✧1My son, pay attention to my wisdom; incline your ear to my insight, ✧2that you may maintain discretion and your lips may preserve knowledge. ✧3Though the lips of the forbidden woman drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil, ✧4in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a double-edged sword. ✧5Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to Sheol. ✧6She does not consider the path of life; she does not know that her ways are unstable. ✧7So now, my sons, listen to me, and do not turn aside from the words of my mouth. ✧8Keep your path far from her; do not go near the door of her house, ✧9lest you concede your vigor to others, and your years to one who is cruel;
Berean Standard Bible (BSB). Berean Standard Bible (BSB). Dedicated to the public domain by the rights holder.
✧10lest strangers feast on your wealth, and your labors enrich the house of a foreigner.
✧11At the end of your life you will groan when your flesh and your body are spent,
✧12and you will say, “How I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof!
✧13I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my mentors.
✧14I am on the brink of utter ruin in the midst of the whole assembly.”
✧15Drink water from your own cistern, and running water from your own well.
✧16Why should your springs flow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares?
✧17Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers.
✧18May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth:
✧19A loving doe, a graceful fawn— may her breasts satisfy you always; may you be captivated by her love forever.
✧20Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress, or embrace the bosom of a stranger?
✧21For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the LORD, and the LORD examines all his paths.
✧22The iniquities of a wicked man entrap him; the cords of his sin entangle him.
✧23He dies for lack of discipline, led astray by his own great folly.