| 5 | Proverbs | ||
| 1 | My son, be attentive to my wisdom, incline your ear to my understanding; | Warning against adultery. Pr.5.1-23 | |
| 2 | that you may keep discretion, and your lips may guard knowledge. | ||
| 3 | For the lips of a loose woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil; | ||
| 4 | but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. | ||
| 5 | Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol; | ||
| 6 | she does not take heed to the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it. | ||
| 7 | And now, O sons, listen to me, and do not depart from the words of my mouth. | ||
| 8 | Keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house; | ||
| 9 | lest you give your honour to others and your years to the merciless; | ||
| 10 | lest strangers take their fill of your strength, and your labours go to the house of an alien; | ||
| 11 | and at the end of your life you groan, when your flesh and body are consumed, | ||
| 12 | and you 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 instructors. | ||
| 14 | I was at the point of utter ruin in the assembled congregation." | ||
| 15 | Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. | ||
| 16 | Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets? | ||
| 17 | Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you. | ||
| 18 | Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, | ||
| 19 | a lovely hind, a graceful doe. Let her affection fill you at all times with delight, be infatuated always with her love. | ||
| 20 | Why should you be infatuated, my son, with a loose woman and embrace the bosom of an adventuress? | ||
| 21 | For a man's ways are before the eyes of Yahweh, and he watches all his paths. | ||
| 22 | The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is caught in the toils of his sin. | ||
| 23 | He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly he is lost. | ||
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