Old Testament · BSB
Proverbs 5
Berean Standard Bible · 23 verses
- My son, pay attention to my wisdom; incline your ear to my insight,
- that you may maintain discretion and your lips may preserve knowledge.
- Though the lips of the forbidden woman drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil,
- in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a double-edged sword.
- Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to Sheol.
- She does not consider the path of life; she does not know that her ways are unstable.
- So now, my sons, listen to me, and do not turn aside from the words of my mouth.
- Keep your path far from her; do not go near the door of her house,
- lest you concede your vigor to others, and your years to one who is cruel;
- lest strangers feast on your wealth, and your labors enrich the house of a foreigner.
- At the end of your life you will groan when your flesh and your body are spent,
- and you will say, “How I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof!
- I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my mentors.
- I am on the brink of utter ruin in the midst of the whole assembly.”
- Drink water from your own cistern, and running water from your own well.
- Why should your springs flow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares?
- Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers.
- May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth:
- A loving doe, a graceful fawn—may her breasts satisfy you always; may you be captivated by her love forever.
- Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress, or embrace the bosom of a stranger?
- For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the LORD, and the LORD examines all his paths.
- The iniquities of a wicked man entrap him; the cords of his sin entangle him.
- He dies for lack of discipline, led astray by his own great folly.