Admonition to Avoid Seduction to Evil
5:1 My child, be attentive to my wisdom,
pay close attention to my understanding,
5:2 in order to safeguard discretion,
and that your lips may guard knowledge.
5:3 For the lips of the adulterous woman drip honey,
and her seductive words are smoother than olive oil,
5:4 but in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a two-edged sword.
5:5 Her feet go down to death;
her steps lead straight to the grave.
5:6 Lest she should make level the path leading to life,
her paths are unstable but she does not know it.
5:7 So now, children, listen to me;
do not turn aside from the words I speak.
5:8 Keep yourself far from her,
and do not go near the door of her house,
5:9 lest you give your vigor to others
and your years to a cruel person,
5:10 lest strangers devour your strength,
and your labor benefit another man’s house.
5:11 And at the end of your life you will groan
when your flesh and your body are wasted away.
5:12 And you will say, “How I hated discipline!
My heart spurned reproof!
5:13 For I did not obey my teachers
and I did not heed my instructors.
5:14 I almost came to complete ruin
in the midst of the whole congregation!”
5:15 Drink water from your own cistern
and running water from your own well.
5:16 Should your springs be dispersed outside,
your streams of water in the wide plazas?
5:17 Let them be for yourself alone,
and not for strangers with you.
5:18 May your fountain be blessed,
and may you rejoice in your young wife –
5:19 a loving doe, a graceful deer;
may her breasts satisfy you at all times,
may you be captivated by her love always.
5:20 But why should you be captivated, my son, by an adulteress,
and embrace the bosom of a different woman?
5:21 For the ways of a person are in front of the LORD’s eyes,
and the LORD weighs all that person’s paths.
5:22 The wicked will be captured by his own iniquities,
and he will be held by the cords of his own sin.
5:23 He will die because there was no discipline;
because of the greatness of his folly he will reel.