Chapter 5
1My son, attend to My wisdom, and bow your ear to My understanding:
2That you may regard discretion, and that your lips may keep knowledge.
3For the lips of a strange woman drop as an 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 lead straight to the grave.
6Lest you should ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that you can not know them.
7Hear Me now therefore, O ye 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 to others, and your years to the cruel:
10Lest strangers be filled with your wealth; and your labours be in the house of a stranger;
11And you mourn at the end of your life, when your flesh and thy 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 all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.”
15Drink waters out of your own cistern, and running waters out of your own well.
16Let your fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets.
17Let them be only your own, and not strangers' with you.
18Let your fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of your youth.
19Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy you at all times; and be you ravished always with her love.
20And why will you, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?
21For the ways of man are before the eyes of AO, and He examines all his paths.
22The wicked will be taken by his own iniquities and he shall be held by the cords of his sins.
23He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.