Chapter 5

  My son, attend to my wisdom, and bow thy ear to my understanding:  

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  That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.  

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  For the lips of a strange woman drop as a honey-comb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:  

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

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

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  Lest thou shouldst ponder the path of life, her ways are movable, that thou canst not know them.  

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

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  Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house:  

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  Lest thou give thy honor to others, and thy years to the cruel:  

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  Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labors be in the house of a stranger;  

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  And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,  

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

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

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

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  Drink waters out of thy own cistern, and running waters out of thy own well.  

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  Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets.  

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  Let them be only thy own, and not for strangers with thee.  

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

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  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.  

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  And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?  

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  For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings.  

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

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

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