Proverbs 5

2Now the sense of my lips giveth thee this injunction: Listen not to an abandoned woman;

3for honey droppeth from the lips of a harlot, which for a while pleaseth thy palate;

4but in the end thou wilt find it bitterer than gall,* and sharper than a two-edged sword.

5For the feet of folly lead them, who indulge themselves with her, down with death to the mansion of the dead.

6Her steps indeed are not established, for she walketh not in the ways of life. Her paths are slippery and not easily known.

7Now therefore, my son, hearken to me and slight not my words.

8Remove thy way far from her, go not near the doors of her house;

9That thou mayst not give thy life to others, and thy substance to the cruel:

10that strangers may not be filled with thy wealth, and thy labours go into the houses of strangers,

11and thou at last be grieved. When the flesh of thy body is consumed,

12then thou wilt say: How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof!

13I hearkened not to the voice of him who instructed me and taught me; nor have I inclined mine ear.

14I have been almost in all evil, in the midst of the assembly and congregation.

16Let not the waters from thy fountain overflow for thee; but let thy waters run in thine own streets.

17Let them be for thyself only, and let no stranger partake with thee.

18Let thy fountain of water be appropriate to thyself; and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.

19Let 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.

20Be not devoted to a strange woman, nor embraced in the arms of one not thine own.

21For the ways of a husband are before the eyes of God, and he examineth narrowly all his paths.

22Iniquities hunt a man; but everyone is caught by the cords of his own sins.

23Such a one dieth with the uninstructed, and from his plentiful means of living he was cast out, and perished by reason of folly.