⁷ So now, children, listen to me; do not turn aside from the words I speak. ⁸ Keep yourself far from her, and do not go near the door of her house, ⁹ lest you give your vigor to others and your years to a cruel person, ¹⁰ lest strangers devour your strength, and your labor benefit another man's house. ¹¹ And at the end of your life you will groan when your flesh and your body are wasted away. ¹² And you will say, "How I hated discipline! My heart spurned reproof! ¹³ For I did not obey my teachers and I did not heed my instructors. ¹⁴ I almost came to complete ruin in the midst of the whole congregation!"

¹⁵ Drink water from your own cistern and running water from your own well. ¹⁶ Should your springs be dispersed outside, your streams of water in the wide plazas? ¹⁷ Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you. ¹⁸ May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in your young wife -- ¹⁹ a loving doe, a graceful deer; may her breasts satisfy you at all times, may you be captivated by her love always. ²⁰ But why should you be captivated, my son, by an adulteress, and embrace the bosom of a different woman? ²¹ For the ways of a person are in front of the Lord's eyes, and the Lord weighs all that person's paths. ²² The wicked will be captured by his own iniquities, and he will be held by the cords of his own sin. ²³ He will die because there was no discipline; because of the greatness of his folly he will reel.