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1 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. | |
15 Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well. | |
16 Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets. | |
17 Let them be only thine own, and not strangers' with thee. | |
18 Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. | |
19 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. | |
20 And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger? | |
21 For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings. | |
22 His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins. | |
23 He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray. | |
