Proverbs - Chapter 5 | English Standard Version

  • 1. My son, be attentive to my wisdom; incline your ear to my understanding,
  • 2. that you may keep discretion, and your lips may guard knowledge.
  • 3. For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil,
  • 4. but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.
  • 5. Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol;
  • 6. she does not ponder the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it.
  • 7. And now, O sons, listen to me, and do not depart from the words of my mouth.
  • 8. Keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house,
  • 9. lest you give your honor to others and your years to the merciless,
  • 10. lest strangers take their fill of your strength, and your labors go to the house of a foreigner,
  • 11. and at the end of your life you groan, when your flesh and body are consumed,
  • 12. and you say, "How I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof!
  • 13. I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors.
  • 14. I am at the brink of utter ruin in the assembled congregation."
  • 15. Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.
  • 16. Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?
  • 17. Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you.
  • 18. Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
  • 19. a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.
  • 20. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?
  • 21. For a man's ways are before the eyes of the LORD, and he ponders all his paths.
  • 22. The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.
  • 23. He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly he is led astray.
أعلى