1 My son, pay attention to my wisdom; extend your ear to my understanding;

2 so that you may keep discretion, and your lips may guard knowledge.

3 For the lips of a strange woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil,

4 but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a cleaver;

5 her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on Sheol;

6 lest you should ponder the path of life, her paths are unstable; you cannot know them.

7 Therefore hear me now, O children, and do not depart from the words of my mouth.

8 Remove your ways far from her, and do not come near the door of her house,

9 lest you give your honor to others, and your years to the cruel;

10 that strangers not be filled with your strength, nor your labors be in the house of a foreigner,

11 and you moan in the end, when your flesh and body are spent;

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

13 and I have not given heed to the voice of my teachers, nor extended my ear to those instructing me.

14 I was almost in all evil 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 springs be dispersed abroad, like streams of water in the streets?

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

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

19 as a loving deer and a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times, and always be intoxicated in her love.

20 For why, my son, will you be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a foreigner?

21 For the ways of man are before the eyes of Jehovah, and He ponders all his tracks.

22 His own iniquities shall capture the wicked, and he shall be held with the cords of his sin.

23 He shall die without instruction, and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.