¹⁵Drink water from your own cistern,

flowing water from your own well.

¹⁶Should your springs be scattered abroad,

streams of water in the streets?

¹⁷Let them be for yourself alone,

and not for strangers with you.

¹⁸Let your fountain be blessed,

and rejoice in the wife of your youth,

¹⁹a lovely deer, a graceful doe.

Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;

be intoxicated4 always in her love.

²⁰Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman

and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?5

²¹For a man's ways are before the eyes of the Lord,

and he ponders6 all his paths.

²²The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him,

and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.

²³He dies for lack of discipline,

and because of his great folly he is led astray.

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