5 ¹ My son, be attentive to my wisdom,
incline your ear to my understanding;
5 ² that you may keep discretion,
and your lips may guard knowledge.
5 ³ For the lips of a loose woman drip honey,
and her speech is smoother than 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 follow the path to Sheol;
5 ⁶ she does not take heed to the path of life;
her ways wander, and she does not know it.

5 ⁷ And now, O sons, listen to me,
and do not depart from the words of my mouth.
5 ⁸ Keep your way far from her,
and do not go near the door of her house;
5 ⁹ lest you give your honour to others
and your years to the merciless;
5 ¹⁰ lest strangers take their fill of your strength,
and your labours go to the house of an alien;
5 ¹¹ and at the end of your life you groan,
when your flesh and body are consumed,
5 ¹² and you say, "How I hated discipline,
and my heart despised reproof!
5 ¹³ I did not listen to the voice of my teachers
or incline my ear to my instructors.
5 ¹⁴ I was at the point of utter ruin
in the assembled congregation."

5 ¹⁵ Drink water from your own cistern,
flowing water from your own well.
5 ¹⁶ Should your springs be scattered abroad,
streams of water in the streets?
5 ¹⁷ Let them be for yourself alone,
and not for strangers with you.
5 ¹⁸ Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
5 ¹⁹ a lovely hind, a graceful doe.
Let her affection fill you at all times with delight,
be infatuated always with her love.
5 ²⁰ Why should you be infatuated, my son, with a loose woman
and embrace the bosom of an adventuress?
5 ²¹ For a man's ways are before the eyes of Yahweh,
and he watches all his paths.
5 ²² The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him,
and he is caught in the toils of his sin.
5 ²³ He dies for lack of discipline,
and because of his great folly he is lost.