1My son, listen to my wisdom; bow your ear to my understanding; 2in order to keep discretion, [that] your lips may keep knowledge. 3For the lips of a strange woman drip honey, and her palate [is] smoother than oil; 4but afterward she [is as] bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. 5Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell, 6lest you should meditate on the path of life, her tracks are movable; you cannot know [them]. 7And now hear me, O sons, and do not depart from the words of my mouth. 8Remove your ways far from her, and do not come near the door of her house, 9lest you give your honor to others and your years to the cruel; 10that strangers not be filled [with] your strength, and your labors [be] in the house of a stranger; 11and you moan when your end [comes], when your flesh and muscle are eaten away, 12and say, How I have hated instruction, and my heart despised correction; 13and I have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor bowed down my ears to those who taught 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. 16Should your overflowing spring be scattered abroad [as] 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. 19[Like] the loving deer and pleasant doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times, and be 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 the LORD, and He watches all his paths. 22His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be held with the cords of his sin. 23He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.