⁷ And now, O sons, listen to me,
    and do not depart from the words of my mouth.
⁸ Keep your way far from her,
    and do not go near the door of her house,
⁹ lest you give your honor to others
    and your years to the merciless,
¹⁰ lest strangers take their fill of your strength,
    and your labors go to the house of a foreigner,
¹¹ and at the end of your life you groan,
    when your flesh and body are consumed,
¹² and you say, “How I hated discipline,
    and my heart despised reproof!
¹³ I did not listen to the voice of my teachers
    or incline my ear to my instructors.
¹⁴ I am at the brink of utter ruin
    in the assembled congregation.”

¹⁵ Drink water from your own cistern,
    flowing water from your own well.
¹⁶ Should your springs be scattered abroad,
    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 lovely deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;
    be intoxicated^[d] always in her love.
²⁰ Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman
    and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?^[e]
21 For a man's ways are before the eyes of the Lord,
    and he ponders^[f] all his paths.
²² The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him,
    and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.
²³ He dies for lack of discipline,
    and because of his great folly he is led astray.