¹ My son,
attend unto my wisdom,
and bow thine ear to my understanding:
² That thou mayest regard discretion,
and that thy lips may keep knowledge.

³ For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb,
and her mouth is smoother than oil:
⁴ But her end is bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a twoedged sword.
⁵ Her feet go down to death;
her steps take hold on hell.
⁶ Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life,
her ways are moveable,
that thou canst not know them.
⁷ Hear me now therefore, O ye children,
and depart not from the words of my mouth.
⁸ Remove thy way far [Withdraw far your way] from her,
and come not nigh the door of her house:
⁹ Lest thou give thine honour unto others,
and thy years unto the cruel:
¹⁰ Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth;
and thy labours be in the house of a stranger;
¹¹ And thou mourn at the last,
when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,
¹² And say, How have I hated instruction,
and my heart despised reproof;
¹³ And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers,
nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!
¹⁴ I was almost in all evil
in the midst of the congregation and assembly.

¹⁵ Drink waters out of thine own cistern,
and running waters out of thine own well.
¹⁶ Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad,
and rivers of waters in the streets.
¹⁷ Let them be only thine own,
and not strangers' with thee.
¹⁸ Let thy fountain be blessed:
and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
¹⁹ Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe;
let her breasts satisfy thee [satiate you] at all times;
and be thou ravished always with her love.

²⁰ And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with 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 pondereth all his goings.
²² His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself,
and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.
²³ He shall die without instruction;
and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.