5:1 My son, attend to my wisdom, [and] bow thy ear to my understanding:
5:2 That thou mayest regard discretion, and [that] thy lips may keep knowledge.
5:3 For the lips of an adulteress drop [as] an honeycomb, and her mouth [is] smoother than oil:
5:4 But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword.
5:5 Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.
5:6 Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are unstable, [that] thou canst not know [them].
5:7 Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.
5:8 Remove thy way far from her, and come not near the door of her house:
5:9 Lest thou give thy honour to others, and thy years to the cruel:
5:10 Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours [be] in the house of a stranger;
5:11 And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,
5:12 And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;
5:13 And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to them that instructed me!
5:14 I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.
5:15 Drink waters out of thy own cistern, and running waters out of thy own well.
5:16 Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, [and] rivers of waters in the streets.
5:17 Let them be only thy own, and not for strangers with thee.
5:18 Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
5:19 [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.
5:20 And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with an adulteress, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?
5:21 For the ways of man [are] before the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings.
5:22 His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be held with the cords of his sins.
5:23 He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.