¹My son, give attention to my wisdom; incline your ear to my understanding.

²To keep discretion, and your lips will guard knowledge.

³For the lips of a strange woman drip honey, and her palate is smoother than oil.

⁴But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a sword of mouths.

⁵Her feet go down to death; her steps lay hold of Sheol.

⁶Lest you weigh the path of life, her tracks waver, and you do not know.

⁷And now, children, hear me, and do not depart from the words of my mouth.

⁸Put your way far away from her, and do not draw near to the entrance of her house.

⁹Lest you give your authority to others, and your years to the cruel.

¹⁰Lest strangers be sated with your strength, and your toil be in the house of a foreigner.

¹¹and you groan at your end, when your flesh and your very self are finished.

¹²and you will say, How I hated discipline, and my heart spurned rebuke!

¹³I did not hear the voice of my teachers, and I did not incline my ear to those who instructed me.

¹⁴I was almost in all evil, in the midst of the assembly and the congregation.

¹⁵Drink water from your cistern, and what flows from the midst of your well.

¹⁶Should your springs be scattered outside, your channels of water in the open places?

¹⁷Let them be yours alone, and not for strangers with you.

¹⁸May your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth,

¹⁹A doe of love and an ibex of favor; may her breasts saturate you at every time; may you be enraptured always in her love.

²⁰Why would you go astray, my son, with a strange woman and embrace the bosom of a foreign woman?

²¹For the ways of a man are before the eyes of Yahweh, and he levels all his paths.

²²His iniquities will capture the wicked, and he will be held in the cords of his sin.

²³He will die for lack of discipline, and in the multitude of his folly, he will go astray.