Proverbs 5

Proverbs 5

Warning against Impurity and Infidelity

¹My child, be attentive to my wisdom;[#Prov 4.20; 22.17]

incline your ear to my understanding,

²so that you may hold on to prudence,

and your lips may guard knowledge.

³For the lips of a loose woman drip honey,[#Ps 55.21; Prov 2.16; #5.3 Heb strange woman]

and her speech is smoother than oil,

⁴but in the end she is bitter as wormwood,[#Ps 57.4; Eccl 7.26]

sharp as a two-edged sword.

⁵Her feet go down to death;

her steps follow the path to Sheol.

⁶She does not keep straight to the path of life;

her ways wander, and she does not know it.

⁷And now, my child, listen to me,[#Ps 119.102; Prov 7.24; #5.7 Gk Vg: Heb children]

and do not depart from the words of my mouth.

⁸Keep your way far from her,[#Prov 7.25; 9.14]

and do not go near the door of her house,

⁹lest you give your honor to others

and your years to the merciless,

¹⁰and strangers take their fill of your wealth,

and your labors go to the house of an alien,

¹¹and at the end of your life you groan,

when your flesh and body are consumed,

¹²and you say, “Oh, how I hated discipline,[#Prov 1.29; 12.1]

and my heart despised reproof!

¹³I did not listen to the voice of my teachers

or incline my ear to my instructors.

¹⁴Now I am at the point of utter ruin

in the public assembly.”

¹⁵Drink water from your own cistern,

flowing water from your own well.

¹⁶Should your springs be scattered abroad,[#Prov 9.17]

streams of water in the streets?

¹⁷Let them be for yourself alone

and not for sharing with strangers.

¹⁸Let your fountain be blessed,[#Eccl 9.9; Mal 2.14]

and rejoice in the wife of your youth,

¹⁹a lovely deer, a graceful doe.[#Song 2.9; 4.5; 7.3]

May her breasts satisfy you at all times;

may you be intoxicated always by her love.

²⁰Why should you be intoxicated, my son, by another woman[#Prov 2.16; 7.5]

and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?

²¹For human ways are under the eyes of the Lord ,[#Job 31.4; 34.21; Prov 15.3; Jer 16.17; 32.19; Hos 7.2; Heb 4.13]

and he examines all their paths.

²²The iniquities of the wicked ensnare them,[#Ps 9.15]

and they are caught in the coils of their sin.

²³They die for lack of discipline,[#Job 4.21; 36.12]

and because of their great folly they are lost.