¹ My son, attend unto my wisdom,
And bow thine ear to my understanding:
² That thou mayest regard discretion,
And that thy lips may keep knowledge.
³ For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb,
And her mouth is smoother than oil:
⁴ But her end is bitter as wormwood,
Sharp as a twoedged sword.
⁵ Her feet go down to death;
Her steps take hold on hell.
⁶ Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life,
Her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.

⁷ Hear me now therefore, O ye children,
And depart not from the words of my mouth.
⁸ Remove thy way far from her,
And come not nigh the door of her house:
⁹ Lest thou give thine honour unto others,
And thy years unto the cruel:
¹⁰ Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth;
And thy labours be in the house of a stranger;
¹¹ And thou mourn at the last,
When thy flesh and thy body are consumed,
¹² And say, How have I hated instruction,
And my heart despised reproof;
¹³ And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers,
Nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!
¹⁴ I was almost in all evil
In the midst of the congregation and assembly.

¹⁵ Drink waters out of thine own cistern,
And running waters out of thine own well.
¹⁶ Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad,
And rivers of waters in the streets.
¹⁷ Let them be only thine own,
And not strangers’ with thee.
¹⁸ Let thy fountain be blessed:
And rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
¹⁹  Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe;
Let her breasts satisfy thee at all times;
And be thou ravished always with her love.
²⁰ And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman,
And embrace the bosom of a stranger?
²¹ For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD,
And he pondereth all his goings.
²² His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself,
And he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.
²³ He shall die without instruction;
And in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.