5:1  My son, be attentive to my wisdom, incline your ear to my understanding;

5:2  that you may keep discretion, and your lips may guard knowledge.

5:3  For the lips of a loose woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil;

5:4  but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.

5:5  Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol;

5:6  she does not take heed to the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it.

5:7  And now, O sons, listen to me, and do not depart from the words of my mouth.

5:8  Keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house;

5:9  lest you give your honor to others and your years to the merciless;

5:10  lest strangers take their fill of your strength, and your labors go to the house of an alien;

5:11  and at the end of your life you groan, when your flesh and body are consumed,

5:12  and you say, "How I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof!

5:13  I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors.

5:14  I was at the point of utter ruin in the assembled congregation."

5:15  Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.

5:16  Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?

5:17  Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you.

5:18  Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth,

5:19  a lovely hind, a graceful doe. Let her affection fill you at all times with delight, be infatuated always with her love.

5:20  Why should you be infatuated, my son, with a loose woman and embrace the bosom of an adventuress?

5:21  For a man's ways are before the eyes of the LORD, and he watches all his paths.

5:22  The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is caught in the toils of his sin.

5:23  He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly he is lost.