1 My son, be attentive to my wisdom, and incline your ear to my understanding:

2 That you may preserve discretion, and that your lips may keep knowledge.

3 For the lips of an immoral woman drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:

4 But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.

5 Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on sheol.

6 Lest you should ponder the path of life, her ways are unstable, that you can not know them.

7 Hear me now therefore, O you children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.

8 Remove your way far from her, and come not near the door of her house:

9 Lest you give your honor unto others, and your years unto the merciless:

10 Lest strangers be filled with your wealth; and your labors go to the house of a foreigner;

11 And you mourn at the last, when your flesh and your body are consumed,

12 And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;

13 And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to them that instructed me!

14 I was almost in utter ruin in the midst of the congregation and assembly.

15 Drink waters out of your own cistern, and running waters out of your own well.

16 Should your fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets?

17 Let them be only for your own, and not for strangers with you.

18 Let your fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of your youth.

19 Let her be as the loving deer and graceful doe; let her breasts satisfy you at all times; and be ravished always with her love.

20 And why will you, my son, be infatuated with an immoral woman, and embrace the bosom of a seductress?

21 For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he ponders all his paths.

22 His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be held with the cords of his sins.

23 He shall die for lack of instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.