever.

20 Why, my son, would you lose yourself

with a forbidden woman

or embrace a wayward woman?  *

21 For a man’s ways are before the  Lord’s eyes,  *

and he considers all his paths.  *

22 A wicked man’s iniquities will trap him;  *

he will become tangled in the ropes of his own sin.  *

23 He will die because there is no discipline,  *

and be lost because of his great stupidity.