Beware of the adulteress
1 My son, pay heed to my wisdom and listen to my insights;
2 remember my counsel and let your lips not depart from this knowledge.
3 Know that the lips of the adulteress are sweet as honey and her words smoother than oil,
4 but the outcome is bitter as herbs. It is as sharp as a double-edged sword.
5 Her feet go down to the grave and her steps lead to death.
6 She pays no attention to the path of life and strays without knowing it.
7 Now then, my son, listen to me and do not forget my words:
8 Stay away from her and never approach the door of her house,
9 lest you surrender your honor to strangers and your best years to cruel men,
10 lest others benefit from your goods, and your earnings go to an alien house.
11 You will complain in the end, when your body and flesh are already devoured and
12 you will say, “Why did I reject instruction and turn my back on sound advice?
13 Why did I not listen to the voice of my teachers and follow their counsel?
14 For I have come to the depths of disgrace in the midst of the whole community.”
15 Drink, then, from the water of your own cistern, from that which flows in your own well.
16 Do not let your fountains be wasted elsewhere nor in the public streets.
17 They are for you alone and not for strangers.
18 May your fountainhead be blessed and may you find joy in the wife of your youth,
19 your beautiful hind and graceful gazelle! May her breasts be your delight at all times: be always in love with her.
20 My son, why be infatuated with an adulteress and embrace a strange woman?
21 For Yahweh watches the ways of men and he observes all their paths.
22 The wicked will be caught in his own evil and remain entangled in the nets of his own sin.
23 He will die for want of discipline and will drown in the rising tide of his own evil.
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Comments Proverbs, Chapter 5
• 5.15 Drink, then, from the water of your own cistern. Let people be responsible first in their married life. This chapter deals with the consequences of licentiousness. It invites a man to value the intimacy of his marriage and after many years to be able to continue being the lover of his wife: be always in love with her.
It is strange that today it is necessary to be reminded of such things in a society of abundance where infidelity is extolled as if it multiplied the possibilities of enjoyment and of finding oneself. The contempt for fidelity and the family is the first cause of death in a country: children become rare and selfishness is the law. The Bible knows that people only reach maturity by respecting a law and that sexual liberty only brings decline to a disenchanted heart.