Avoiding Immorality
(Leviticus 20:10–21; 1 Corinthians 5:1–8)

1My son, attend to my wisdom; incline thine ear to understanding:

2To watch meditation, and thy lips shall guard knowledge.

3For the lips of the strange woman will drop droppings of the honeycomb, and her palate is smooth above oil:

4And her latter state being bitter as wormwood; sharp as a two-mouthed sword.

5Her feet go down to death; her steps will hold fast to hades.

6Lest thou shalt make level the path of life, her tracks wavered; thou wilt not know.

7And now, ye sons, hear to me, and ye shall not depart from the words of my mouth.

8Remove far off from her thy way, and thou shalt not draw near to the door of her house:

9Lest thou shalt give thy strength to others, and thy years to the cruel:

10Lest strangers shall be filled with thy strength, and thy labors in the house of strangers;

11And thou didst lament in thy latter state, in the consuming of thy flesh and thy fulness,

12And thou saidst, How did I hate instruction, and my heart despise reproofs.

13And I heard not to the voice of him teaching me, and I inclined not mine ear to him instructing me.

14As I was almost in all evil in the midst of the convocation and the assembly.

15Drink water from thy pit, and flowing from the midst of thy well.

16Thy fountains shall be dispersed without; in the broad places streams of waters.

17They shall be to thee alone, and not strangers with thee.

18Thy fountain shall be blessed: and rejoice from the wife of thy youth.

19The hind of loves and the wild goat of grace; her breasts shall satiate thee in all time; thou shalt always wander in her loves.

20And wherefore, my son, wilt thou wander with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?

21For before the eyes of Jehovah are the ways of man, and he makes level all his tracks.

22His iniquities shall take the unjust one, and with the cords of his sins shall he be held fast.

23He shall die in not being instructed, and he shall wander in the multitude of his folly.