Warning Against Adultery

¹My son, be attentive to my wisdom;

incline your ear to my understanding,

²that you may keep discretion,

and your lips may guard knowledge.

³For the lips of a forbidden1 woman drip honey,

and her speech2 is smoother than oil,

⁴but in the end she is bitter as wormwood,

sharp as a two-edged sword.

⁵Her feet go down to death;

her steps follow the path to3 Sheol;

⁶she does not ponder the path of life;

her ways wander, and she does not know it.

⁷And now, O sons, listen to me,

and do not depart from the words of my mouth.

⁸Keep your way far from her,

and do not go near the door of her house,

⁹lest you give your honor to others

and your years to the merciless,

¹⁰lest strangers take their fill of your strength,

and your labors go to the house of a foreigner,

¹¹and at the end of your life you groan,

when your flesh and body are consumed,

¹²and you say, “How I hated discipline,

and my heart despised reproof!

¹³I did not listen to the voice of my teachers

or incline my ear to my instructors.

¹⁴I am at the brink of utter ruin

in the assembled congregation.”

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.