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My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding:
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That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.
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¶ For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:
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But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword.
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Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.
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Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.
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Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.
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Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house:
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Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel:
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Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger;
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And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,
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And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;
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And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!
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I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.
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¶ Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.
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Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets.
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Let them be only thine own, and not strangers’ with thee.
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Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
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Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.
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And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?
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For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goings.
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¶ His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.
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He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.