Avoiding Immorality

¹ My son, pay attention to my wisdom;

incline your ear to my insight,

² that you may maintain discretion

and your lips may preserve knowledge.

³ Though the lips of the forbidden woman^* drip honey

and her speech is smoother than oil,

⁴ in the end she is bitter as wormwood,

sharp as a double-edged^* sword.

⁵ Her feet go down to death;

her steps lead straight to Sheol.

⁶ She does not consider the path of life;

she does not know that her ways are unstable.

⁷ So now, my sons, listen to me,

and do not turn aside from the words of my mouth.

⁸ Keep your path far from her;

do not go near the door of her house,

⁹ lest you concede your vigor to others,

and your years to one who is cruel;

¹⁰ lest strangers feast on your wealth,

and your labors enrich the house of a foreigner.

¹¹ At the end of your life you will groan

when your flesh and your body are spent,

¹² and you will say, “How I hated discipline,

and my heart despised reproof!

¹³ I did not listen to the voice of my teachers

or incline my ear to my mentors.

¹⁴ I am on the brink of utter ruin

in the midst of the whole assembly.”

¹⁵ Drink water from your own cistern,^*

and running water from your own well.

¹⁶ Why should your springs flow in the streets,

your streams of water in the public squares?

¹⁷ Let them be yours alone,

never to be shared with strangers.

¹⁸ May your fountain^* be blessed,

and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth:

¹⁹ A loving doe, a graceful fawn—

may her breasts satisfy you always;

may you be captivated by her love forever.

²⁰ Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress,^*

or embrace the bosom of a stranger?

²¹ For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the LORD,

and the LORD examines all his paths.

²² The iniquities of a wicked man entrap him;

the cords of his sin entangle him.

²³ He dies for lack of discipline,

led astray^* by his own great folly.