¹ My son, attend to my wisdom. Incline thine ear to my understanding,

² that thou may preserve discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.

³ For the lips of an interloping woman drop honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil.

⁴ But in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.

⁵ Her feet go down to death. Her steps take hold on Sheol,

⁶ so that she does not find the level path of life. Her ways are unstable, and she does not know.

⁷ Now therefore, ye sons, hearken to me, and do not depart from the words of my mouth.

⁸ Remove thy way far from her, and do not come near the door of her house,

⁹ lest thou give thine honor to others, and thy years to the cruel,

¹⁰ lest strangers be filled with thy strength, and thy labors be in the house of an alien,

¹¹ and thou mourn at thy latter end when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,

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

¹³ Neither have I obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to those who instructed me!

¹⁴ I was almost in all evil in the midst of the assembly and congregation.

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

¹⁶ Should thy springs be dispersed abroad, and streams of water in the streets?

¹⁷ Let them be for thyself alone, and not for strangers with thee.

¹⁸ Let thy fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of thy youth:

¹⁹ a loving hind and a pleasant doe. Let her breasts satisfy thee at all times, and be thou ravished always with her love.

²⁰ For why should thou, my son, be ravished with an interloping woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?

²¹ For the ways of man are before the eyes of Jehovah, and he makes level all his paths.

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

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