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Warning against Impurity and Infidelity

5My child, be attentive to my wisdom;
   incline your ear to my understanding,
² so that you may hold on to prudence,
   and your lips may guard knowledge.
³ For the lips of a loose^* woman drip honey,
   and her speech is smoother than oil;
⁴ but in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
   sharp as a two-edged sword.
⁵ Her feet go down to death;
   her steps follow the path to Sheol.
⁶ She does not keep straight to the path of life;
   her ways wander, and she does not know it.

⁷ And now, my child,^* listen to me,
   and do not depart from the words of my mouth.
⁸ Keep your way far from her,
   and do not go near the door of her house;
⁹ or you will give your honour to others,
   and your years to the merciless,
¹⁰ and strangers will take their fill of your wealth,
   and your labours will go to the house of an alien;
¹¹ and at the end of your life you will groan,
   when your flesh and body are consumed,
¹² and you say, ‘Oh, 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 instructors.
¹⁴ Now I am at the point of utter ruin
   in the public assembly.’

¹⁵ Drink water from your own cistern,
   flowing water from your own well.
¹⁶ Should your springs be scattered abroad,
   streams of water in the streets?
¹⁷ Let them be for yourself alone,
   and not for sharing with strangers.
¹⁸ Let your fountain be blessed,
   and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
¹⁹   a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
May her breasts satisfy you at all times;
   may you be intoxicated always by her love.
²⁰ Why should you be intoxicated, my son, by another woman
   and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?
²¹ For human ways are under the eyes of the Lord,
   and he examines all their paths.
²² The iniquities of the wicked ensnare them,
   and they are caught in the toils of their sin.
²³ They die for lack of discipline,
   and because of their great folly they are lost.