Proverbs 5:9-23 ▼

9 Otherwise, you will give up your vitality to others and your years to someone cruel;

10 strangers will drain your resources, and your earnings will end up in a foreigner’s house.

11 At the end of your life, you will lament when your physical body has been consumed,

12 and you will say, “ How I hated discipline, and how my heart despised correction.

13 I didn’t obey my teachers or listen closely to my mentors.

14 I am on the verge of complete ruin before the entire community .”

15 Drink water from your own cistern, water flowing from your own well.

16 Should your springs flow in the streets, streams of water in the public squares?

17 They should be for you alone and not for you to share with strangers.

18 Let your fountain be blessed, and take pleasure in the wife of your youth.

19 A loving doe, a graceful fawn — let her breasts always satisfy you; be lost in her love forever.

20 Why , my son, would you be infatuated with a forbidden woman or embrace the breast of a stranger?

21 For a man’s ways are before the LORD’s eyes, and He considers all his paths.

22 A wicked man’s iniquities entrap him; he is entangled in the ropes of his own sin.

23 He will die because there is no discipline, and be lost because of his great stupidity.