¹ My son, pay attention to my wisdom, and stretch your ear to my understanding ² That you may regard discretion, and that your lips may keep knowledge. ³ For the lips of a strange woman drip like honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil ⁴ But her end is bitter as wormwood, as sharp as a two-edged sword. ⁵ Her feet go down to death her steps take hold of hell. ⁶ Unless you should ponder the path of life, her ways are shifting, that you cannot know [them]. ⁷ Hear me now therefore, O you children, and don't depart from the words of my mouth. ⁸ Remove your way far from her, and don't come near the door of her house ⁹ Unless you give your honour to others, and your years to the cruel ¹⁰ Unless strangers be filled with your wealth and your labours be in the house of a stranger ¹¹ And you mourn at the end, when your flesh and your 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 my ear to them who instructed me! ¹⁴ I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly. ¹⁵ Drink waters out of your own cistern, and running waters out of your own well. ¹⁶ Let your fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets. ¹⁷ Let them be only your own, and not strangers ' with you. ¹⁸ Let your fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of your youth. ¹⁹ Let her be as the loving doe and pleasant roe let her breasts satisfy you at all times and be ravished always with her love. ²⁰ And why will you, 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 ponders all his goings. ²² His own iniquities will take the wicked himself, and he will be held with the cords of his sins. ²³ He will die without instruction and in the greatness of his folly he will go astray.