otcanon
Proverbs 5
A father addresses his son on the contrast between two paths: the strange woman whose lips are sweet as honeycomb but whose end is death and Sheol, and the wife of his youth whose fountain alone is to satisfy him. The warning is not merely moral prudence — the strange woman actively obscures the path of life, keeping the man from pondering it. The remedy is fidelity to covenant: one's own cistern, one's own well, one's own fountain. Jehovah's eyes track every step, and the wicked man is ultimately bound by his own sins rather than by any outside chain.
1
My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding:
2
That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.
3
For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:
4
But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword.
5
Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.
6
Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.
7
Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.
8
Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house:
9
Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel:
10
Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger;
11
And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,
12
And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;
13
And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!
14
I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.
15
Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.
16
Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets.
17
Let them be only thine own, and not strangers' with thee.
18
Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
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.
20
And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?
21
For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings.
22
His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.
23
He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.
