Login Go Premium

Proverbs 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Proverbs 5 (RSV)

Click verse numbers to view individual verses with commentary

View interlinear text with original Hebrew/Greek →

Proverbs

Chapter 5

5 of 31