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Proverbs 5, RSV

5:1 My son, be attentive to my wisdom, incline your ear to my understanding;

5:2 that you may keep discretion, and your lips may guard knowledge.

5:3 For the lips of a loose woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil;

5:4 but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.

5:5 Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol;

5:6 she does not take heed to the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it.

5:7 And now, O sons, listen to me, and do not depart from the words of my mouth.

5:8 Keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house;

5:9 lest you give your honor to others and your years to the merciless;

5:10 lest strangers take their fill of your strength, and your labors go to the house of an alien;

5:11 and at the end of your life you groan, when your flesh and body are consumed,

5:12 and you say, "How I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof!

5:13 I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors.

5:14 I was at the point of utter ruin in the assembled congregation."

5:15 Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.

5:16 Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?

5:17 Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you.

5:18 Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth,

5:19 a lovely hind, a graceful doe. Let her affection fill you at all times with delight, be infatuated always with her love.

5:20 Why should you be infatuated, my son, with a loose woman and embrace the bosom of an adventuress?

5:21 For a man's ways are before the eyes of the LORD, and he watches all his paths.

5:22 The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is caught in the toils of his sin.

5:23 He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly he is lost.

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