Proverbs 4:20-5:14

Authorized (King James) Version

²⁰ My son, attend to my words;
incline thine ear unto my sayings.
²¹ Let them not depart from thine eyes;
keep them in the midst of thine heart.
²² For they are life unto those that find them,
and health to all their flesh.

²³ Keep thy heart with all diligence;
for out of it are the issues of life.
²⁴ Put away from thee a froward mouth,
and perverse lips put far from thee.
²⁵ Let thine eyes look right on,
and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.
²⁶ Ponder the path of thy feet,
and let all thy ways be established.
²⁷ Turn not to the right hand nor to the left:
remove thy foot from evil.

5 My son, attend unto my wisdom,
and bow thine ear to my understanding:
² that thou mayest regard discretion,
and that thy lips may keep knowledge.

³ For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb,
and her mouth is smoother than oil:
⁴ but her end is bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a twoedged sword.
⁵ Her feet go down to death;
her steps take hold on hell.
⁶ Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life,
her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.
⁷ Hear me now therefore, O ye children,
and depart not from the words of my mouth.
⁸ Remove thy way far from her,
and come not nigh the door of her house:
⁹ lest thou give thine honour unto others,
and thy years unto the cruel:
¹⁰ lest strangers be filled with thy wealth;
and thy labours be in the house of a stranger;
¹¹ and thou mourn at the last,
when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,
¹² and say, How have I hated instruction,
and my heart despised reproof;
¹³ and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers,
nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!
¹⁴ I was almost in all evil
in the midst of the congregation and assembly.