| 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.
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Public Domain