Proverbs - The Old Testament

¹ My son, pay attention to my wisdom, listen carefully to what I know;

² so that you may preserve discretion and your lips may guard knowledge. Take no notice of a loose-living woman,

³ for the lips of the adulteress drip with honey, her palate is more unctuous 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, Sheol the goal of her steps;

⁶ far from following the path of life, her course is uncertain and she does not know it.

⁷ And now, son, listen to me, never deviate from what I say:

⁸ set your course as far from her as possible, go nowhere near the door of her house,

⁹ or she will hand over your honour to others, the years of your life to a man without pity,

¹⁰ and strangers will batten on your property, and your produce go to the house of a stranger,

¹¹ and, at your ending, your body and flesh having been consumed, you will groan

¹² and exclaim, 'Alas, I hated discipline, my heart spurned all correction;

¹³ I would not attend to the voice of my masters, I would not listen to those who tried to teach me.

¹⁴ Now I have come to nearly every kind of misery, in the assembly and in the community.'

¹⁵ Drink the water from your own storage-well, fresh water from your own spring.

¹⁶ Even if your fountains overflow outside, your streams of water in the public squares:

¹⁷ let them be for you alone, and not for strangers with you.

¹⁸ May your fountain-head be blessed! Find joy with the wife you married in your youth,

¹⁹ fair as a hind, graceful as a fawn: hers the breasts that ever fill you with delight, hers the love that ever holds you captive.

²⁰ Why be seduced, my son, by someone else's wife, and fondle the breast of a woman who belongs to another?

²¹ For the eyes of Yahweh observe human ways, and survey all human paths.

²² The wicked is snared in his own misdeeds, is caught in the meshes of his own sin.

²³ For want of discipline, he dies, led astray by his own excessive folly.