| 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 mouth is smoother than oil:
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| 4 | But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged 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; 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 satisfy thee at all times; and be thou 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.
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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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