LITV(i)
1 My son, listen to my wisdom; bow your ears to my understanding;
2 So that you may keep judgment, and your lips may keep knowledge.
3 For the lips of a strange woman drip honey, and her palate is sweeter than oil,
4 but afterwards, she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a sword of mouths;
5 her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell,
6 lest you should meditate on the path of life, her tracks are movable, you cannot know them.
7 Then hear me now, O sons, and do not depart from the words of my mouth.
8 Remove your ways far from her, and do not come near to the door of her house,
9 lest you give your honor to others, and your years to the cruel;
10 that strangers not be filled with your strength, and your labors be in the house of an alien,
11 and you moan when your end comes, when your flesh and muscle are eaten away;
12 and say, How I have hated instruction, and my heart despised correction;
13 and I have not bowed to the voice of my teachers, nor bowed my ears to those instructing me.
14 I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.
15 Drink waters out of your own cistern, and running waters out of your own well.
16 Should your overflowing springs be scattered outside, like rivers of waters in the streets?
17 Let them be only your own, and not to strangers with you;
18 let your fountains be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of your youth;
19 she is a loving deer, a graceful doe; let her breasts satisfy you every time, and always be ravished in her love.
20 And my son, why will you be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace a foreigner's bosom?
21 For the ways of man are before the eyes of Jehovah, and He ponders all his tracks.
22 His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be held with the cords of his sin.
23 He shall die without instruction, and in the greatness of his foolishness he shall go astray.