Proverbs 5:6-23

5:6 Lest she should make level the path leading to life,

her paths are unstable but she does not know it.

5:7 So now, children, listen to me;

do not turn aside from the words I speak.

5:8 Keep yourself far from her,

and do not go near the door of her house,

5:9 lest you give your vigor to others

and your years to a cruel person,

5:10 lest strangers devour your strength,

and your labor benefit another man’s house.

5:11 And at the end of your life you will groan

when your flesh and your body are wasted away.

5:12 And you will say, “How I hated discipline!

My heart spurned reproof!

5:13 For I did not obey my teachers

and I did not heed my instructors.

5:14 I almost came to complete ruin

in the midst of the whole congregation!”

5:15 Drink water from your own cistern

and running water from your own well.

5:16 Should your springs be dispersed outside,

your streams of water in the wide plazas?

5:17 Let them be for yourself alone,

and not for strangers with you.

5:18 May your fountain be blessed,

and may you rejoice in your young wife –

5:19 a loving doe, a graceful deer;

may her breasts satisfy you at all times,

may you be captivated by her love always.

5:20 But why should you be captivated, my son, by an adulteress,

and embrace the bosom of a different woman?

5:21 For the ways of a person are in front of the Lord’s eyes,

and the Lord weighs all that person’s paths.

5:22 The wicked will be captured by his own iniquities,

and he will be held by the cords of his own sin.

5:23 He will die because there was no discipline;

because of the greatness of his folly he will reel.