Home Master Index
←Prev   Proverbs 5 as rendered by/in  Next→ 



5:1  My child, be attentive to my wisdom; incline your ear to my understanding,
5:2  so that you may hold on to prudence, and your lips may guard knowledge.
5:3  For the lips of a loose woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil;
5:4  but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.
5:5  Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol.
5:6  She does not keep straight to the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it.
5:7  And now, my child, listen to me, and do not depart from the words of my mouth.
5:8  Keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house;
5:9  or you will give your honour to others, and your years to the merciless,
5:10  and strangers will take their fill of your wealth, and your labours will go to the house of an alien;
5:11  and at the end of your life you will groan, when your flesh and body are consumed,
5:12  and you say, ‘Oh, how I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof!
5:13  I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors.
5:14  Now I am at the point of utter ruin in the public assembly.’
5:15  Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.
5:16  Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?
5:17  Let them be for yourself alone, and not for sharing with strangers.
5:18  Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
5:19  a lovely deer, a graceful doe. May her breasts satisfy you at all times; may you be intoxicated always by her love.
5:20  Why should you be intoxicated, my son, by another woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?
5:21  For human ways are under the eyes of the Lord, and he examines all their paths.
5:22  The iniquities of the wicked ensnare them, and they are caught in the toils of their sin.
5:23  They die for lack of discipline, and because of their great folly they are lost.