MLV(i)
3 Because the lips of a strange woman drop honey and her mouth is smoother 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. Her steps take hold on Sheol, 6 so that she does not find the level path of life. Her ways are unstable and she does not know.
7 Now therefore, you* the sons, listen to me and do not depart from the words of my mouth.
8 Remove your way far from her and do not come near the door of her house, 9 lest you give your honor to others and your years to the cruel, 10 lest strangers be filled with your strength and your labors be in the house of an alien, 11 and you mourn at your latter end when your flesh and your body are consumed, 12 and say, How I have hated instruction and my heart despised reproof. 13 Neither have I obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to those who instructed me! 14 I was almost in all evil in the midst of the assembly and congregation.
15 Drink waters out of your own cistern and flowing waters out of your own well. 16 Should your springs be dispersed abroad and streams of water in the streets? 17 Let them be for yourself alone and not for strangers with you.
18 Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth: 19 a loving female-deer and a pleasant doe. Let her breasts satisfy you at all times and be ravished always with her love.
20 For why should you, my son, be ravished with an strange woman and embrace the bosom of a foreigner?
21 Because the ways of man are before the eyes of Jehovah and he makes level all his paths.
22 His own iniquities will take a wicked man and he will be held with the cords of his sin. 23 He will die for lack of instruction. And he will go astray in the greatness of his folly.
5 Her feet go down to death. Her steps take hold on Sheol, 6 so that she does not find the level path of life. Her ways are unstable and she does not know.
7 Now therefore, you* the sons, listen to me and do not depart from the words of my mouth.
8 Remove your way far from her and do not come near the door of her house, 9 lest you give your honor to others and your years to the cruel, 10 lest strangers be filled with your strength and your labors be in the house of an alien, 11 and you mourn at your latter end when your flesh and your body are consumed, 12 and say, How I have hated instruction and my heart despised reproof. 13 Neither have I obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to those who instructed me! 14 I was almost in all evil in the midst of the assembly and congregation.
15 Drink waters out of your own cistern and flowing waters out of your own well. 16 Should your springs be dispersed abroad and streams of water in the streets? 17 Let them be for yourself alone and not for strangers with you.
18 Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth: 19 a loving female-deer and a pleasant doe. Let her breasts satisfy you at all times and be ravished always with her love.
20 For why should you, my son, be ravished with an strange woman and embrace the bosom of a foreigner?
21 Because the ways of man are before the eyes of Jehovah and he makes level all his paths.
22 His own iniquities will take a wicked man and he will be held with the cords of his sin. 23 He will die for lack of instruction. And he will go astray in the greatness of his folly.