1My son, keep my sayings, and store up my commandments within you.
2Keep my commandments and live, and my teaching like the pupil of your eyes.
3Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart.
4Say to wisdom, ‘You are my sister,’ and call understanding your kinswoman,
5to keep you from the strange woman, from the foreign woman who makes her words smooth.
6For at the window of my house, through my lattice, I looked out,
7and I saw among the simple ones, I discerned among the sons, a youth lacking heart,
8passing through the street near her corner, and he strode the way to her house
9in the twilight, in the evening of the day, in the pupil of night and darkness.
10And behold, a woman came to meet him, dressed as a prostitute and guarded of heart.
11She is boisterous and defiant; her feet do not stay at home.
12Now outside, now in the squares, and beside every corner she lies in wait.
13She seized him and kissed him; with a brazen face she said to him:
14‘Peace offerings were due from me; today I have paid my vows.
15So I came out to meet you, to seek your face eagerly, and I have found you.
16I have spread coverings on my couch, colored linens of Egypt.
17I have sprinkled my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.
18Come, let us drink our fill of love until morning; let us delight ourselves with caresses.
19For the man is not at his house; he has gone on a distant journey.
20He took the bag of silver in his hand; at the day of the full moon he will come home.’
21She led him astray with her abundant persuasion; with the smoothness of her lips she drove him along.
22He goes after her at once, like an ox coming to the slaughter, and like a fetter to the discipline of a fool,
23until an arrow pierces his liver, like a bird rushing into a snare, and he does not know that it will cost him his life.
24And now, sons, listen to me, and pay attention to the sayings of my mouth.
25Do not let your heart turn aside to her ways; do not stray into her paths.
26For many are the slain she has brought down, and numerous are all those she has killed.
27Her house is the ways to Sheol, going down to the chambers of death.
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