| 1 ¶ My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding:
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| 2 That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.
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| 3 For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth1 is smoother than oil:
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| 4 But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword.
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| 5 Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.
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| 6 Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.
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| 7 Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.
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| 8 Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house:
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| 9 Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel:
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| 10 Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth;2 and thy labours be in the house of a stranger;
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| 11 And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,
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| 12 And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;
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| 13 And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!
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| 14 I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.
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| 15 ¶ Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.
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| 16 Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets.
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| 17 Let them be only thine own, and not strangers' with thee.
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| 18 Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
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| 19 Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy3 thee at all times; and be thou4 ravished always with her love.
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| 20 And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?
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| 21 For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings.
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| 22 His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.5
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| 23 He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.
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