Do Not Commit Adultery Against Wisdom

• 7 Now, O children, listen to me; do not depart from the sayings of my mouth.
• 8 Keep your paths far from her, and do not go near to the door of her house,
• 9 lest you give your honor to the others, and your years to the merciless,
• 10 lest strangers take their fill of your strength, and your labors go to the house of a foreigner,
• 11 and you groan at your end, when your flesh and body are consumed,
• 12 and say “How I hated discipline, and I despised reproof!”
• 13 and “I did not listen to the voice of my teachers, and I did not incline my ear to my instructors!
• 14 I was almost at utter[fn] ruin[fn] in the midst of the assembly and congregation.”
• 15 Drink water from your own cistern and flowing waters from inside your own well.
• 16 Shall your springs be scattered outward? In the streets, shall there be streams of water?
• 17 May they be yours alone, and not for strangers who are with you.
• 18 May your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife[fn] of your youth.
• 19 She is a deer of love and a doe of grace; may her breasts satisfy you always ;[fn]
• by her love may you be intoxicated continually.
• 20 Why should you be intoxicated, my child, by a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a foreigner?
• 21 For before the eyes of Yahweh are human ways ,[fn] and all his paths he examines.
• 22 His iniquities shall ensnare him, the evildoer, and in the vanity of his sin he shall be caught.
• 23 He shall die for lack of[fn] discipline, and in the greatness of his folly he shall be lost.