Mind of God Sundays: Proverbs--Proverbs 5

Proverbs 5 (English Standard Version)

¹ My 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 forbidden 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 ponder 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 a foreigner,
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.
¹⁴ I am at the brink 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 deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;
be intoxicated always in her love.
²⁰Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman
and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?
²¹For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the LORD,
and he ponders all his paths.
²²The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him,
and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.
²³He dies for lack of discipline,
and because of his great folly he is led astray.