Avoid Another Man’s Wife and Find a Wife of Your Own
1My son, listen to my wisdom;
Incline your ear to my insight,
2That you may have foresight,
While your lips hold fast to knowledge.
3For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey;
Her mouth is smoother than oil;
4But in the end she is as bitter as wormwood,
Sharp as a two-edged sword.
5Her feet go down to Death;
Her steps take hold of Sheol. [ . . . ]
8Keep yourself far away from her;
Do not come near the doorway of her house
9Lest you give up your vigor to others,
Your years to a ruthless one;
10Lest strangers eat their fill of your strength,
And your toil be for the house of another;
11And in the end you roar,
When your flesh and body are consumed,
12And say,
“O how I hated discipline,
And heartily spurned rebuke.
13I did not pay heed to my teachers,
Or incline my ear to my instructors.
14Soon I was in dire trouble
Amidst the assembled congregation.”
15Drink water from your own cistern,
Running water from your own well.
16Your springs will gush forth
In streams in the public squares.
17They will be yours alone,
Others having no part with you.
18Let your fountain be blessed;
Find joy in the wife of your youth—
19A loving doe, a graceful mountain goat.
Let her breasts satisfy you at all times;
Be infatuated with love of her always.
20Why be infatuated, my son, with a forbidden woman?
Why clasp the bosom of an alien woman?
21For a man’s ways are before the eyes of God;
He surveys his entire course.
22The wicked man will be trapped in his iniquities;
He will be caught up in the ropes of his sin.
23He will die for lack of discipline,
Infatuated by his great folly.
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Credits
Reprinted from Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright 1985 by the Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia.
Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 1.
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