³ For the lips of a woman who is a stranger drop honey,
her mouth is smoother than oil;
⁴ but in the end she is as bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a double-edged sword.
⁵ Her feet go down to death,
her steps lead straight to Sh’ol;
⁶ she doesn’t walk the level path of life —
her course wanders all over, but she doesn’t know it.
⁷ So now, children, listen to me;
don’t turn away from what I am saying:
⁸ distance your way from her,
stay far from the door of her house;
⁹ so that you won’t give your vigor to others
and your years to someone who is cruel,
¹⁰ so strangers won’t be filled with your strength
and what you worked for go to a foreign house.
¹¹ Then, when your flesh and bones have shrunk,
at the end of your life, you would moan,
¹² “How I hated discipline!
My whole being despised reproof,
¹³ I ignored what my teachers said,
I didn’t listen to my instructors.
¹⁴ I took part in almost every kind of evil,
and the whole community knew it.”

¹⁵ Drink the water from your own cistern,
fresh water from your own well.
¹⁶ Let what your springs produce be dispersed outside,
streams of water flowing in the streets;
¹⁷ but let them be for you alone
and not for strangers with you.
¹⁸ Let your fountain, the wife of your youth,
be blessed; find joy in her —
¹⁹ a lovely deer, a graceful fawn;
let her breasts satisfy you at all times,
always be infatuated with her love.
²⁰ My son, why be infatuated with an unknown woman?
Why embrace the body of a loose woman?
²¹ For Adonai is watching a man’s ways;
he surveys all his paths.
²² A wicked person’s own crimes will trap him,
he will be held fast by the ropes of his sin.
²³ He will die from lack of discipline;
the magnitude of his folly will make him totter and fall.