|
My son, attend unto my wisdom, [and] bow thine ear to my understanding: (5:1) That thou mayest regard discretion, and [that] thy lips may keep knowledge (5:2) For the lips of a strange woman drop [as] an honeycomb, and her mouth [is] smoother than oil: (5:3) But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword (5:4) Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell (5:5) Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, [that] thou canst not know [them] (5:6) Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth (5:7) Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house: (5:8) Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel: (5:9) Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours [be] in the house of a stranger; (5:10) And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, (5:11) And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; (5:12) And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me! (5:13) I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly (5:14) Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well (5:15) Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, [and] rivers of waters in the streets (5:16) Let them be only thine own, and not strangers' with thee (5:17) Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth (5:18) [Let her be as] the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love (5:19) And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger? (5:20) For the ways of man [are] before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goings (5:21) His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins (5:22) He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray
(5:23)
|