Avoid Seduction

1My son, pay attention to my wisdom;

listen closelyA to my understandinga

2so that you may maintain discretion

and your lips safeguard knowledge.a

3Though the lips of the forbidden woman drip honey

and her words areA smoother than oil,

4in the end she’s as bitter as wormwooda

and as sharp as a double-edged sword.b

5Her feet go down to death;

her steps head straight for Sheol.a

6She doesn’t consider the path of life;

she doesn’t know that her ways are unstable.

7So now, sons, listen to me,

and don’t turn away from the words from my mouth.a

8Keep your way far from her.

Don’t go near the door of her house.a

9Otherwise, you will give up your vitality to others

and your years to someone cruel;

10strangers will drain your resources,

and your hard-earned pay will end up in a foreigner’s house.

11At the end of your life, you will lament

when your physical body has been consumed,

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

and how my heart despised correction.a

13I didn’t obey my teachers

or listen closelyA to my instructors.

14I am on the verge of complete ruin

before the entire community.”

Enjoy Marriage

15Drink water from your own cistern,

water flowing from your own well.a

16Should your springs flow in the streets,

streams in the public squares?a

17They should be for you alone

and not for you to share with strangers.

18Let your fountain be blessed,

and take pleasure in the wife of your youth.a

19A loving deer, a graceful doeA —

let her breasts always satisfy you;a

be lost in her love forever.

20Why, my son, would you lose yourself

with a forbidden woman

or embrace a wayward woman?a

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

and he considers all his paths.b

22A wicked man’s iniquities will trap him;a

he will become tangled in the ropes of his own sin.b

23He will die because there is no discipline,a

and be lost because of his great stupidity.