001 My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding:
002 That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.
003 For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:
004 But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword.
005 Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.
006 Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.
007 Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.
008 Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house:
009 Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel:
010 Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger;
011 And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,
012 And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;
013 And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!
014 I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.
015 Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.
016 Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets.
017 Let them be only thine own, and not strangers' with thee.
018 Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
019 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.
020 And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?
021 For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings.
022 His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.
023 He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.
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