Warning Against Adultery

1My son, be attentive to my wisdom, and incline your ear to my understanding:

2That you may preserve discretion, and that your lips may keep knowledge.

3For the lips of an immoral woman drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:

4But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.

5Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on sheol.

6Lest you should ponder the path of life, her ways are unstable, that you can not know them.

7Hear me now therefore, O you children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.

8Remove your way far from her, and come not near the door of her house:

9Lest you give your honor unto others, and your years unto the merciless:

10Lest strangers be filled with your wealth; and your labors go to the house of a foreigner;

11And you mourn at the last, when your flesh and your body are consumed,

12And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;

13And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to them that instructed me!

14I was almost in utter ruin in the midst of the congregation and assembly.

15Drink waters out of your own cistern, and running waters out of your own well.

16Should your fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets?

17Let them be only for your own, and not for strangers with you.

18Let your fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of your youth.

19Let her be as the loving deer and graceful doe; let her breasts satisfy you at all times; and be ravished always with her love.

20And why will you, my son, be infatuated with an immoral woman, and embrace the bosom of a seductress?

21For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he ponders all his paths.

22His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be held with the cords of his sins.

23He shall die for lack of instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.