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Proverbs – Chapter 5

Books of The Bible / Book of Proverbs

1 My son, pay attention to my wisdom, listen carefully to what I know;

2 so that you may preserve discretion and your lips may guard knowledge. Take no notice of a loose-living woman,

3 for the lips of the adulteress drip with honey, her palate is more unctuous 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, Sheol the goal of her steps;

6 far from following the path of life, her course is uncertain and she does not know it.

7 And now, son, listen to me, never deviate from what I say:

8 set your course as far from her as possible, go nowhere near the door of her house,

9 or she will hand over your honour to others, the years of your life to a man without pity,

10 and strangers will batten on your property, and your produce go to the house of a stranger,

11 and, at your ending, your body and flesh having been consumed, you will groan

12 and exclaim, ‘Alas, I hated discipline, my heart spurned all correction;

13 I would not attend to the voice of my masters, I would not listen to those who tried to teach me.

14 Now I have come to nearly every kind of misery, in the assembly and in the community.’

15 Drink the water from your own storage-well, fresh water from your own spring.

16 Even if your fountains overflow outside, your streams of water in the public squares:

17 let them be for you alone, and not for strangers with you.

18 May your fountain-head be blessed! Find joy with the wife you married in your youth,

19 fair as a hind, graceful as a fawn: hers the breasts that ever fill you with delight, hers the love that ever holds you captive.

20 Why be seduced, my son, by someone else’s wife, and fondle the breast of a woman who belongs to another?

21 For the eyes of Yahweh observe human ways, and survey all human paths.

22 The wicked is snared in his own misdeeds, is caught in the meshes of his own sin.

23 For want of discipline, he dies, led astray by his own excessive folly.

Chapters from the Book of Proverbs