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Chapter 5
1 My son, attend to my wisdom, and incline your ear to my prudence.
2 That you may keep thoughts, and your lips may preserve instruction. Mind not the deceit of a woman.
3 For the lips of a harlot are like a honeycomb dropping, and her throat is smoother than oil.
4 But her end is bitter as wormwood, and sharp as a two-edged sword.
5 Her feet go down into death, and her steps go in as far as hell.
6 They walk not by the path of life, her steps are wandering, and unaccountable.
7 Now therefore, my son, hear me, and depart not from the words of my mouth.
8 Remove your way far from her, and come not nigh the doors of her house.
9 Give not your honour to strangers, and your years to the cruel.
10 Lest strangers be filled with your strength, and your labours be in another man's house,
11 And you mourn it the last, when you shall have spent your flesh and your body, and say:
12 Why have I hated instruction, and my heart consented not to reproof,
13 And have not heard the voice of them that taught me, and have not in- dined my ear to masters?
14 I have almost been in all evil, in the midst of the church and of the congregation.
15 Drink water out of your own cistern, and the streams of your own well:
16 Let your fountains be conveyed abroad, and in the streets divide your waters.
17 Keep them to yourself alone, neither let strangers be partakers with you.
18 Let your vein be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of your youth:
19 Let her be your dearest hind, and most agreeable fawn: let her breasts inebriate you at all times; he you delighted continually with her love.
20 Why are you seduced, my son, by a strange woman, and art cherished in the bosom of another ?
21 The Lord beholds the ways of man, and considers all his steps.
22 His own iniquities catch the wicked, and he is fast bound with the ropes of his own sins.
23 He shall die, because he has not received instruction, and in the multitude of his folly he shall be deceived.