Warning against Unchastity |
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My son, attend unto my wisdom,
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and bow thine ear to my understanding: |
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that thou mayest regard discretion,
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and that thy lips may keep knowledge. |
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| 3 |
For the lips of a strange woman drop as a honeycomb,
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and her mouth is smoother than oil: |
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but her end is bitter as wormwood,
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sharp as a two-edged sword. |
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Her feet go down to death;
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her steps take hold on hell. |
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Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life,
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her ways are movable, that thou canst not know them. |
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Hear me now therefore, O ye children,
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and depart not from the words of my mouth. |
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| 8 |
Remove thy way far from her,
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and come not nigh the door of her house: |
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lest thou give thine honor unto others,
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and thy years unto the cruel: |
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lest strangers be filled with thy wealth;
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and thy labors be in the house of a stranger; |
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and thou mourn at the last,
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when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, |
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and say, How have I hated instruction,
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and my heart despised reproof; |
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| 13 |
and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers,
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nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me! |
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| 14 |
I was almost in all evil
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in the midst of the congregation and assembly. |
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| 15 |
Drink waters out of thine own cistern,
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and running waters out of thine own well. |
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| 16 |
Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad,
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and rivers of waters in the streets. |
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| 17 |
Let them be only thine own,
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and not strangers' with thee. |
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| 18 |
Let thy fountain be blessed:
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and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. |
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| 19 |
Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe;
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let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; |
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and be thou ravished always with her love. |
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| 20 |
And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman,
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and embrace the bosom of a stranger? |
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| 21 |
For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD,
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and he pondereth all his goings. |
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| 22 |
His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself,
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and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins. |
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| 23 |
He shall die without instruction;
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and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray. |
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