Proverbs 5
Avoiding Immorality
(Leviticus 20:10–21; 1 Corinthians 5:1–8)
¹ My son, pay attention to my wisdom; incline your ear to my insight,
² that you may maintain discretion and your lips may preserve knowledge.
³ Though the lips of the forbidden woman 1 drip honey and her speech 2 is smoother than oil,
⁴ in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a double-edged sword.
⁵ Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to Sheol.3
⁶ She does not consider the path of life; she does not know that her ways are unstable.
⁷ So now, my sons, listen to me, and do not turn aside from the words of my mouth.
⁸ Keep your path far from her; do not go near the door of her house,
⁹ lest you concede your vigor to others, and your years to one who is cruel;
¹⁰ lest strangers feast on your wealth, and your labors enrich the house of a foreigner.
¹¹ At the end of your life you will groan when your flesh and your body are spent,
¹² and you will say, “How I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof!
¹³ I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my mentors.
¹⁴ I am on the brink of utter ruin in the midst of the whole assembly.”
¹⁵ Drink water from your own cistern, and running water from your own well.
¹⁶ Why should your springs flow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares?
¹⁷ Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers.
¹⁸ May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth:
¹⁹ A loving doe, a graceful fawn— may her breasts satisfy you always; may you be captivated 4 by her love forever.
²⁰ Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress, or embrace the bosom of a stranger?5
²¹ For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the LORD, and the LORD examines 6 all his paths.
²² The iniquities of a wicked man entrap him; the cords of his sin entangle him.
²³ He dies for lack of discipline, led astray by his own great folly.