Bible Browser

4Listen, children, to a father’s instruction,
and be attentive, that you may gain insight;
²for I give you good precepts:
do not forsake my teaching.
³When I was a son with my father,
tender, and my mother’s favorite,
⁴he taught me, and said to me,
“Let your heart hold fast my words;
keep my commandments, and live.
⁵Get wisdom; get insight: do not forget, nor turn away
from the words of my mouth.
⁶Do not forsake her, and she will keep you;
love her, and she will guard you.
⁷The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom,
and whatever else you get, get insight.
⁸Prize her highly, and she will exalt you;
she will honor you if you embrace her.
⁹She will place on your head a fair garland;
she will bestow on you a beautiful crown.” ¹⁰Hear, my child, and accept my words,
that the years of your life may be many.
¹¹I have taught you the way of wisdom;
I have led you in the paths of uprightness.
¹²When you walk, your step will not be hampered;
and if you run, you will not stumble.
¹³Keep hold of instruction; do not let go;
guard her, for she is your life.
¹⁴Do not enter the path of the wicked,
and do not walk in the way of evildoers.
¹⁵Avoid it; do not go on it;
turn away from it and pass on.
¹⁶For they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong;
they are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble.
¹⁷For they eat the bread of wickedness
and drink the wine of violence.
¹⁸But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn,
which shines brighter and brighter until full day.
¹⁹The way of the wicked is like deep darkness;
they do not know what they stumble over.
²⁰My child, be attentive to my words;
incline your ear to my sayings.
²¹Do not let them escape from your sight;
keep them within your heart.
²²For they are life to those who find them,
and healing to all their flesh.
²³Keep your heart with all vigilance,
for from it flow the springs of life.
²⁴Put away from you crooked speech,
and put devious talk far from you.
²⁵Let your eyes look directly forward,
and your gaze be straight before you.
²⁶Keep straight the path of your feet,
and all your ways will be sure.
²⁷Do not swerve to the right or to the left;
turn your foot away from evil. 5My child, be attentive to my wisdom;
incline your ear to my understanding,
²so that you may hold on to prudence,
and your lips may guard knowledge.
³For the lips of a loose woman drip honey,
and her speech is smoother than oil;
⁴but in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a two-edged sword.
⁵Her feet go down to death;
her steps follow the path to Sheol.
⁶She does not keep straight to the path of life;
her ways wander, and she does not know it. ⁷And now, my child, listen to me,
and do not depart from the words of my mouth.
⁸Keep your way far from her,
and do not go near the door of her house;
⁹or you will give your honor to others,
and your years to the merciless,
¹⁰and strangers will take their fill of your wealth,
and your labors will go to the house of an alien;
¹¹and at the end of your life you will groan,
when your flesh and body are consumed,
¹²and you say, “Oh, how I hated discipline,
and my heart despised reproof !
¹³I did not listen to the voice of my teachers
or incline my ear to my instructors.
¹⁴Now I am at the point of utter ruin
in the public assembly.” ¹⁵Drink water from your own cistern,
flowing water from your own well.
¹⁶Should your springs be scattered abroad,
streams of water in the streets?
¹⁷Let them be for yourself alone,
and not for sharing with strangers.
¹⁸Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
¹⁹a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
May her breasts satisfy you at all times;
may you be intoxicated always by her love.
²⁰Why should you be intoxicated, my son, by another woman
and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?
²¹For human ways are under the eyes of the Lord,
and he examines all their paths.
²²The iniquities of the wicked ensnare them,
and they are caught in the toils of their sin.
²³They die for lack of discipline,
and because of their great folly they are lost.