| 1 | My son, attend unto my wisdom, {and} bow thine ear to my understanding: |
| 2 | That thou mayest regard discretion, and {that} thy lips may keep knowledge. |
| 3 | For the lips of a strange woman drop {as} an 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 hell. |
| 6 | Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, {that} thou canst not know {them}. |
| 7 | Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth. |
| 8 | Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house: |
| 9 | Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel: |
| 10 | Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours {be} in the house of a stranger; |
| 11 | And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy 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 mine ear to them that instructed me! |
| 14 | I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly. |
| 15 | Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well. |
| 16 | Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, {and} rivers of waters in the streets. |
| 17 | Let them be only thine own, and not strangers’ with thee. |
| 18 | Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. |
| 19 | {Let her be as} the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love. |
| 20 | And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger? |
| 21 | For the ways of man {are} before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goings. |
| 22 | His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins. |
| 23 | He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray. |