¹My child, be attentive to my wisdom, and to my understanding incline your ear; ²in order to keep prudence, and knowledge will guard your lips. ³For the lips of the strange woman will drip honey, and smoother than oil is her mouth. ⁴But her end is bitter as the wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. ⁵Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold of Sheol. ⁶She does not observe the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it. ⁷Now, O children, listen to me; do not depart from the sayings of my mouth. ⁸Keep your paths far from her, and do not go near to the door of her house, ⁹lest you give your honor to the others, and your years to the merciless, ¹⁰lest strangers take their fill of your strength, and your labors go to the house of a foreigner, ¹¹and you groan at your end, when your flesh and body are consumed, ¹²and say “How I hated discipline, and I despised reproof!” ¹³and “I did not listen to the voice of my teachers, and I did not incline my ear to my instructors! ¹⁴I was almost at utter ruin in the midst of the assembly and congregation.” ¹⁵Drink water from your own cistern and flowing waters from inside your own well. ¹⁶Shall your springs be scattered outward? In the streets, shall there be streams of water? ¹⁷May they be yours alone, and not for strangers who are with you. ¹⁸May your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth. ¹⁹She is a deer of love and a doe of grace; may her breasts satisfy you ⌞always⌟; by her love may you be intoxicated continually. ²⁰Why should you be intoxicated, my child, by a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a foreigner? ²¹For before the eyes of Yahweh are ⌞human ways⌟, and all his paths he examines. ²²His iniquities shall ensnare him, the evildoer, and in the vanity of his sin he shall be caught. ²³He shall die ⌞for lack of⌟ discipline, and in the greatness of his folly he shall be lost.