1My son, attend to my wisdom. Incline thine ear to my understanding, 2that thou may preserve discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge. 3For the lips of an interloping woman drop honey, and her mouth 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 take hold on Sheol, 6so that she does not find the level path of life. Her ways are unstable, [and] she does not know. 7Now therefore, ye sons, hearken to me, and do not depart from the words of my mouth. 8Remove thy way far from her, and do not come near the door of her house, 9lest thou give thine honor to others, and thy years to the cruel, 10lest strangers be filled with thy strength, and thy labors [be] in the house of an alien, 11and thou mourn at thy latter end when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, 12and say, How I have hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof. 13Neither have I obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to those who instructed me! 14I was almost in all evil in the midst of the assembly and congregation. 15Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well. 16Should thy springs be dispersed abroad, and streams of water in the streets? 17Let them be for thyself alone, and not for strangers with thee. 18Let thy fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of thy youth: 19a loving hind and a pleasant doe. Let her breasts satisfy thee at all times, and be thou ravished always with her love. 20For why should thou, my son, be ravished with an interloping woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger? 21For the ways of man are before the eyes of LORD, and he makes level all his paths. 22His own iniquities shall take a wicked man, and he shall be held with the cords of his sin. 23He shall die for lack of instruction. And in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.