✧My son, keep my words. Lay up my commandments within you. ✧2Keep my commandments and live! Guard my teaching as the apple of your eye. ✧3Bind them on your fingers. Write them on the tablet of your heart. ✧4Tell wisdom, “You are my sister.” Call understanding your relative, ✧5that they may keep you from the strange woman, from the foreigner who flatters with her words. ✧6For at the window of my house, I looked out through my lattice. ✧7I saw among the simple ones. I discerned among the youths a young man void of understanding, ✧8passing through the street near her corner, he went the way to her house, ✧9in the twilight, in the evening of the day, in the middle of the night and in the darkness. ✧10Behold, there a woman met him with the attire of a prostitute, and with crafty intent. ✧11She is loud and defiant. Her feet don’t stay in her house. ✧12Now she is in the streets, now in the squares, and lurking at every corner. ✧13So she caught him, and kissed him. With an impudent face she said to him: ✧14“Sacrifices of peace offerings are with me. Today I have paid my vows. ✧15Therefore I came out to meet you, to diligently seek your face, and I have found you. ✧16I have spread my couch with carpets of tapestry, with striped cloths of the yarn of Egypt. ✧17I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. ✧18Come, let’s take our fill of loving until the morning. Let’s solace ourselves with loving. ✧19For my husband isn’t at home. He has gone on a long journey. ✧20He has taken a bag of money with him. He will come home at the full moon.” ✧21With persuasive words, she led him astray. With the flattering of her lips, she seduced him. ✧22He followed her immediately, as an ox goes to the slaughter, as a fool stepping into a noose. ✧23Until an arrow strikes through his liver, as a bird hurries to the snare, and doesn’t know that it will cost his life. ✧24Now therefore, sons, listen to me. Pay attention to the words of my mouth. ✧25Don’t let your heart turn to her ways. Don’t go astray in her paths, ✧26for she has thrown down many wounded. Yes, all her slain are a mighty army. ✧27Her house is the way to Sheol, going down to the rooms of death.