An exhortation to avoid sexual immorality
5
📚✭My son, give attention to my wisdom,and turn your ear
to my understanding,
2 📚That you may regard discretion
and that your lips
may keep knowledge.
3 📚✭For the lips of a strange woman
drip like a honeycomb,
and her mouth is smoother than oil,
4 📚But the result with her is
as bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a two-edged sword.
5 📚Her feet go down to death;
her steps hold to the path of the grave✭.
6 📚Lest you should ponder the path of life,
her ways are unstable,
so that you cannot understand them.
7 📚Therefore, listen to me now,
O you children, and do not depart
from the words of my mouth.
8 📚Keep your way far from her,
and do not come near the door of her house,
9 📚✭Lest you give your honour to others,
and your years to those who are cruel,
10 📚Lest strangers be filled with your wealth,
and your labours be for the house
of a stranger,
11 📚And you mourn at the last,
when your flesh and your body are consumed,
12 📚And say, “How I hated instruction!
And my heart despised rebuke!
13 📚And I have not obeyed the voice
of my teachers,
or turned my ear to those
who instructed me!
14 📚I was almost in total misery in the midst
of the congregation and assembly”.
15 📚✭Drink water out of your own cistern,
and running water out of your own well.
16 📚Should your springs flow outside
and be like rivers of water
in the streets?
17 Let them be only your own,
and not strangers sharing with you.
18 📚Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice with the wife of your youth.
19 📚Let her be like a loving doe
and graceful deer;
let her breasts satisfy you at all times,
and always be captivated by her love.
20 📚✭And why will you, my son,
be captivated by 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 ponders all his goings.
22 📚✭The iniquities of the wicked will
capture him,
and he will be held by the cords of his sins.
23 📚✭He will die without instruction,
and in the greatness of his folly
he will go astray.