Proverbs 5 YLT
Summary: This chapter is an extended warning against the adulteress, whose lips "drip honey" but whose end "is bitter as wormwood" (v. 3-4) and whose feet lead down to death and Sheol. The father urges his son to keep his way far from her house and instead to find satisfaction in the wife of his youth, "a lovely deer, a graceful doe... be intoxicated always in her love" (v. 19). He warns that a man's ways are always before the eyes of the LORD, who weighs all his paths, and that the wicked man is ultimately held fast and ensnared by the cords of his own sin.
1My son! to my wisdom give attention, To mine understanding incline thine ear,
2To observe thoughtfulness, And knowledge do thy lips keep.
3For the lips of a strange woman drop honey, And smoother than oil is her mouth,
4And her latter end is bitter as wormwood, Sharp as a sword with mouths.
5Her feet are going down to death, Sheol do her steps take hold of.
6The path of life--lest thou ponder, Moved have her paths--thou knowest not.
7And now, ye sons, hearken to me, And turn not from sayings of my mouth.
8Keep far from off her thy way, And come not near unto the opening of her house,
9Lest thou give to others thy honour, And thy years to the fierce,
10Lest strangers be filled with thy power, And thy labours in the house of a stranger,
11And thou hast howled in thy latter end, In the consumption of thy flesh and thy food,
12And hast said, `How have I hated instruction, And reproof hath my heart despised,
13And I have not hearkened to the voice of my directors, And to my teachers have not inclined mine ear.
14As a little thing I have been all evil, In the midst of an assembly and a company.
15Drink waters out of thine own cistern, Even flowing ones out of thine own well.
16Let thy fountains be scattered abroad, In broad places rivulets of waters.
17Let them be to thee for thyself, And not to strangers with thee.
18Let thy fountain be blessed, And rejoice because of the wife of thy youth,
19A hind of loves, and a roe of grace! Let her loves satisfy thee at all times, In her love magnify thyself continually.
20And why dost thou magnify thyself, My son, with a stranger? And embrace the bosom of a strange woman?
21For over-against the eyes of Jehovah are the ways of each, And all his paths He is pondering.
22His own iniquities do capture the wicked, And with the ropes of his sin he is holden.
23He dieth without instruction, And in the abundance of his folly magnifieth himself!
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