Chapter 5

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.