Thomson(i)
1 My son, attend to my wisdom, and incline thine ear to my words,
2 that thou mayst keep a good understanding. Now the sense of my lips giveth thee this injunction; listen not to an abandoned woman;
3 for honey droppeth from the lips of a harlot, which for a while pleaseth thy palate;
4 but in the end thou wilt find it bitterer than gall, and sharper than a two edged sword.
5 For the feet of folly lead them, who indulge themselves with her, down with death to the mansion of the dead. Her steps indeed are not established,
6 for she walketh not in the ways of life. Her paths are slippery and not easily known.
7 Now therefore, my son, hearken to me and slight not my words.
8 Remove thy way far from her, go not near the doors of her house;
9 That thou mayst not give thy life to others, and thy substance to the cruel:
10 that strangers may not be filled with thy wealth, and thy labours go into the houses of strangers,
11 and thou at last be grieved. When the flesh of thy body is consumed,
12 then thou wilt say, "How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof!
13 I hearkened not to the voice of him who instructed me and taught me; nor have I inclined mine ear.
14 I have been almost in all evil, in the midst of the assembly and congregation."
15 Drink water from thine own vessels, and from the wells of thine own fountain.
16 Let not the waters from thy fountain over flow for thee; but let thy waters run in thine own streets.
17 Let them be for thyself only, and let no stranger partake with thee.
18 Let thy fountain of water be appropriate to thyself; and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
19 Let thy loving hind and graceful fawn converse with thee; and let her be accounted peculiarly thine, and be with thee on all occasions. For ravished with her love thou wilt become a numerous family.
20 Be not devoted to a strange woman, nor embraced in the arms of one not thine own.
21 For the ways of a husband are before the eyes of God, and he examineth narrowly all his paths.
22 Iniquities hunt a man; but every one is caught by the cords of his own sins.
23 Such a one dieth with the uninstructed, but from his plentiful means of living he was cast out, and perished by reason of folly.