RSV Proverbs 5 Chapter
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.