Proverbs, 5

1. My son, attend unto my wisdom, [and] bow thine ear to my understanding:

1. My son, pay heed to my wisdom and listen to my insights;

2. That thou mayest regard discretion, and [that] thy lips may keep knowledge.

2. remember my counsel and let your lips not depart from this knowledge.

3. For the lips of a strange woman drop [as] an honeycomb, and her mouth [is] smoother than oil:

3. Know that the lips of the adulteress are sweet as honey and her words smoother than oil,

4. But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword.

4. but the outcome is bitter as herbs. It is as sharp as a double-edged sword.

5. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.

5. Her feet go down to the grave and her steps lead to death.

6. Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, [that] thou canst not know [them].

6. She pays no attention to the path of life and strays without knowing it.

7. Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.

7. Now then, my son, listen to me and do not forget my words:

8. Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house:

8. Stay away from her and never approach the door of her house,

9. Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel:

9. lest you surrender your honor to strangers and your best years to cruel men,

10. Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours [be] in the house of a stranger;

10. lest others benefit from your goods, and your earnings go to an alien house.

11. And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,

11. You will complain in the end, when your body and flesh are already devoured and

12. And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;

12. you will say, "Why did I reject instruction and turn my back on sound advice?

13. And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!

13. Why did I not listen to the voice of my teachers and follow their counsel?

14. I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.

14. For I have come to the depths of disgrace in the midst of the whole community."

15. Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.

15. Drink, then, from the water of your own cistern, from that which flows in your own well.

16. Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, [and] rivers of waters in the streets.

16. Do not let your fountains be wasted elsewhere nor in the public streets.

17. Let them be only thine own, and not strangers' with thee.

17. They are for you alone and not for strangers.

18. Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.

18. May your fountainhead be blessed and may you find joy in the wife of your 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.

19. your beautiful hind and graceful gazelle! May her breasts be your delight at all times: be always in love with her.

20. And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?

20. My son, why be infatuated with an adulteress and embrace a strange woman?

21. For the ways of man [are] before the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings.

21. For Yahweh watches the ways of men and he observes all their paths.

22. His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.

22. The wicked will be caught in his own evil and remain entangled in the nets of his own sin.

23. He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.

23. He will die for want of discipline and will drown in the rising tide of his own evil.